D.A.S. Monitor-8
A RETURN TO STUDIO MONITORS

by Michael Cooper

D.A.S. Monitor-8s
(click for larger image)

I would hazard a guess that most studio engineers will not recognize the D.A.S. name, as the Spanish company’s last studio monitor was produced roughly 20 years ago. Established in 1970, D.A.S. began as a manufacturer of studio monitors before changing its focus to produce loudspeakers for sound reinforcement applications. The company has returned to its roots with the introduction of its Monitor line of near- to midfield recording and broadcast studio monitors. The Monitor-8s and their smaller sibling, the Monitor-6s, are the first offerings in the expanding product line. The larger Monitor-8s are reviewed here.

At $459 each ($918/pair), the Monitor-8s are modestly priced, so I was completely surprised by what I heard when I first auditioned these superb passive monitors in my control room. In short, I was completely blown away. The Monitor-8s are world-class monitors offered at a bargain-basement price.

First Look
Straight out of the box, the Monitor-8s are beautiful to behold. The heavily radiused side panels are fashioned from exotic Iroko plywood, adding rigidity as well as visual contrast to the black, 15mm-thick MDF cabinet. This reinforcement minimizes coloration from panel vibration. The top and bottom edges of the cabinet are not radiused. Cabinet dimensions (with a vertical orientation) are 16.5x11x11.5 inches (HxWxD). Each cabinet weighs 28 pounds. The monitors are not magnetically shielded.

Behind the detachable, black cloth grille are two drivers—an 8-inch polypropylene woofer with a rubber surround and a 1-inch soft-dome, ultra-fine aluminum diaphragm tweeter. The low-frequency driver’s oversized motor structures and cast-aluminum chassis promise improved efficiency and impulse response. The tweeter’s voice coils are Ferrofluid-cooled for maximum power handling and improved linearity.

The tweeter sits behind a protective fine-mesh metal grille. Both the tweeter and grille are inset in a Linear Quadratic Spherical™ waveguide, the curved shape that reportedly reduces diffractive effects at high frequencies (the radiused side panels make a similar contribution). The result is wider, more uniform imaging and less distortion due to comb filtering. The waveguide also increases the tweeter’s sensitivity.

A circular bass tuning port is on the rear panel, directly opposite the high-frequency driver. Also on the rear panel are two binding posts that provide power amp connections; these accept only bare wire. Two M6 (metric 6) female mounting points are located on the bottom of the cabinet that allows the monitors to be anchored to a flat stand with a downward tilt.

Specs
The Monitor-8s are rated at 125-watt RMS power, 250W program power and over 500W peak power handling capability; D.A.S. recommends an amplifier rated at 125 to 250 watts at eight ohms. The specified peak SPL at full power is 116 dB, and I found a stereo pair of Monitor-8s to be plenty loud when powered by my 150-watt Hafler P-3000 Trans•nova amp. On-axis sensitivity (1 watt/1 meter) is a respectable 89dB SPL.

The Monitor-8s’ frequency response is specified as 38 to 33 kHz (with no tolerances given). D.A.S. recommends you place the Monitor-8s four inches from a wall for added reinforcement of bass frequencies, and a supplied chart shows the frequency response one would ideally expect with such placement. The response is three dBs down at 55 Hz and two dBs down at 20 kHz, with impressive linearity in between both extremes. (These measurements were made using a 1W swept sine signal at one meter with the Monitor-8s in a half-space anechoic environment. (For more information, see the sidebar “On the Bench.”) The crossover point for the 12dB/octave Linkwitz-Riley passive crossover is 3 kHz.

Reprinted with permission from

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