Appholic
Member
Magnat's Monitor Reference 5A is a pair of powered stereo floorstanders with HDMI ARC on board, pitched at GBP 759, and the review frames it as the question I keep coming back to: why is a soundbar the default answer for TV audio when a pair of active speakers costs about the same and actually images?
The HDMI ARC part is what makes this category work at all. Powered speakers have existed forever, but the moment you need a separate box to get sound out of the TV, you've rebuilt a mini system and lost the whole point. ARC means one cable, TV remote volume, and no receiver. Magnat isn't a name most people here will have on a shortlist, though they've been building loudspeakers in Germany since 1973 and are now under the Premium Audio Company umbrella.
Where I'd push back on the soundbar-killer framing: two towers give you a proper stereo stage and real bass extension, but you get no centre channel and no height processing, so dialogue on a busy mix lands wherever the phantom centre puts it. In a wide room with the sofa off-axis that's a genuine downgrade versus a decent three-channel bar. The trade is imaging and music quality against dialogue lock and Atmos. No driver layout, amp power or subwoofer output details in what I've read, so I can't tell you if there's a way to add a sub later.
Anyone here actually swapped a soundbar for active towers? Did the family notice the dialogue difference, or is that only obvious to us?
The HDMI ARC part is what makes this category work at all. Powered speakers have existed forever, but the moment you need a separate box to get sound out of the TV, you've rebuilt a mini system and lost the whole point. ARC means one cable, TV remote volume, and no receiver. Magnat isn't a name most people here will have on a shortlist, though they've been building loudspeakers in Germany since 1973 and are now under the Premium Audio Company umbrella.
Where I'd push back on the soundbar-killer framing: two towers give you a proper stereo stage and real bass extension, but you get no centre channel and no height processing, so dialogue on a busy mix lands wherever the phantom centre puts it. In a wide room with the sofa off-axis that's a genuine downgrade versus a decent three-channel bar. The trade is imaging and music quality against dialogue lock and Atmos. No driver layout, amp power or subwoofer output details in what I've read, so I can't tell you if there's a way to add a sub later.
Anyone here actually swapped a soundbar for active towers? Did the family notice the dialogue difference, or is that only obvious to us?
