What Hi Fi Sound and Vision
24 SEP 2006
Monitor Audio Bronze BR2
Nothing is more likely to make us look sideways at a product than a price rise. As Tom Waits said, “I know, things are tough all over ’n’ they ain’t gettin’ any easier” but, nonetheless, a £30 price hike is a £30 price hike.
And when you’re dealing with a sector of such rabid competitiveness, upping the cost of your front-running product by over 10 per cent can only be characterised as a daring move.
Mind you, in raw materials alone, the
Monitor Audio Bronze BR2s look good value in this company. They’re the bruisers of the group, housed in what is decisively the biggest cabinet.
They carry their relative bulk well, though, and use their physical dimensions to house the largest drive unit in the test. In action, the big box/big driver combo works as well for the BR2s as it has since we first listened to them back in December 2006.
In fact, only the price has changed in the past two years. In every other respect, the Monitor Audios remain the same admirable products they’ve always been.
No obscure subgenre of music is too taxing for the BR2s to bring to heel. We started with The Fall’s
Mere Pseud Mag. Ed. (oh yes we did) and the MAs never looked back.
The top of the frequency range is open and crisp, the lumpy tempo dextrously dealt with and the turbulent combination of muttering and bellowing that constitutes a vocal is granted space and a degree of coherence.
Stereo focus and separation is impressive, there’s ample dynamic headroom and the big measurements
help the low frequencies remain deep and solid.
Fluently lyricalA switch to the altogether less threatening sound of 10cc’s high-gloss
I’m Mandy Fly Me allows the BR2s to show off their fluent lyricism, though it does also reveal their occasional tendency to become mildly flustered by rhythms.
You’ll have gathered by the MAs retention of five stars that we don’t consider this a huge problem, but there’s no doubt that they can sound slightly muscle-bound next to the whippet-like Dali Lektor 1s.
So, if you simply find the Dalis too supermodel-skinny to properly satisfy, these big-boned Monitor Audios are just the thing to wrap yourself up in.