Monitor Audio Silver 8i Speakers

Imagine the Civilization of London With Los Angeles Weather

By Mike McGann

When we think of the English, a few stereotypes pop immediately into our heads as Americans: awful food, cold and rainy weather, a stiff reserve, great music and literature, and those palace guards with the funny hats. Anyone who’s been to the UK knows only some of that stuff is accurate.

American audiophiles think of English speakers as stiff, a bit bright, accurate, but lacking warmth. (And, yes, I know there some British audiophiles who have suggested that “American audiophile” is an oxymoron, but they all write for T3.) Anyone who has spent time with Monitor Audio’s new Silver 8i speakers knows differently.

In fairness, I must identify myself as a dyed-in-the-wool fan of Monitor’s speakers over the years. Combining good looks with impressive accuracy and detail, they always appeal to my desire for precision. If they had a drawback, it was a general lack of warmth, kind of like a rainy January afternoon in London. We who are fans of such precision have generally understood that in speakers that cost less than the GDP of several developing nations, it has traditionally been a tradeoff. Perish the thought of living with the speaker equivalent of a valley girl: warm, loud and kind of fuzzy at the top.

Evidently, Monitor’s designers have been spending quality time in warmer climes, putting the top down and cruising Wilshire Boulevard. Rest assured, though, they’ve been cruising in a Jaguar and noshing on kidney pie.

The folks at Monitor were kind enough to send us a pair of gorgeous cherry-finished Silver 8i towers ($1,499), a 10i center speaker in black ($599), a pair of cherry-finished 3i speakers ($599) and an ASW-210 subwoofer ($999) for a complete, integrated home theater system.

The 8is use three 5.5-inch ceramic-coated aluminum/magnesium woofers stacked below a 1-inch tweeter. Two-inch rear ports, top and bottom of the tower, make a big difference in the mid-bass performance of the towers, blocking them with a wall, or errant small children, really cuts down on the quality of sound below 200 cycles. The center and rear surrounds are front ported, a single port below the tweeter on the 10i center, while the 3i has a pair of ports located just below the single woofer, under the assumption, presumably, that space for rear porting would be unlikely. The sub is seriously ported, with two 4-inch ports below the front-firing 10-inch woofer. A second 10-inch woofer fires straight down.

From a looks standpoint, these are plenty cool. The woofers in all but the sub are a deep gray/silver, metal coated, with golden caps over the drivers. The woofers look cool enough, that you’ll want to lose the grills, permanently. The sub, surprisingly, is also something of a fashion statement, with a bright, deep gold woofer. I’d happily show off any of this gear in my home. The cherry veneer is good looking and classy. If there’s a negative here, the very stiff cones take a really long time to break in. It’s worth the patience, but be ready.

So, they’re nice looking? While that’s all good, it doesn’t pay the rent for a speaker maker. Fortunately, these speakers actually sound better than they look, something of an accomplishment in my book.

Looking at the performance of the speaker as a stereo pair, I set them up with my reference Parasound AVC-1800 pre/pro and HCA-855A five-channel amp. I kind of figured the clarity and precision of the Parasound gear would shine through on the Monitors, and I was right. In fact, I was surprised at the increase of soundstage and clarity, as compared to any of the other speakers I’ve matched with the Parasound gear. The soundstage on some music tracks was so deep, it was almost like having surround sound. At times, I felt like I could reach out and touch the music. Clarity and detail were amazing, as well. When listening to a couple of tracks of Vivaldi, a harpsichord that is normally drowned out by the strings is as evident as if the chamber group were playing in your room. Instrument positioning is very clear. If you close your eyes, you can hear where everyone is.

Even more interesting: these towers have excellent deep extension, something I haven’t heard from Monitor speakers in this price range previously. In fact, I ended up turning down the subwoofer’s crossover and setting the towers as large because they were so comfortable with bass, deep and powerful certainly below 80 hertz and probably closer to 40 hertz before rolling off. Without the subwoofer, music sounded great, but I liked ‘em better with the sub, which itself is clean, accurate and very fast.

I moved onto multi-channel audio, dragging out the Don Henley DTS recording of The End of the Innocence, which I plan to crush into a thousand pieces when I find a better five-channel audio-only recording. Despite the awful material, the recording is good enough to divine the quality of the speakers. I like the Silver 3i speaker, but it’s a little less competent at reproducing bass, not surprising due to the size of the enclosure and the porting design. I needed to boost the sub frequency up to about 120 hertz before I felt the gap was completely closed. Since the surrounds and the center use the same drivers, you get a very evenly matched sound (except for bass performance), which I think works well for five-channel audio. I switched to a couple of non-Don Henley music video titles on DVD, which were a bit less painful but still sounded excellent.

Any lingering concerns I might have had about movie soundtracks evaporated in just a few minutes of movie watching. The opening sequence of Dances With Wolves was lush, with the gun shots sharp and deep. Dialogue, especially with Kevin Costner’s occasional slide into mumbling, was bright and clear. Surround effects, generally less demanding than multi-channel music, were almost a waste of the 3i’s talents. Without question, this is one of the best speaker systems I’ve ever heard.

While some of us with minivans and little ones in our immediate future might not be able to shell out $3,500 for speakers, anyone spending $3,000 to $5,000 on electronics should look very seriously at these Monitors to get the most out of your gear. In this price range, they’re clearly a good value and a star performer. Despite the variety of good-performing speakers living in my test lab, I’m going to miss this Monitor system when I ship it back. Few speakers, in my experience, combine all of the good things that the Silver 8is manage to deliver. Were I shopping, these would be at the top of my list.

Monitor Audio Silver 8i Speakers

Price: $1,499 a pair

The Good

Excellent detail. Fabulous mid-bass. Deep soundstage. Less fussy about pointing.

The Bad

Long break-in.

Target User: Audiophile willing to spend a bit more (and only a bit) to take a serious step up in class without sacrificing home theater performance.