MONITOR AUDIO Platinum PL100 (Series 1) Black Bookshelf Speakers

MSRP: $5000.00 USD

pcX Price: $2499.95 USD

These elegant bookshelf speakers from Monitor Audio are designed to bring lifelike reproductions and unrivaled neutrality to your living room. Its ebony real wood veneer might just get your wife to start taking your audio hobby seriously.

Big Sound for a Low Price: These are brand new units at 40% Off MSRP retail list price.

SHIPPING COST: please contact us with your location and we'll give you a quote.

We have other Platinum Series models available. Please contact us if you're interested.

Some information from Monitor Audio, for the technologically-inclined:

C-CAM Technology: Ceramic-Coated Aluminium/Magnesium is a material originally developed by the aerospace industry for jet engine components. Its properties are ideal for loudspeaker cones being extremely rigid, yet light enough to yield high overall efficiency. In manufacture, aluminium/magnesium alloy undergoes a three-stage stress-relieving process to remove surface deformation and molecular weakness. Once formed, the alloy cone is subjected to a high temperature anodic coating process in which a layer of pure ceramic alumina is depleted onto its surfaces to a depth of 50 microns, producing a completely rigid sandwich of alloy and heat-dissipating ceramic material.
Conventional cones are liable to flex or twist in operation, producing a significant level of audible distortion. C-CAM cones have a much higher resistance to bending stress and therefore exhibit much greater fidelity over their entire operating range. C-CAM tweeters and woofers share an audible consistency producing a smooth transition of frequencies and a sense of realism and cohesion in the soundstage.

RDT (Rigid Diaphragm Technology): RDT is a unique technology developed specifically by Monitor Audio's engineers for the Platinum series of loudspeakers. Designed to reduce mass and increase cone stiffness, RDT applies ultra-thin skins of C-CAM to a core of honeycomb Nomex® material, creating a structure which is extremely light but incredibly rigid. At only 40 microns thick, the C-CAM skins are half the thickness of a human hair, yet when bonded to the Nomex core they form an RDT cone, which is 150 times more rigid than a single layer of 200 micron C-CAM alloy, but has a fraction of the overall mass. These properties allow the cone to operate as a lightning-fast piston for a clearer more natural sound. The RDT cone's concave geometry has been refined by FEA analysis to provide a smooth frequency response and to eradicate break-up.

HiVe II Port Technology: A new type of port technology which uses a straight rifled design to accelerate air flow and reduce turbulence. HiVe II technology has the ability to move air in and out much quicker than a conventional port, the result is fast powerful bass coupled with superior transient response.

ARC (Anti-Resonance Composite): Having various applications within a number of our speaker ranges, this high-tech Anti-Resonance Composite material is a thermo-set polymer loaded with minerals to provide very inert, optimally-damped components. Refined by Monitor Audio’s engineers initially for the Platinum series, ARC is ideal for acoustic design, where a high degree of structural rigidity and vibration damping is required in order to prevent the propagation of standing waves and modal resonances.

Magnetic Grille-Fixing: Ultra-powerful neodymium magnets hold the speaker grilles in place, allowing for easier installation and access.

Ribbon Transducer: Monitor Audio's proprietary ribbon tweeter design uses an ultra-thin sandwich of C-CAM alloy suspended in a powerful transverse magnetic field of high energy NeFeB rare earth magnets. The ribbon serves as both voice coil and radiating diaphragm, with every part of the ribbon driven directly and simultaneously without energy storage. Having a mass of just 18mg, its diaphragm is able to start and stop in an instant, producing a transient response capable of defining the leading edge and natural harmonic resonance of complex musical sounds. Specified to reach ultra-high frequencies up to an elusive 100 kHz, Platinum’s magical ribbon tweeter will reproduce with ease every last nuance and detail from vinyl, CD, DVD-A and SACD, together with the wider bandwidth of Blu-ray.

Recipient of the “Highly Commended” award in the August 2012 issue of HiFi News:

“The PL100 provides an astonishingly open window through which to view the recording engineer’s art.”

- John Bamford, Hi-Fi News, August 2012

“A speaker that’s unflinching in its presentation, one that, in the end, hides nothing.”

- Doug Schneider, SoundStageHiFi, Sept. 2008.