English speaker company Monitor Audio has been producing a range of excellent affordable speakers since its managment buyout nine years ago, including the Silver RS6 tower that so impressed Bob Reina last March. Their suite at the Hilton, however, saw the Platinum series, an assault on the state of the speaker art from a design team led by Dean Hartley (above).

In the bookshelf Platinum 100 ($4295/pair plus stands) and the tower Platinum 300 ($8995/pair) a wide-bandwidth, ceramic-coated ribbon tweeter, combined with lower-range drivers that use aluminum-honeycomb diaphragms and baffles cast from mineral-loaded polymer to provide mass, stiffness, and high self-damping, finished with Strathspey leather, and subtly curved enclosures finished in piano lacquers.

The Platinums were being demmed with Musical Fidelity electronics and sounded very promising. Availability wil be May 2007.