One of Britain's best-known specialist loudspeaker brands, Monitor Audio was among the first to introduce some key technologies, most famously the metal dome tweeter - the distant ancestor of the very model used in this system.

The Silver RS range is strictly mainstream in its appeal. The technology is contemporary, if not cutting-edge.

Setting the RS range apart from its rivals, the finishes are real wood veneer, and are of good quality. The styling of the driver surrounds is on the brash side; leaving the front baffle covers in place helps, but there is a small but significant loss of transparency and clarity when the tweeters are obscured.

The speaker that sets the tone for this system is the RS6, the main left/right, which is the smaller of two floor-standing models in the range. It is a two-way design, which means it has a tweeter, a mid-range unit that also covers the bass, and a similar driver which is limited to the bass only.

This is a simple and popular way of increasing the cone's radiating area devoted to the lowest frequencies - where larger generally means better - while using a smaller, lighter and more responsive engine for the mid-range, where these qualities are needed most.

Other models in this system include the RS-LCR, a D'Appolito design with two mid/ bass units flanking the tweeter. The rear effects speaker is a wall-hugger with a single bass driver and two tweeters, which can be switched between bipole and dipole radiation patters.

Last but not least, the subwoofer is an extremely heavy sealed-enclosure design, equipped with a 30cm driver and a 500W amplifier Class D amplifier.

All loudspeakers - or speaker systems - have a degree of technical merit (or otherwise). But loudspeakers can be judged by other than standards of absolute literal accuracy. Loudspeakers have character. Perhaps this shouldn't be, but in reality every part of the audio chain has its own foibles, and so do the engineers entrusted with the task of recording the source material in the first place. So literal, absolute neutrality, is not always what is required.