John Darko
Right up front, I want to tell you ev-er-y-thing that I don’t like about the Studio 89 (โฌ2350/pair), the latest two-way standmount loudspeaker to spill from the UK’s Monitor Audio: I donโt like the high-gloss black finish that needs to be dusted daily and causes untold reflective trouble for anyone wielding a camera. We shot the first round of b-roll last weekend and Darko.Audio cameraman Olaf said they were a challenge to film. This, of course, is a personal judgment — one that could be levelled at any high-gloss black speaker cabinet. But that’s it. That’s everything that I don’t like about the Studio 89.
However, there’s a wrinkle in the Studio 89’s promotional materials in which Monitor Audio is eager to draw a direct line between it and the Studio series from the 1980s, specifically, 1989’s Studio 15. What’s missing from those press materials (and much of the ensuing coverage) is mention of the โStudioโ speaker (US$1800/pair), introduced by Monitor Audio in 2018 and quietly discontinued a few years later. It’s plain to see that the Studio – and not the Studio 15 – gave us our first look at what would ultimately become the Studio 89: a pair of mid/bass drivers sitting vertically astride a tweeter in a D’Apolitto driver array – sometimes called midwoofer-tweeter-midwoofer or MTM – that’s mounted to a narrow front baffle within a figure-eight aluminium plate. The rest of the 2018 Studio’s cabinet was as deep as it was tall – just like the Studio 89 – and the rear panel featured two slotted ‘HIVE’ bass reflex ports for a -6dB reach of 48Hz — again, just like the Studio 89.
That’s enough of the similarities. I asked Monitor Audio about the differences between the Studio and Studio 89. They told me via return email that the Studio 89 is a completely different loudspeaker: one that uses a larger mid-bass driver (4.5″ instead of 4″) with a new motor assembly, a new tweeter, a new front baffle, a new crossover and a new terminal plate. Fair enough. Here’s hoping Monitor Audio eventually carries over the Studio’s grey and white finishes to the 89’er.
Unlike a soft or metal dome tweeter that pushes air forward, an Air Motion Transformer uses a pleated membrane to squeeze air into the room. Now we ponder why Monitor Audio refers to the Studio 89’s tweeter as a Micro-Pleated Diaphragm (or MPD) when it’s clearly an Air Motion Transformer. I recall GoldenEar pulling a similar linguistic stunt with its BRX standmount in 2019; the Californians referred to its AMT tweeter as a “high-velocity folded ribbon”.
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Moving on…
Monitor Audio gets a little funky with the Studio 89’s mid/bass driver nomenclature. The company’s RDT III technology, borrowed from the flagship Hyphn, gives us a driver thatโs made to be light and rigid via three construction layers: a Nomex core – whose honeycomb pattern is visible to the naked eye – sits between a layer of woven carbon fibre on the underside and a layer of ceramic-coated aluminium magnesium on top.
The aluminium plate to which the drivers are mounted is then bolted to the rear of the cabinet where the very elegantly designed speaker binding posts talk to an analogue crossover which reportedly features โthe best bespoke polypropylene capacitors, polyester capacitors, air-core inductors and low-loss laminated steel-core inductorsโ.
Monitor Audio says the Studio 89 serves up 6 Ohms of nominal impedance and 86dB of sensitivity โ so youโll need some watts to drive them. I’ve gone with Cambridge Audioโs EVO 150 and Marantz’s Model M1 but I might eventually pull Musical Fidelity’s A1 into the picture.
Stands? The Studio 89 landed at my door accompanied by a second box containing a bespoke solution: โฌ600/pair. The speaker can be bolted to the stand’s top plate and the floor spikes unscrewed to expose four rubber feet (that are kind to wooden floors). I won’t use these stands’ speaker cable management slot – one that runs up and down the rear of the central column – because it would only slow the side-by-side comparison process. I need to be able to swap in other speakers at a moment’s notice.
On the other hand, I won’t be rushing to complete this review; one that will a) detail everything that I do like about the speaker and b) how it stacks up against some similarly-priced competition. Hello, KEF R3 Meta and – in a simple twist of fate – hello, GoldenEar BRX.
Why the delay? Simple. I don’t wish to see my video coverage swept up in the wave of reviews going live on (or soon after) the Studio 89’s July 1st news embargo lift. Time has told me that the Darko.Audio YouTube audience is far less time-sensitive to new products than those reading this website, which makes standing apart preferable to being first.
Further information: Monitor Audio
