All you have to do is look at the ads for audio/video
receivers to know it’s true. The first thing listed is almost
always the power rating. Wacky power rating issues aside,
generally the more power you put into your room, the bet-
ter the sound, but people can sometimes get too hung up
on numbers.
Power can make or break how your room sounds, but it
depends on how you use it. Definitive Technology, long
known for innovative speaker design, has come up with an
interesting way to give you all the power you can ever use.
Def Tech’s new PowerMonitor 500 speaker (the small-
est of three monitor designs in the new lineup) bundles a
surprisingly small package crammed with power and per-
formance. Sure, there’s the 1-inch aluminum dome tweet-
er and 4 1/2-inch mid-range driver, which may look kind
of similar to what you might find in dozens of mini mon-
itor speakers. The average part of the speakers ends there.
Definitive adds a side-firing eight-inch woofer, powered
by its own 150-watt amplifier to create a package that
packs a wallop for just $425.
We were able to get four PowerMonitor 500s, a match-
ing, larger center channel speaker (more on that later) the
C/L/R 2300 ($599), a ProSub 200TL 12-inch subwoofer
($549) with a 250-watt amp (probably more subwoofer
than this system requires) and a pair of ProMonitor 80s
($225/pair) to use as rear surrounds in my 7.1 setup.
Make no mistake, these are not large speakers. Next to
the MB Quart OLS 1030 tower speakers that have been
living in my theater lately, they look positively tiny, until
you fire them up.
This may be the
best value on
the speaker
market today,
a great blend
of affordable
pricing and
world class
performance.
Definitive Technology
PowerMonitor 500 speaker system
They
’
ve got power and know how to use it
E-GEAR
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2001
Reviews
BY MIKE McGANN
“a surprisingly small package
crammed with power and
performance…you can get
tower-like sound if you don’t
have space for towers”
