“A focus on overall musicality and cohesion”
FOR Clear presentation; bold and punchy sound AGAINST Nothing of note
If we review any more products in Monitor Audio’s sixth-generation Silver range, we’ll probably need to get ourselves a new thesaurus. Having previously reviewed the Silver 200 and its surround sound package, we were already close to running out of suitable superlatives.
These Silver 100s are effectively the fifth member of the group to pass through our testing rooms, and, with the company highlighting the shared family characteristics, it’s possible we could be struggling for new ways to describe them. As it happens, we’re just as loathe to box them back up as we were their siblings.
Modern living
The larger of two pairs of standmounters in the series, the Silver 100s are chunkier than the Silver 200 floorstanders that won an Award last year, largely thanks to their bigger mid/bass driver. Whereas the latter comprised a pair of 13cm CCAM (ceramiccoated aluminium/magnesium) drivers each, these have just one, measuring 20cm.
It doesn’t add a whole lot of heft to the overall design, which still sits very much within Monitor Audio’s ‘modern living’ intentions, but feels as though it offers more for the money. It’s the same basic design as the Silver 200s, despite the different sizing, aided by a DCF coupling mechanism taken from the company’s flagship Platinum II Series, to help lower distortion for cleaner-sounding highs.
A Hive II port is again also a feature, using a straight-rifled design to accelerate airflow and reduce turbulence – effectively moving air in and out more swiftly for a faster, more powerful bass response. And there’s the same 25mm gold-dome tweeter, a Monitor Audio staple, fine-tuned for clearer, smoother and low-distortion high frequencies.
This time, our review sample comes with a walnut finish, but there are other options available. These are the same as throughout the range, and include black oak, natural oak, rosenut and high gloss black finishes, plus the satin white we saw in our review of the Silver 200s.
With so much in common with the speakers we’ve already heard from this Silver range, tuned by the same fine hands, it comes as little surprise that the performance is equally superb. Again they take a couple of days to run in properly, which might be a little longer than most loudspeakers at this price.
However, as it turns out, the wait is well worth it. We play Bicep’s album from last year, the self-titled Bicep, and immediately discover that the Silver 100s don’t just time well, but that they’re consummately adept at delivering the energy harnessed within each snapping rhythm, while also still leaving enough headroom for intensity to build in each track.
Promising start
The focus has been on overall musicality and cohesion with this range of Silvers, swerving the temptation to concentrate too intently on analytical insight. This leaves some blind spots, but the level of detail is still impressive.
There’s texture to instruments, and space within the mix for the reverbs that dictate much of the atmosphere. While nailing the record’s ambience is high on the
“The Silver 100s' punch and dynamic expression set them apart from the pack. These are very much the hi-fi speakers Monitor Audio had promised”
Silvers’ to-do list, at no point do we feel as though we are sacrificing resolution: these are very much the hi-fi speakers Monitor Audio had promised.
But it is that punch and dynamic expression that sets these standmounters apart from the pack. Switching to a more vocal performance in The Twilight Sad’s
Fourteen Autumns And Fifteen Winters, the emotion in James Graham’s voice is penetrating, throwing light on the inflections in his accent as well as the intensity of its delivery.
Beefy basslines
The Silver 100s are given an opportunity to prove their smooth balance, standing on tiptoes to reach those soaring guitar lines, fully charged but without the coarseness that in some hands can have these arrangements giving our ears a pretty exhausting work-out. The basslines that act as the anchor for those parts are beefy as well, warmer perhaps than with some competitors, but not overly soft or distractingly rumbling.
As with the rest of the range, the Silver 100s are versatile with positioning. Placing them right up against the wall will accentuate that bottom end, but still it won't sacrifice too much of the pace or dynamics that are the range’s true fortes.
The most obvious comparison here is the Award-winning KEF Q350, though they are cheaper at £530. As to the question of which speakers we’d take home, that's a discussion that leaves our colleagues in the
What Hi-fi? offices pretty evenly split, and that’s to both pairs’ credit.
Plump up the volume
The KEFS are more refined, sacrificing some of the Silver 100s’ muscle and energy to deliver a more polished performance, but it is largely a question of preference over objective supremacy. Monitor Audio is proven to justify its price tag quite easily.
And that price, when you factor in the cost of a suitable pair of speaker stands, comes quite close to what you’d be paying for the floorstanders sitting next in line. Though it's too early to say whether they will end up following family tradition by taking home an Award at the end of the year, the fact that we may plump for the Silver 100s over the towers is evidence of the high regard in which we hold them.
Though it might feel as if we’re repeating ourselves each time we review something from this range, the process by which we arrived at the same conclusion once again has been anything but boring.