Monitor Audio Studio 89 loudspeakers
It was back I the ‘80s, I recall, when Monitor Audio launched its Studio Series of loudspeakers. Now, taking its name from that now fashionable time, the Studio 89 has launched and I was excited to put this compact two-way through its paces, especially as it borrows some technology from the £70,000 flagship Hyphn model. I could be in for a treat.
Monitor Audio
Still a British company, although production moved to China twenty years ago, Monitor Audio was the brainchild of one Mo Iqbal in 1972. Starting life near Cambridge, in 1976 the factory moved to Southend in Essex and today is in much larger premises, just down the road in Rayleigh. Now part of the Monitor Audio Group, which includes Roksan (acquired in 2016) and Blok stands which came aboard in 2019, loudspeakers remain a prominent part of the business.
The Essex design team is extensive, with separate groups working on various elements: aesthetics, acoustics and electronics. There’s a listening room for R&D along with an anechoic chamber and an identical one over at the Chinese production plant. Model ranges were simplified and named after various base metals: bronze, silver, gold and platinum. Then, last year, the new flagship Hyphn was unveiled as a no-compromise design. I had the pleasure of hearing it, extensively, at the Warsaw Show and was blown away by the sound even if it does cost about as much as an entry-level Porsche.
Design
I was told in Warsaw that elements of the Hyphn’s technology would be seen in other new models and, true to their word, that’s the case in the Studio 89. Here the cabinet is deep, in fact deeper than it is tall (34cm high, 36cm deep) and finished in a gloss black lacquer so lustrous that it can be used as a shaving mirror. The boxes are finished with copper/bronze badge decals which wrap around the edges in a very smart way. To the rear are a pair of letterbox reflex openings (shaped to reduce turbulence) nearly as wide at the cabinet, to create a substantial bass port tuned to 58Hz. A single pair of rhodium-plated terminals are provided.
The drive units, as is common with Monitor Audio, are proprietary and mounted on an aluminium sub-baffle that’s acoustically separated from the rest of the enclosure by foam. Taking centre stage, literally, is the MPD III tweeter with micro-pleated diaphragm which radiates equally in both the vertical and horizontal planes, helped by the waveguide located behind it.
Above and below the HF unit are 108mm RDT II mid-bass drive units in a vertical array that’s been designed to create a large ‘point source sound dispersion’. These drivers are the company’s C-CAM (ceramic-coated aluminium/magnesium) cones with a sandwich construction. We have three super-thin layers of ceramic-coated metal, sitting over a Nomex honeycomb central core with the underside skin made up of a woven carbon fibre. The result: super lightweight and exceptionally strong. This cone is driven by an oversized and powerful motor system centred on an 85nm magnet, that’s larger than the cone itself.
There are no visible fixings on the front baffle, with the drive units relying on through-bolts to rear fixings which are well finished and produce a highly rigid structure. The third-order crossover (at 2.2kHz) uses bespoke polyprop and polyester capacitors in series, alongside air-cored and low-loss laminated steel-cored inductors.
Quick in-room plots show how well the off-axis response is, such that hardly any toe-in will be required to create a meaningful soundstage. The crossover point exhibits a slight dip and one might have expected more proficient summing here to at least reduce, if not eliminate it. Monitor audio quote -6dB frequency limits of 48Hz and 60kHz.
The sensitivity is given as a lowish 86dB and, since the nominal impedance is only six Ohms, a powerful amplifier will be needed to yield best results. But since watts are inexpensive nowadays, that should not present a problem.
Set-up
I began by connecting the Studio 89s to a Hegel H190 with digital sources of a satellite tuner and an Atoll MS120 for internet radio and high-res Qobuz streaming. With the speakers sitting on some half-filled Custom Design FS104 Signature stands, first impressions were of overwhelming bass swamping almost everything else. Moving the loudspeakers away from the rear wall, and distancing those rear ports improved matters considerably although I still felt there was a mismatch between parts of the spectrum. The bass was now better controlled but the midrange seemed slightly recessed, notably when listening to speech. The speakers’ rather unusual proportions saw them rather awkwardly perched on off-the-shelf stands, although Custom Design will produce bespoke-sized top-plates if asked.
Monitor Audio had supplied the matching £500 Studio 89 stands, flat-packed, and I spent 30 minutes screwing the various parts together using purely pictorial instructions and swearing under my breath from time-to-time. I can see now why dealers are so invaluable. The final step was to bolt the speakers to the stands and run the cables up the ingeniously designed flex clips in the back of the columns; the whole certainly looked the part.
Sound quality
Sonically, too, the coupling was amazing. The sound was harmonious and everything suddenly fell into place such that we probably have to think of the Studio 89 and Stands as a single purchase. The panel assembled to hear the 1990s album Megabass which turned dance tracks into non-stop sequences to create the ‘ultimate megamix of the hottest club hits’. But both Qobuz and Apple Music let us down so we turned to the ever-reliable Queen track Flash. And, wow! Whereas in my initial setup the bass was overwhelming, now it was beautifully controlled and in the correct proportion to everything else. The bass went impressively low for what are compact cabinets and modest drive units.
Written by guitarist Brian May, this theme song to the 1980 film Flash Gordon produced a gorgeous stereo soundstage with both openness and precision that one hardly expects at this price-point. Close your eyes and you could be listening to loudspeakers costing several times the price of the Studio 89s. Harmonies are lush, emotion conveyed to the listener and the track rich and vivid and there’s that glorious cameo by Brian Blessed.
What I noticed, in particular, is that the Studio 89s are not unlike a lot of modern speakers of their size and price. In a refreshing and most welcome change, we had no overtly-forward balance that puts performers in the listeners’ laps. We had no over-bearing treble accompanying overblown bass to produce a ‘boom and tizz’ sound that’s all about excitement but little else. Everything was well balanced and seemingly trying to faithfully reproduce what was on the recording.
From the first notes of Poco’s Rose of Cimarron the soundstage was lusciously wide, deep and full-bodied. This classic track, which begins as a typical hit of the day, delights with its ending of string orchestra and grand piano. It beautifully displayed the Studio 89s’ ability to cope with dynamics as well as their skills in the timing department. The lyrics were crisp and clear while the involvement factor was high. We wallowed in the three-part harmonies of Cotton, Schmit and drummer George Grantham and marvelled at the angelic highs of Schmit that lift the song into the clouds and drew us into the performance.
We concluded a morning of joyous listening, the panel just wanting to hear more and more which, in itself, is testament to a fine sound, with Brook Benton’s Fools Rush In from 2005. This track endorsed the Studio 89s’ ability with speed and dynamics and confirmed their timing qualities. The percussion and stunning strings sounded so realistic, as if the performance was taking place in front of us, while the rich vocal tones cemented the midrange as it avoided any blemishes or unwanted artefacts that can so undermine voice reproduction.
Conclusion
Now, the term Studio means different things to different people and this Monitor Audio design is a long way from a BBC-style monitor. But they do have attributes akin to speakers used in recording studios: an easy-going manner that tries not to add anything to or mask anything on the recording. Their balance is also fairly neutral, certainly coherent across the bandwidth and capable across a wide range of material.
The finish quality of the Studio 89s is exemplary and their streamlined looks atop the dedicated stands adds to the visual attraction. If the transducers were not made in China, they would be at least double, if not treble the price; so, they afford great value-for-money as well.
Sonically, the Studio 89s need to be kept away from boundary walls for the most neutral sound; sited here they don’t put a foot wrong. The treble has bite but without harshness or sibilance; the bass is solid, crisp and substantial but not over-powering so expresses rhythms with conviction. The panel enjoyed the midband and I came to appreciate its merits of articulation and detail.
All-in-all the Studio 89 is a modern-looking, modern-sounding loudspeaker package well worth considering. They are certainly a step-up from the original 1980s Studio models I remember which were, for me, far too much about the aesthetics at the expense of sound quality with the gold dome tweeters and gold alloy cones. Here’s to further Monitor Audio models taking their inspiration from Hyphn.