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The Short Form |
| $19,600 (as tested) / MONITORAUDIOUSA.COM / 905-428-2800 |
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Snapshot
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| A high-end speaker system that combines audiophile-pleasing delicacy with the dynamics necessary for large home theaters |
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Plus
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| • Clear and present treble • Enough bass for anyone and any room • Luxury-car-style craftsmanship |
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Minus
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| • PL300 demands careful positioning • PL300 and PL350C commandeer much floor space |
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Key Features
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• PL300 ($10,000/pair) |
People often complain about America's pervasive influence on other cultures. They decry the worldwide proliferation of junk food, throwaway pop music, and carbon-belching cars. But they so often overlook all the good things we invented. Like electricity. Bathing. Fun.
The latest example of conspicuous Americanization is Monitor Audio's new Platinum Series. This company built its reputation on diminutive, beautiful-sounding speakers designed to reproduce the works of Benjamin Britten, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Petula Clark in the dinky domiciles of the British Isles. But in a more American setting — playing the tours de force of Vin Diesel, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Bruce Willis in home theaters the size of tennis courts — the speakers were sometimes overwhelmed. The Platinum Series, though, is built for just such demanding fare and capacious surroundings.
Placing the PL300 tower speaker next to a typical Monitor Audio model is like parking a Hummer next to a Mini. It stands nearly 44 inches high and weighs 96 1/2 pounds. It's finished like a luxury SUV, too. Monitor wraps the front baffle in supple leather from the Strathspey region of Scotland — which, like everywhere else in Scotland, is known for scotch and animal products. The sides and back have 11 hand-applied layers of lacquer, covering a piano-black finish or a veneer of ebony or Santos rosewood. Platinum-plated binding posts connect the PL300 to its speaker cables.
Each side of the speaker arcs subtly, lending it a more elegant look and helping to eliminate resonances inside the cabinet. Further reducing resonance are a front baffle made from dense bulk-molding compound, a tarry bitumastic coating applied to all interior surfaces, and four heavy, hand-torqued bolts connecting the baffle directly to the back panel.
The PL300 packs two 8-inch woofers, a 4-inch midrange, and a ribbon tweeter. The last is increasingly common in high-end speakers, but it's a new twist for Monitor. The ribbon has a diaphragm made from the company's light but rigid C-CAM (ceramic-coated aluminum/magnesium) material. Monitor says the diaphragm's nearly massless weight of 18 milligrams (less than one-tenth the heft of an equivalently sized piece of printer paper) allows it to reproduce much higher frequencies than a conventional tweeter can.
The other speakers in the Platinum Series mirror the PL300's design. The PL350C center speaker essentially turns the PL300 on its side and rejiggers the drivers so that the still vertically arrayed tweeter and midrange are between the two woofers. The PL100, which I used mainly for surround duties but will also work as a front left/right speaker, looks like what would happen if a samurai sliced off the top third of a PL300; it has the same tweeter and one 6 1/2-inch woofer.
The series also includes a subwoofer, the monstrous PLW15 ($4,800), which houses a 15-inch driver, a 1,000-watt amplifier, and a digital audio processor with 10-band equalization — all in a cabinet that's crafted to match the look of the other Platinum speakers. Unfortunately, there was only one prototype in the Western Hemisphere at the time of this review, so we didn't get the chance to test it. (Check back soon to read an extended version of this report.)
Big speakers like the PL300 always seem to demand some fussing with to get them to sound their best. The bass output of the tower is astounding, but with great power comes great responsibility. A pair of these speakers can easily overwhelm you with their bumptious bottom end. Pulling them out about 2 or 3 feet from the wall behind them will tame and tighten the low notes. You also might need to adjust the distance of your listening seat from the PL300s. With woofers this muscular, you don't want to be in a spot where the bass waves sum to create a peak in the response.
None of this will trouble the PL100 owner. Just place the speaker on its dedicated stand (or any other sturdy 24-inch support) and turn it toward you, and it should sound great, whether used in the rear or up front.
Ribbon drivers spread sound broadly in the horizontal plane, but they create a narrow beam of sound in the vertical plane. If the ribbon isn't pointed right at the level of your ears, treble response will be diminished. The tweeters in the PL300 and PL100 are already at ear level, but the PL350C center speaker will probably need to be aimed upward. Fortunately, Monitor's dedicated stand makes it easy to tilt the speaker to the proper angle.
MUSIC PERFORMANCE
The PL300 instantly impressed me with its robust, vivid sound. The ribbon tweeters whispered sweet somethings in my ears, producing such an enveloping sound with stereo music that I had to get up to make sure the surround speakers weren't playing. The treble was exceptionally clear. I especially loved hearing the work of acoustic-stringed-instrument polymath Bob Brozman through this speaker — "Afro Mada" from his Lumière in particular. Whether he was playing a National resonator guitar, a ukulele, or a Bolivian charango, every little detail came through with lifelike clarity.
Standard pop fare — even that throwaway stuff we've inflicted on the world — sounded marvelous on the PL300, with its 4-inch midrange delivering the neutral, uncolored vocal sound I crave. On albums like Madonna's Ray of Light and the Replacements' Pleased to Meet Me, the bass was intense and powerful, as if the speaker had an amplified 15-inch woofer built in. I can't imagine that many listeners will feel the need for a subwoofer.
Unlike commonly used fabric-dome tweeters, the ribbons weren't forgiving of sloppy work on the recording end. The treble on about 95% of the music I listened to did sound ideal through the PL300, but excessively bright or edgy recordings will only sound more so with this speaker.
To my surprise, when I replaced the PL300s with the PL100s in the front left and right channels, I enjoyed the resulting tonal quality even more. Except in the bass, the PL100 does everything the PL300 does, even though the smaller speaker's 6 1/2-inch woofer was surely tougher to mate with that ribbon tweeter than the tower's 4-inch midrange was. Of course, the PL100 can't even approach the PL300's bass capabilities; anything below about 50 Hz makes the PL100's rear port huff and puff. Still, I found that speaker's sound full enough to satisfy me for most of my music listening.
The crystalline sound of the PL300 and PL100, combined with the almost perfectly matched voice of the PL350C, brought a new level of excitement to movie soundtracks. In the revered (if overplayed) tiger scene from Apocalypse Now, the bugs and birds — buzzing and cawing and circling all around me — sounded creepier than I could ever remember, thanks to the ribbon tweeters, and my anticipation of the tiger's attack became almost unbearable. Again, bad recordings proved extra-annoying; the ribbons did nothing to tame the harsh-sounding dialogue in the children's classic Matilda. But all of the other DVDs I played, from the frantic Live Free or Die Hard to the placid Planet Earth series, sounded pretty darn close to perfect, even without help from a subwoofer.
BOTTOM LINE
The Platinum Series proves that a little American influence can work aesthetic wonders. With the rich, enveloping sound of the best British speakers and the raw muscle needed to meet the demands of American-style home theater, this system is an all-around winner for any home that has the space for it.
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TEST BENCH
All three Monitor models have a similarly smooth response above 500 Hz. The PL300 tower exhibits a broad but shallow dip centered at 375 Hz, while the PL350C center shows a similar dip centered at 275 Hz. The PL350C has excellent off-axis perfor- mance for a center speaker, with only a slight treble rolloff above 10 kHz and a mild dip centered at 1.2 kHz when the mike is moved 15º or further off-axis. The PL300 and PL350C produce strong midbass output; at 10% distortion, both average around 100 dB in the range from 50 to 63 Hz. — B.B.