Friday, October 21st 2022
Monolith by Monoprice Announces MTM 100 Watt Bluetooth aptX HD Powered Desktop Speakers
The Monolith MTM Desktop Speakers deliver stunning audiophile performance for your desktop! These speakers feature an accurate frequency response, exceptional sonic clarity, punchy, powerful bass, and present a spacious, and musical soundstage. Set up is a breeze: Connect easily through analog RCA and 3.5 mm inputs or through the optical or USB digital inputs. Pair your device wirelessly using the Bluetooth with Qualcomm aptX HD Audio for high quality, CD audio level Bluetooth performance. A headphone jack adorns the front, allowing you to easily switch between the speakers and headphones. The Monolith MTM powered speakers are a perfect, great sounding addition to a home office, gaming, or bedroom system.
Engineered to deliver spacious, punchy, and accurate sound, the Monolith MTM features a powerful 100 watts per speaker amplifier, a 1" silk dome tweeter and dual 4" woofers, and a 5.25" passive radiator to enhance bass performance. Fantastic dynamics, smooth midrange, punchy bass combined with holistic imaging usually only found in audiophile grade speakers at a much higher price. The Qualcomm aptX HD audio codec ensures your Bluetooth wireless enabled device can deliver high definition audio. It preserves sound data through the audio transmission, resulting in a "better than CD" listening experience. With aptX HD, you can enjoy
listening to your music at the highest audio quality when using an aptX HD enabled device.
You can easily connect these speakers to your laptop, tablet or any other gear you may have. Featuring a pair of RCA inputs and a 3.5 mm auxiliary input for wired use, or connect through a Bluetooth enabled device for wireless connectivity. This Bluetooth features a Qualcomm chipset and aptx HD decoding, for superior Bluetooth performance and sound. An optical and USB connection allow you to connect digitally and utilize the onboard high performance DAC. Add a little kick to your music or games by utilizing the subwoofer output jack and connecting a powered subwoofer.
A convenient front headphone jack graces the front of the speaker allowing you to easily choose to utilize your speakers for playback, or monitor the sound with your favorite headphones. Adjust volume, select the input and source, pair Bluetooth, and increase treble or bass to your preference through the supplied remote control. The Monolith MTM comes with a 3-year warranty, will be available from Oct 28, and costs $499.99.
Engineered to deliver spacious, punchy, and accurate sound, the Monolith MTM features a powerful 100 watts per speaker amplifier, a 1" silk dome tweeter and dual 4" woofers, and a 5.25" passive radiator to enhance bass performance. Fantastic dynamics, smooth midrange, punchy bass combined with holistic imaging usually only found in audiophile grade speakers at a much higher price. The Qualcomm aptX HD audio codec ensures your Bluetooth wireless enabled device can deliver high definition audio. It preserves sound data through the audio transmission, resulting in a "better than CD" listening experience. With aptX HD, you can enjoy
listening to your music at the highest audio quality when using an aptX HD enabled device.
A convenient front headphone jack graces the front of the speaker allowing you to easily choose to utilize your speakers for playback, or monitor the sound with your favorite headphones. Adjust volume, select the input and source, pair Bluetooth, and increase treble or bass to your preference through the supplied remote control. The Monolith MTM comes with a 3-year warranty, will be available from Oct 28, and costs $499.99.
63 Comments on Monolith by Monoprice Announces MTM 100 Watt Bluetooth aptX HD Powered Desktop Speakers
Language concepts 101 is best left for separate conversation.You don't know what you are talking about. For most music content an F3 of 50-55Hz is pretty good and covers most of it. Klipsch Heresy IVs are full size speakers that have an F3 of 48Hz retail for $3,000 and while they aren't full range you certainly are not expected to add a subwoofer right out of the gate. Headphone frequency response specs are so inaccurate they pretty much meaningless so don't compare them to speakers.
Like everything in life quality over quantity, a bookshelf that that can produce quality bass into the mid to lower 50s will sound far better than a entry level subwoofer that play into 40s.Not really. Its just a full range active desktop speaker, plenty of them around, nothing weird about it.For quality drivers, quality amp, and a quality DAC in well built enclosure, $500 is about right.
Given the limitations of so much going on in a couple of cabinets, these are never going to sound amazing but I figured for a couple of hundred bucks they are going to make a lot of people suitably impressed.
...and then I reached the end of the news article and saw the price.
Just no.
You can do sooooo much better than this for a lot less money. Thinking about all the parts in my desktop setup here, I basically have the same input functionality at the same price, but using actual, pro-grade 8" studio monitors.
Stereo equipment stops getting ugly in the 5-6 figure range but that's insane.
You already have the capture and analysis gear, get some proper mics and you're good to go if the room is also done right.
Bottom line - too expensive for what you'd get out of it.
Ultimately the people that really care about this stuff for powered monitors or powered speakers or whatever the hell this is aren't going to use that. I have powered monitors on both my desktops and they are both fed by a DAC and have both RCA and 1/4 TRS inputs.
If they can get 55Hz and reasonable output with multiple 4" woofers and passives that allows them to keep a small desktop foot print at the expensive of more parts vs. the much bigger cabinet requirments a a speaker with larger woofer and port would require. I think thats a fair compromise to make considering the target market.Unless the speakers are broken the room still matters. There are plenty of people with $1,000+ speakers setup poorly in bad sounding rooms and there are plenty of people with $300 speakers that have them setup properly and are getting the most of them. Also you don't need extensive room treatments to get things to sound decent, most of it comes down to placement of the speakers in the room (which is speaker dependent), and you can get good results with normal room furnishings to keep reflections under control.
I know this because I own these speakers, and even the Denon AVR recognizes the small speakers as BIG.
But, it comes at a higher cost of course.
You get the extension but it comes at the cost of size and of course limited output so nothing is free.