Monolith Encore Speaker System Review

The Monolith brand from Monoprice is really coming into its own. When the Encore system was announced late last year, home theater and audio forums were immediately buzzing about them. Launched in 2017, Monolith is known as a no-frills, high-value, high-quality brand, offering multi-channel amps and processsors, a plethora of impressive subwoofers, and a now expanded lineup of home theater speakers consisting of THX speakers and the new Encore family I’m reviewing here.
The Encore lineup differs from its THX brethren in both style and features. The THX-rated Monolith speakers sport a curved cabinet design and (on some models) Atmos-enabling ceiling reflection drivers. The Encore lineup takes a more traditional aesthetic with a classic straight box, and no Atmos reflecting drivers available.

I’ve been a fan of Monoprice for a long time, going back to the days when they were virtually a secret that those “in the know” went to for affordable HDMI cables. They are still my go-to for many cable needs, but their product selection has grown to include products from trekking poles and tents, to bulk networking accessories, to guitar amps, and so much in between.

The Monolith brand, which debuted in 2017, is the brainchild of Hobie Sechrest who has built the brand virtually from nothing. Sechrest is the sole product manager of the Monolith family of high-end audio products – envisioning the lineup, the performance targets, and the market placement of each Monolith product. He then recruits some of the industry’s top technical talent to implement his vision into technical designs. In the case of Monolith’s newest entries, the Encore C6 Center, B6 Bookshelf, and T6 Tower speakers, (as well as the THX speakers and subs), Hobie worked with none other than Dan Roemer, CEO and chief acoustic engineer of Perlisten audio. As Sechrest put it, “I come up with the performance targets, … etc., and then Dan starts designing. We go a few rounds on drawings then we start building some samples. We go back and forth with them, tweaking crossover and performance until we get to a place where we feel the speaker is musical, dynamic, and accurate. I really targeted this price range and performance ‘cause it seems as if there are a lot of performers in this price bracket… but I didn’t really love how they sounded. That’s not a knock on any [particular] speaker, as sound is really subjective, but I thought I could put out a compelling, disruptive product.”

As I found out through the course of this review, the Encore family of speakers is indeed a compelling, and in my opinion disruptive, offering.

All three members of the Monolith Encore family of speakers – the T6 Tower, the B6 Bookshelf, and the C6 Center – share the same simple yet pleasing design aesthetic. They are straight-up (literally and figuratively) black rectangular box speakers, with a vinyl faux-wood exterior over MDF construction. The B6 Bookshelf and the T6 Tower both have nice high-gloss painted black steel top and bottom caps, and the C6 Center has the same steel caps on the sides. This really gives an elegant look to what might have otherwise been a fairly plain-looking speaker. The construction is quite sturdy; each speaker has quite a bit of mass to it, and the old-school “knuckle knock test” yields a satisfyingly solid response on all sides. I say “old-school” as the utility of this kind of a test is often compared to “kicking the tires” of a car, in that it doesn’t tell you anything. While it is limited, it can tell you quickly about the general construction of the cabinet, if you’ve knocked enough speakers to know what a good one sounds like or doesn’t. Gently shaking a speaker, and turning it upside down and around in your hands (not really possible with the T6 Tower!) also can tell you sometimes if wires or insulation are loose inside, or if bracing seems to be less than well-made. It’s just the first pass of assessment of a speaker, but the Encore speakers all give one the sense of high-quality construction, and good things to come.

Given that the Monolith Encore speakers are passive, there aren’t a lot of “features” per se. That said, the T6 Tower speakers do have dual sets of binding posts for bi-wiring and/or bi-amping if you have the cabling for that. The towers also include a nice set of feet onto which one may install either spikes or rubber pads.

All three speaker types, the T6 tower, B6 Bookshelf, and C6 center, share the same mid-woofer drivers, tweeters, and waveguide. Each speaker has one tweeter housed in a plastic waveguide; the B6 has one woofer, the C6 has two woofers, and the T6 tower has three.

The Monolith by Monoprice M-12 V2 12in THX Certified Ultra 500-Watt Powered Subwoofer has a similar construction with faux wood vinyl veneer, this time on an HDF construction cabinet. Unlike its predecessor which had large chamfered edges, the V2 has rounded edges. With the grille off, the face of the sub shows the two large ports, which allow for tuning the response of this THX Ultra-Certified beast. And make no mistake, this is a large subwoofer among the 12-inch class. Sitting at about 23 inches high with feet, over two feet deep, almost 17 inches wide, and just over 115 pounds, this is not a sub that will hide in most rooms. And that’s not the style of the Monolith brand, either. This sub, and the Encore speakers, make a statement: these ain’t your neighbor’s “lifestyle” HTIB speakers. On paper, I thought that the new Monolith subwoofer was going to be comparable in size to my Hsu VTF-2 MK5 Subwoofer, but it did feel substantially bigger, and it was definitely way heavier.

The Monolith M-12 V2 12-inch THX Certified Ultra 500-Watt Powered Subwoofer has a decent list of features, including XLR inputs and outputs (as well as RCA) for running your main left and right channels through the sub’s crossover. Said crossover is bypassable and variable from 40~160 Hz. A good portion of this M12 V2’s mass is due to the HDF cabinet, but a non-trivial portion also comes from the Class D 500W (RMS) amplifier, which yields a specified < 3% Harmonic Distortion in the 20-100Hz band.

The Monolith M-12 V2 Powered Subwoofer has six surprisingly low-profile high-density rubber feet pre-installed on the bottom of its cabinet. While they serve their purpose well on a hard floor, they are short enough that on a rug or carpet the sub will be somewhat sitting with its bottom surface, on the rug. This may be fine for a subwoofer, but worth noting. I’d have liked to see a couple of options for feet included.

Each of the Encore speakers as well as the M-12 V2 Subwoofer came in sturdy packaging and a strong, heavy black cloth drawstring bag, which protected the finish from marring or scuffing from the packaging.

The bag that contained the sub was so sturdy, that I was able to lift it while it was in the bag, by only holding the bag (not that I’d recommend this; get help when unpacking and/or moving/placing this 115-pound subwoofer!). I was very impressed with the packaging and unboxing experience, across all six boxes.

Setup of the Encore system was straightforward; after all they are passive speakers so I simply replaced my Paradigm L/C/R speakers with the Encores. I let all speakers break in for several days of just background music from Spotify for several hours per day.

I first tested out the Encore B6 Bookshelf speakers in place of my Paradigm Titan V2 Bookshelf speakers, which serve as my main/front Left & Right channels. The Encore C6 center replaced my Paradigm CC-170. When I swapped in the Encore T6 Towers, I did not bi-wire/amp them as I’m not set up for that. While listening to the B6 bookshelf speakers in the front main position, I used a pair of speaker stands which just so happen to come from Monoprice as well (and worked quite well for the task). This was completely coincidental; I had owned this pair of stands for about 9 months prior to testing the Encore setup.

Just so you get an idea of the acoustic layout: my media room is essentially a rectangular box room, roughly 14 feet wide by 20 feet long and about 10 feet high. My screen is centered on one of the long walls, the couch directly across from it. The main speakers are set up symmetrically on either side of the screen, sub in the corner to the left of the screen, and surrounds on either side about 18 inches from the back wall facing in at the couch. I also have two ceiling speakers for Atmos, but those were not part of this review or testing.

The subwoofer setup was a bit more involved. I did two periods of testing with a focus on the sub, one with the Monolith M-12 V2 in place of my Hsu, and another with the two of them set up for some A/B testing. The A/B testing was done with the subs in the middle of the room, stacked one on top of the other. I did not run a dual-sub setup here, though I was tempted, just to see what would break first: the windows or the drywall (kidding). I also did my best to set up the Monolith M-12 V2 sub as similar to my Hsu’s setup as possible, which meant one port plugged and crossovers bypassed in favor of the bass management in my Denon AVR-X3700H receiver.

Critical listening was conducted with a few of my favorite discs, as well as some test/demo tracks: Dire Straits’ best-of album, Sultans of Swing from Mercury Records, Telarc’s Copland: The Music of America, Norah Jones’ Come Away With Me from Blue Note Records, and the HSU/BAS Test CD from the Boston Audio Society. Movies included Blu-ray discs of Star Wars Episode IV: The Force Awakens, and The Dark Knight.

Initial listening tests conducted with the Encore B6 bookshelf in the main/front position allowed me to do some critical listening of the Encore B6 as a stereo pair, as well as in the role of main left & right in a smaller surround system.

As a standalone stereo pair, the Encore B6 bookshelf speakers impressed me with a very flat response and surprisingly full bass. My media room is not small (about 2800 cubic feet, with the ability to close off all entrances) but the B6 performed very well in the mid-bass range, with ample extension to satisfy all but pipe-organ musical tastes, of which there are a couple of examples on the Boston Audio Society Test CD from HSU.

These speakers could easily fill a small room for music listening with no other help, especially for music. The low-end extension is reported at around 49Hz, which I would say is underselling their in-room performance (see my room description for reference). Mid-range and high-end response of the Encore B6 pair were even more impressive, with a neutral sound indicative of a flat response from high bass on up to the highest frequencies. Vocals and strings were incredibly realistic and (for fear of overusing the term) natural. This is what I look for in speakers: natural, neutral, sound with no boosts or color. For the price point, the Monolith Encore B6 bookshelf speakers may be best in class in this regard.

Next up was the pair of Monolith by Monoprice Encore T6 Tower speakers. As described in the design section above, these towers share the exact same drivers as the bookshelf speakers, except they each have three of the mid-woofers, rather than just one.

The T6 has two crossovers, with one woofer between them in the mid-range, which leaves the other two woofers for the low end. The cabinet design is very similar to the B6, except that it is… a tower. But the cabinet is not only taller, but it’s also wider and deeper. This, combined with the extra woofers, and larger port, results in more bass extension. Whereas the B6 bookshelves had ample bass for a small room, the towers impressed me in my large media room. Specs report extension to 37Hz, but to my ear, there was plenty of bass to be heard well into the sub-40Hz octave. The mid-bass range is where the T6 really stands out from the B6. The towers just seemed more effortless in going loud, providing a very full, rich sound. The T6 tower is an easy choice if you’re building a system for a slightly larger room. The overall tone is, not surprisingly, very similar across these different-sized speakers; the mid-range and high-end were nearly identical. The difference really came across with the mid and low bass, which really affects the perception of the whole sonic picture. There’s no getting around the fact that towers if you can afford them both financially, aesthetically, and spatially, offer better performance. That’s not to take anything away from the B6 model, mind you. They truly were spectacular as well, again ideal for smaller rooms where the T6 towers would be overkill.

Moving on from music to movies, I set up the system with the Monolith by Monoprice Encore C6 Center speaker front and, well, center! With the T6 pair handling front left & right channels, the B6 bookshelves were moved to the back of the room for surround duty.

One thing I will note here is a difference I noticed between the B6 bookshelves and the T6 towers: when used for the front/main Left & Right channels, the B6 speakers with the C6 center resulted in a sound stage that was almost too directional. When seated in the primary center position, all was fantastic. However, if I moved my position on the couch off-axis by about 30 degrees or more, dialog volume seemed to drop, just slightly. At first, I blamed the C6 center; I thought this meant that the C6 had too narrow of a sound field. When I placed the T6 towers in the front Left & Right positions though, this effect disappeared. I only noticed this with dialog, and again it was very subtle. Music and sound effects did not reveal any disparity in this way. With my speaker stands, the B6 tweeters were at the exact same height as the tweeters for the T6, so it can’t be explained by tweeter misalignment. I tested the C6 speaker alone as well and could find no faults, it’s a solid performer in its own right, and could easily fill all three spots in the LCR positions if one wanted to go that way.

Surround action is plentiful in The Force Awakens, and the B6 performed admirably in the rear spots of this system. Honestly, though, they are so good, that they might be overkill as surround speakers. I suppose it depends on your individual take on how much speaker one needs for surround duty, but if you err in the direction of more is better, the Monolith B6 Bookshelf speakers will not disappoint. The TIE vs. Millenium Falcon chase and the final X-Wing dogfight scenes were acoustically dizzying, and I mean that as a compliment! With ample bass response and the aforementioned flat-sounding response from the mids through the highs, you won’t miss a single whizzing aircraft, superhero, bullet, or spaceship.

This is one rocking sub, let me tell you. It easily pressurized my room at reference level and provided ample, palpable bass even at moderate listening levels. I had long heard and read good things about Monolith’s subwoofer lineup, but this was my first time auditioning one. This sub should absolutely be on anyone’s shortlist for a budget (under a grand) subwoofer, right up there with HSU, SVS, and Rythmik (to name a few). My reference sub is the HSU VTF-2 Mk5, which is itself very highly regarded, and by the numbers is pretty similar if a little bit the underdog to the Monolith M-12 V2. In use, however, I found the two to be comparable. Monolith claims lower distortion, which may be true, I did not do bench testing for this review. However at some point, distortion becomes very difficult to identify, especially for low bass frequencies, and I think both the HSU and Monolith are below that threshold. One thing to note with the Monolith sub is that it – is – massive! It makes the 65-pound HSU seem like a lightweight. The Monolith M-12 V2 lives up to its brand name and some. Weighing in at 115 pounds, you may want a furniture dolly and a friendly helper handy while identifying the optimum location in your room. This is not a bad thing, mind you! It is a sign of a well-designed, well-built subwoofer. If you don’t have space or aesthetic limitations when it comes to subs, the bigger and heftier, the better.

The MONOLITH by MONOPRICE M-12 V2 THX CERTIFIED ULTRA SUBWOOFER AND NEW ENCORE B6, T6, and C6 FAMILY OF SPEAKERS represent one of the highest-value 5.1 systems I’ve seen (and heard). Together or piecemeal these speakers are a must-hear!

My favorite class of products is the “high value” or big “bang for buck” products. Both the Monolith M-12 V2 THX Certified Ultra subwoofer and the Monolith family of speakers really impressed me in this category. The M-12 V2 is a force to be reconned with and is solidly in my short list of top 12” subwoofers to recommend. If you can deal with the size, it is tough to beat. The new Encore family of speakers, in my opinion, really establishes the Monolith brand as not only a legitimate player in the crowded mid-range speaker market but arguably the leader in this space. These speakers are classic, yet modern and state of the art at the same time. What they lack in whiz-bang features and avant-garde styling, they make up for in solid, natural, amazing, sound quality that far exceeds expectations for this price point. Very highly recommended!