Polk Audio has unleashed a new Monitor XT range of speakers, giving various mix and match options for those who want to build their own hi-fi or home theater system, while still keeping things relatively affordable.
The Monitor XT Series comprises of the XT70 and XT60 floor-standing speakers, the XT30 center channel speaker (or alternatively the XT35 low-profile center speaker), and the XT20 and XT15 bookshelf speakers, with the XT12 subwoofer.
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The range comes certified for Hi-Res Audio and Dolby Atmos, and in the latter case there’s also the option of buying dedicated height speakers (XT90) which can sit atop the floor-standers (or XT20 bookshelf speakers), or indeed they can just be placed on a shelf.
All these different speakers are timbre-matched, so you can buy whichever models you wish to put together into a system and be sure that the resulting overall sound will be consistent. In Polk’s words: “Matched components provide a unified sound field with seamless speaker-to-speaker blending for truly immersive listening experiences.”
Polk boasts that the Monitor XT speakers are good all-rounders and capable of enhancing the “experience of music, movies, TV and game sound”.
Effortless bass
The subwoofer is a 12-inch 100W powered model and it provides “powerful and effortless” bass, with the floor-standers also offering plenty of oomph in terms of their bass performance.
The loudspeakers benefit from Hi-Res Audio Certified Terylene dome tweeters, and these enable playback up to 40kHz – beyond the range of human ears – to give a clear and spacious sound, Polk notes.
The Monitor XT range comes in midnight black and the speakers are up on the Polk website now, although you can’t order just yet – but they are labeled as “coming soon”, so it shouldn’t be long now. Pricing runs as follows:
- XT12 Subwoofer: £299 / $299 each
- XT15 Bookshelf: £149 / $149 per pair
- XT20 Bookshelf: £249 / $249 per pair
- XT30 Center Channel: £169 / $149 each
- XT35 Center Channel (low-profile): £199 / $249 each
- XT60 Floor-standing Speaker: £349 / $398 per pair
- XT70 Floor-standing Speaker: £499 / $598 per pair
- XT90 Height Speaker: £179 / $149 per pair
