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Monitor Audio Silver 100 Review (Speaker)

Rate this speaker:

  • 1. Poor (headless panther)

    Votes: 15 5.7%
  • 2. Not terrible (postman panther)

    Votes: 62 23.5%
  • 3. Fine (happy panther)

    Votes: 157 59.5%
  • 4. Great (golfing panther)

    Votes: 30 11.4%

  • Total voters
    264

onslash

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Thanks for reviewing this. I've owned several Monitor Audio Silver speakers over the years (but not this one).

Among those I owned was the RX2, which was two generations prior to this model. IMO it had pretty impressive bass, and pretty nice highs, but there were a couple of things wrong in the mids - a scoop around the crossover and a resonance somewhere around there as well. This one appears to be quite similar but a little better in all respects.

Here are some non-Klippel measurements of the predecessor RX2:
Monitor Audio RX2 Measurements
I can agree with you regarding the impressive bass for its size. I had a rx6 and that too have the same traits, however i do not particularly like how the extreme high's sounded on the rx6 which is suspect has something to do with early cone breakup on the tweeter
 

Beave

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I can agree with you regarding the impressive bass for its size. I had a rx6 and that too have the same traits, however i do not particularly like how the extreme high's sounded on the rx6 which is suspect has something to do with early cone breakup on the tweeter
I also owned the RX6s (and RX1s, and RX2s as mentioned previously). I liked the RX6s but they too had a couple of issues. One, as you suggest, there was some cone breakup, but it wasn't the tweeter. It's the upper woofer breaking up above the crossover frequency. The other problem was that they had a port resonance from the front port and bottom woofer chamber. That made the bass a bit muddy on certain content.

When comparing the RX6 and RX2, I liked the RX2's bass better, but the RX6 had better mids. Highs were similar on both.
 

Koeitje

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My experience is that these sound pretty ok, just a bit bright. I've heard worse loudspeakers for the price and finish on these is very nice. They look like more expensive loudspeakers for sure. I haven't compared them to the M16, but in terms of finish they look better than my M106's for sure.
 

abdo123

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That matches to what Toole says and my personal experience with EQing loudspeaker, namely that using EQ trying to smooth the (predicted) listening position response won't still sound as right if the directivity isn't smooth, so for me it does not deserve a fine panther, especially at that price.

That’s a very reductionist way of looking at things, i had many speakers with less than perfect directivity and they sounded just fine.

I don’t understand what’s the difference between a crossover and EQ, they both change the tonality of the sound in a controlled way
 

DSJR

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Dunno about loose screws, mine fell out decades ago never to be seen again :D

I never liked older MA's with metal cones, finding a kind of soft (as in Scottish loch) 'ccccchhhhh' sound in many of them. The mid kHz driver resonances are hard to hide I feel unless a very steep crossover is used (not here it seems) and what's with that tweeter - the tin can take-off is massive (as I believe B&W's are as well). You may not hear it directly, but it can't be right, surely?
 

FeddyLost

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I assume that if they invest in a proper notch filter for woofer break-up, it would be much better speaker.
And sometimes spring loaded bolts and thread sealant also helps.
Otherwise it's just a good "industrial" engineering approach with some flaws due to financial restraints.
 

MZKM

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Preference Rating
SCORE: 4.9
SCORE w/ sub: 7.0


Sensitivity: 87.7dB (300Hz-3kHz ; spec: 88dB)
Frequency response: +/- 2.9dB 80Hz-20kHz


Spinorama 103.png
Horizontal Directivity 96.png
Horizontal Directivity Normalized 95.png
Vertical Directivity 93.png
Vertical Directivity Normalized 93.png
chart 107.png
 

thewas

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That’s a very reductionist way of looking at things, i had many speakers with less than perfect directivity and they sounded just fine.
I also had many loudspeakers with not great directivity and they sounded good to me, till I heard ones with great directivity which sounded significantly better and more consistent in different rooms and listening distances. Also we are in ASR, if commenting on poor objective performance is not desired just because something sounded good to someone let's forget all the measurements and work of researchers like Toole and Olive and just waffle on great subjective experiences with colouring audio equipment.
I don’t understand what’s the difference between a crossover and EQ, they both change the tonality of the sound in a controlled way
In the crossover you can change the directivity of the loudspeaker (by changing the crossover frequencies and slopes) while with an overall EQ you can't.
 
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Dennis_FL

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Until recently, I had both Monitor Audio Gold (for fronts, sub, and surround ) and Silver speakers (for rears) I thought the Gold's were awesome and the Silver's were not.
 
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abdo123

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I also had many loudspeakers with not great directivity and they sounded good to me, till I heard ones with great directivity which sounded significantly better and more consistent in different rooms and listening distances. Also we are in ASR, if we commenting on poor objective performance is not desired just because something sounded good to someone let's forget all the measurements and work of researches like Toole and Olive and just waffle on great subjective experiences with colouring audio equipment.

In the crossover you can change the directivity of the loudspeaker (by changing the crossover frequencies and slopes) while with an overall EQ you can't.

This is just your (reductionist) view and according to it we should simply stop reviewing every speaker that doesn’t have a custom baffle or a waveguide as they’re inherently flawed in your opinion.

Why bother am i right? They all sound wrong to you anyway, no matter what.
 

thewas

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This is just your (reductionist) view
No, its the state of research which many follow here, ignoring directivity is just your own view.

and according to it we should simply stop reviewing every speaker that doesn’t have a custom baffle or a waveguide as they’re inherently flawed in your opinion.
No, according to you we should just ignore the problem or not measure it. Also you don't necessarily need a custom baffle or waveguide if you choose the driver sizes and crossover frequencies appropriately. Also I am surprised that you suddenly propagate that directivity does not matter while just two days ago your comment (again towards me, a personal thing?) sounded very different?

Why bother am i right? They all sound wrong to you anyway, no matter what.
Who are you to judge of what I have heard? Please refrain on your own experiences, if you don't hear differences between loudspeakers with smooth and non-smooth directivity, be happy as you have much more choices and can save also a lot of money.
 

PeteL

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When I was testing the speaker, I could readily hear resonances from the cabinet. I traced most of it to the upper screw for wall mounting. It was loose. I tightened it and got rid of 80% of it.
I don't have this speaker but I have the subwoofer of this line in my system and me there was a button rattling. Had to fix it with a small piece of tape. Maybe mechanical design is sub par at monitor audio, maybe just bad luck.
All else being equal, I rather see a speaker with larger error that are easy to identify and fix.
I find it a strange thing to say, maybe I don't fully understand what you mean. Theoretically small corrections should be more likely to be transparent? and you have SOTA measuring equipment.
 

Koeitje

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I find it a strange thing to say, maybe I don't fully understand what you mean. Theoretically small corrections should be more likely to be transparent? and you have SOTA measuring equipment.
The problem is that due to the directivity issues its impossible to actually correct those small errors. If the loudspeaker has a very uneven frequency response, but good directivity its much easier to correct.
 

Krobar

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Until recently, I had both Monitor Audio Gold (for fronts) and Silver speakers (for rears) I thought the Gold's were awesome and the Silver's were not.
I have Gold GX all round currently, would be interested to see how/if Monitor have improved over the years.
 

abdo123

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No, its the state of research which many follow here, ignoring directivity is just your own view.
There is no research on loudspeaker directivity out there that is backed by listening impressions or blind listening. If there is please share it here so we can discuss it.
No, according to you we should just ignore the problem or not measure it.

No, according to me we should measure and review all speakers. All speakers are compromised in one way or another, The Revel M16 might have perfect directivity for example but the Listening window shows obvious tweeter shelving, you cannot say that one design is obviously superior to the other without backing research and listening comparisons.

Amir liked many speakers in the past with obvious directivity errors. It's not very cool to nitpick this particular opinion and design and procceed to project your philosophy on speaker design onto him without backing research.

You also misquoted Dr. Toole, he never said that a crossover should not prioritize a flat listening window over smooth sound power (this design). He only said not to EQ a speaker based on the in-room response. There is no fundamental difference between crossover filters and EQ, why is one okay but not the other?

That matches to what Toole says and my personal experience with EQing loudspeaker, namely that using EQ trying to smooth the (predicted) listening position response won't still sound as right if the directivity isn't smooth, so for me it does not deserve a fine panther, especially at that price.





Also you don't necessarily need a custom baffle or waveguide if you choose the driver sizes and crossover frequencies appropriately.
This is only the case when 4-inch mid-woofers are used, you can't perfectly match a 5.5 inch woofer to 1-inch tweeter (or smaller) without a waveguide or a custom baffle. Feel free to show examples where this is not the case.

Also I am surprised that you suddenly propagate that directivity does not matter while just two days ago your comment (again towards me, a personal thing?) sounded very different?
I did not say that, I think the listening windows is the more important parameter. that speaker that i thought had a terrible directivity mismatch exhibits the directivity mismatch in such a small frequency range and in such a severe way that the actual listening impression will be similar to ringing. in fact there is a good chance that it's cabinet ringing and not a strictly a directivity mismatch.

Who are you to judge of what I have heard?

I did not judge what you heard, you shared that experience yourself.

That matches to what Toole says and my personal experience with EQing loudspeakers
 

abdo123

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@amirm Since you had the two speakers (this and the M16) side by side, Could you comment on which provided you an overral better subjective experience (Without EQ).
 

akarma

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For such a pricy speaker it is not so good. I don't like Monitor Audio as a brand at all to say honestly
 

thewas

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There is no research on loudspeaker directivity out there that is backed by listening impressions or blind listening. If there is please share it here so we can discuss it.
The whole Harman/Olive metric strongly correlates directivity with the score and that correlation was based and confirmed with blind listening.

All speakers are compromised in one way or another, The Revel M16 might have perfect directivity for example but the Listening window shows obvious tweeter shelving, you cannot say that one design is obviously superior to the other without backing research and listening comparisons.
The Harman score and even Amirs preference talk a clear language (and am sure of the most who would compare both directly). Also if a loudspeaker has perfect directivity then a shelving behaviour can be easily corrected with EQ

Amir liked many speakers in the past with obvious directivity errors.
And gave the highest ranking usually to loudspeakers with great directivity.

You also misquoted Dr. Toole, he never said that a crossover should not prioritize a flat listening window over smooth sound power (this design).
No, I said that EQ cannot correct directivity flaws and here is the exact quote of Toole:

"Equalization can address frequency response issues, but cannot fix directivity issues. Consider getting better loudspeakers."

There is no fundamental difference between crossover filters and EQ, why is one okay but not the other?
As written above, in a crossover you can change the directivity while with an EQ added to the total loudspeaker you cannot.

This is only the case when 4-inch mid-woofers are used, you can't perfectly match a 5.5 inch woofer to 1-inch tweeter (or smaller) without a waveguide or a custom baffle. Feel free to show examples where this is not the case.
No one is forced to make 2-way loudspeakers with large midwoofers and 1" dome tweeters without waveguides. Just for your information it can be done even with 6" if a tweeter is used which allows very low crossover frequency (around 1 kHz) like some from Wavecore for example. Here is also a 5" loudspeaker measured in ASR with decent directivity https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...s/dynaudio-lyd-5-studio-monitor-review.15963/

I did not say that, I think the listening windows is the more important parameter.
I totally disagree, for example its very easy to EQ a loudspeaker with poor directivity to a flat LW but it will still sound coloured (unless listened in an anechoic chamber, outside or extreme nearfield).
 
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