Displaying items by tag: monitor - StereoLife Magazine

Davis Acoustics is celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2026. The company was founded by Michel Visan, an engineer who had previously worked with brands including Audax and Siare Acoustique. From the beginning, his ambitions extended beyond building complete loudspeakers, with the development of proprietary drivers forming an equally important part of the business. One of the brand's earliest products was the 13KVL5A, a mid/bass driver with a woven Kevlar cone. The material soon became one of Davis Acoustics' signatures, alongside carbon and glass fiber, while the company continued developing its own drivers at its facility in Troyes over the following decades. In its anniversary year, the manufacturer is beginning a generational change within one of its most important product families with the launch of the Courbet S2 series.

Quad has spent much of the last few years rebuilding its range from both ends. Revela brought a new generation of conventional dynamic loudspeakers, ESL X refreshed the electrostatic side of the catalog, while electronics such as Quad 3, the reimagined 33 and 303 and the flagship Platina series have given the company an unusually broad portfolio for its 90th anniversary year. One piece, however, was still missing - a genuinely accessible pair of conventional loudspeakers designed to introduce new listeners to the brand. Elegan fills that gap with just two models, Elegan 1 and Elegan 2, and deliberately avoids anything too exotic. Instead, Quad has returned to ingredients it knows extremely well - woven Kevlar cones, fabric-dome tweeters, carefully engineered passive crossovers and heavily braced bass-reflex cabinets.

One of the traditional arguments against active loudspeakers is that their electronics age faster than their cabinets and drivers. An amplifier module can become outdated, streaming standards change and DSP platforms improve, while the acoustic part of a well-designed speaker may remain perfectly capable for decades. Buchardt Audio has been thinking about this problem since developing its first active models, and its latest product tackles it unusually directly. Rather than asking owners of A500, A500SE, A700, A700 Limited Edition or Anniversary 10 speakers to replace them with an entirely new generation, the Danish manufacturer has created the Mk2 Upgrade Kit - a user-installable package that replaces the complete amplifier, DSP and power-supply platform inside the existing cabinets. Selected models receive a new tweeter as well.

Monitor Audio has introduced Silver Series 8G, the latest generation of one of the most important and best-selling loudspeaker families in its catalog. The company is not presenting this as a cosmetic refresh, but as a comprehensive reinvention of the platform, with changes extending to the drivers, bass-reflex systems, crossovers, cabinets, feet, and finishes. The project is still rooted in Monitor Audio's Transparent Design Philosophy, but the goal this time was to achieve greater clarity, better control, and more coherent performance across the entire loudspeaker system. Just as importantly, Silver Series 8G is not a small launch built around two or three models. Seven new designs arrive at once, covering both traditional two-channel setups and far more elaborate home theater systems.

Klipsch is celebrating its 80th anniversary with a major overhaul of one of the most recognizable parts of its powered-speaker lineup. The Fives II, The Sevens II and The Nines II retain the familiar three-step hierarchy of the previous generation, but little else has simply been carried over. All three models combine Klipsch's horn-loaded acoustic design with a completely new electronics platform developed by Onkyo engineers in Osaka, while adding built-in network streaming, HDMI 2.1, Dolby Atmos and a much broader range of system functions. The new generation was first shown at CES 2026 and has since reached stores in the US, UK and Europe.

Sonus Faber has introduced the Olympica G3 collection, the third generation of one of the most recognisable loudspeaker families in its catalogue. The Italian brand is returning here to an idea that, from the beginning, was always more than just another line of speakers. Since its debut in 2013, Olympica has combined traditional craftsmanship, a characteristic asymmetrical cabinet and clear references to the culture of Vicenza, the city Sonus Faber calls home. The new generation is intended to preserve that spirit while introducing acoustic solutions inspired by the company's flagship designs, including Suprema. The result is a collection that still looks unmistakably like Sonus Faber, but also shows that the Italians are not interested in living only on memories of beautiful loudspeakers from a decade ago.

Triangle has introduced Solstice, a new loudspeaker range that takes the spirit of the long-running Esprit series and moves it into a more contemporary, more visually ambitious and more technically developed form. The name is not accidental. A solstice is a moment of transition, the end of one cycle and the beginning of another, and the French manufacturer clearly wants to suggest that this is not just another variation on a familiar design. It is the start of a new chapter in this part of the catalogue. That may sound a little grand, but here it is not difficult to see the point. Esprit was for years associated with a strong balance between sound quality and price, while Solstice aims to preserve that accessibility and add fresher styling, new drivers and several mechanical solutions that are not always expected at this level.

Wharfedale has introduced the Elysian R series, a refreshed version of its flagship loudspeaker range. This is not an entirely new project, but rather a carefully considered evolution of speakers that already occupied a special place in the British brand's catalogue. The original Elysians showed that Wharfedale could move well beyond the world of very successful, sensibly priced loudspeakers for normal people and offer something on the edge of high-end audio - large, beautifully finished, technically ambitious designs that still did not pretend to be products with prices detached from reality. Now, under the direction of Peter Comeau, the engineering team has returned to the concept and refined almost every important area, including the drivers, crossovers, cabinets, finishes and construction details.

Marten's new Dexter series brings several ideas from the Swedish manufacturer's upper ranges into a more compact and comparatively accessible loudspeaker family. The line made its public debut at High End Vienna 2026 and consists of four models - Dexter Duo, Dexter Trio, Dexter Quartet and Dexter Quintet. All are designed and built at Marten's facility in Sweden, and all share the same core ingredients - a Marten pure diamond tweeter developed from work carried out during the Coltrane Supreme Extreme project, a new triple-layer M-Core cabinet construction, internal Jorma Duality wiring and a new bass loading system created specifically for the series.

Wharfedale has introduced the Denton 1S, a new compact loudspeaker in its Heritage Series inspired by the original Denton 1 from 1974. Unlike the more traditional wood-veneered Denton models associated with the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Denton 1 was a forward-looking design with a molded white enclosure, rounded edges and an unusual coaxial driver. The new Denton 1S takes that idea as a starting point, but reworks it as a modern two-way speaker intended for contemporary rooms, flexible placement and much higher acoustic performance.