Bookshelf Speakers — Alexandria Audio The Monitor

The Monitor is the stand-mount two-way loudspeaker from Alexandria Audio, the company Henry Kristanto and Kenneth Lin founded in Bali in 2019. Kristanto grew up around a family furniture workshop and spent about a decade in Sydney building and measuring loudspeakers, and development of The Monitor goes back to 2014, well before the brand existed. A prototype with an Australian-made cabinet and a series crossover was first shown at the Melbourne Audio Club in 2016, followed by a parallel-crossover version at the Sydney Audio Club in 2017. Alexandria lists the production version at USD 6,500.

Key specs that matter

The cabinet is vented through a rear-facing reflex port. A 220 mm carbon and paper cone midwoofer hands over at 2.1 kHz to a 28 mm dome tweeter with a neodymium magnet system. Rated response is 35 Hz to 20 kHz, sensitivity is 91 dB and maximum output reaches 108 dB. Nominal impedance is 8 ohms, falling to a minimum of 6.3 ohms at 140 Hz, and the rear panel carries a 150 W rating. Each cabinet is 280 mm wide, 450 mm high and 330 mm deep, and weighs 14 kg.

Engineering and use context

Neither driver is an off-the-shelf part. The founders set the target parameters and had the midwoofer built to their specification by Sinar Baja Electric in Indonesia, while the tweeter is made in Italy and is itself rated at 94 dB and 120 W. A shallow waveguide around the tweeter gives the speaker controlled directivity from 2.5 kHz upward, so the off-axis response falls away in step with the on-axis curve, and chamfered edges on the front baffle reduce diffraction. The birch plywood cabinets are braced inside, finished in gloss ebony veneer and produced for Alexandria at a piano factory in China. The grilles attach with hidden magnets. Internal wiring was made specifically for this model by Kenkraft Labs, and the crossover network is currently in its twelfth revision. Alexandria measures and auditions every speaker as part of a matched pair before it leaves the workshop.

Pairing

The founders aimed for an even impedance curve with fairly high sensitivity so that the speaker could be driven by low-power single-ended triode amplifiers, and Alexandria names SET designs as its preferred match. The company also states that the linear impedance keeps the speaker compatible with any amplifier type, so solid-state designs remain an option.

Alternatives

Alexandria Audio makes no other stand-mount model beside The Monitor.