THX Revisited
WHAT’S IN A NAME? If visions of $10 HDMI and iPhone Lightning cables pop into your head when you hear the name Monoprice, you should know that the company introduced the premium Monolith brand a few years back to move beyond its image as an online peddler of low-cost cables. Think of Monolith as being a bit like Genesis is to Hyundai: a fresh name free of the parent brand’s bargain basement associations.
The Monolith brand portfolio mostly consists of amplifiers, headphones, and subwoofers. For the first complete line of speakers to sport the Monolith name, Monoprice has taken a surprisingly focused approach. Instead of creating speakers that would appeal to a wide array of customers, they have aimed straight for the dedicated home theater enthusiast with THX Certified speakers that support Dolby Atmos.
When I worked in a high-end audio store back in the early 1990s, customers would eagerly snap up THX Certified speakers from brands like Snell, Bowers & Wilkins, and JBL Synthesis for their fancy home theaters. While such speakers have to meet exacting standards for frequency response, power handling, distortion, and dispersion, their deliberately restricted bass extension means they need to be paired up with
