Loudspeakers

For many people in the UK, Loewe remains either a brand they haven’t heard of at all (in which case, you pronounce it ‘Lerver’!), or a German designer TV brand. It’s not a marque generally associated with audio.

In an ideal world you'd want to experience movies with the same speakers used to craft their soundtracks. M&K Sound has been making professional studio monitors for decades, and its S150 is about as iconic as you can get. But what if you fancy a similar level of performance from a speaker that's a bit cheaper and a bit more… normal looking?

Branding is funny stuff. We expect some gravitas with excellent products – being too flippant about something of high-quality tends to put us Brits right off. There’s been a huge fuss about chavs wearing Burberry and ‘devaluing’ the brand, for instance.

Considering its position as both a hi-fi and home cinema speaker brand, and the sizable catalogue of models that it's typically offered, Monitor Audio has been rather slow to step into the Dolby Atmos arena. Now, however, it's selling an upfiring module for 3D audio lovers, and keeping the price low too.

Monitor Audio isn't a speaker maker catering chiefly to music lovers that does pretty well with home cinema all things considered. Nor is it a company packing multichannel cred that nevertheless makes a decent enough fist of hi-fi. If you can detect the slightest hint of compromise in either direction, MA reckons it hasn't done its job.

I believe Monitor Audio's Mass system is destined to be a good seller. Sub/sat packages in general are more likely to shift units than larger, costlier arrays, and this has 
a lot going for it. First, it's from a respected brand that, over the years, has rarely put a foot wrong. Secondly, it's got a neat style thing going on. Thirdly, the total £800 ticket is just the right side of £1,000 (where some people start to sweat when buying speakers), but comfortably high enough to entice audio snobs who won't entertain the idea of a £400 or £500 setup. That it offers a delightful multichannel performance is the icing on 
the cake.