Should you find yourself with a grand or so in your back pocket and a craving for a pair of floorstanding loudspeakers, you are spoilt for choice right now. As our recent review of Q Acoustics’ 5050 showed, the bar is high for options in this price bracket.
Rayliegh’s Monitor Audio is a stalwart of this arena, introducing its latest offering within its seventh generation of Bronze models, which also covers cinema speakers and stand mounters, alongside these range-topping floorstanders under review here.
The Bronze 300 7G come in walnut, black and white finish options, with contrasting black baffles on the wood option
The new line-up is a significant redesign of the 6G range, with key Monitor Audio trademarks still present and correct, including the familiar rounded grilles plus ‘C-CAM’ (Ceramic Coated Aluminium Magnesium) tweeters and drive units, giving these speakers their stylish aesthetics. Enhancements include gold dome tweeters that are lighter yet more rigid, sporting the ‘UD waveguide II’ tech of the one-step-up Silver range.
The speaker’s 6″ mid/bass drivers boast larger voice coils and magnets over their predecessors, along with improved chassis bracing. These are enclosed in a modified plywood baffle design, while the cabinets sit on improved outrigger feet.
As with their predecessors, the 300 is a two-and-a-half-way design, fed from a redesigned crossover. The tweeter operates between 2.6-30kHz, while the mid/bass driver extends up from 34Hz where it crosses over at 2.6kHz. Finally the lower bass driver’s ‘half’ overlaps the mid/bass at 34-470Hz.
Max power is quoted at 150W into 8 ohms with sensitivity rated at 88dB, meaning that the majority of amps will drive them without complaint.
Bi-wire or bi-amping? The 300 7G has you covered, with good quality multiway terminals on hand
Get into position
Set up doesn’t tax the grey matter too much, requiring no more than fitting the supplied outrigger feet to each cabinet’s base, which sport rubber domes as standard. Should your listening area be carpeted, spikes are provided too.
The cabinets themselves are smart in appearance and solidly constructed while weighing in at a moderate 15.6kg apiece, meaning they’re easy to manoeuvre.
Measuring 1005 x 269 x 392mm (HWD), the 300 7G is a compact loudspeaker with plenty of depth for its size
This speaker’s design brief seems to be focussed on fitting into any listening space, without clashing with adjacent furniture. This results in a clean yet fairly conservative looking product, which works perfectly at its market position, as fancy designs can divide opinion while eating into R&D budgets, which can be better spent on a speaker’s sonic capabilities.
In any case I leave the last word on the visual appeal of hifi kit to my wife who is rather more qualified than I to opine, and she felt that their look blended into our living space ‘just fine’ which I assure you is high praise indeed!
Outrigger feet are the only assembly required prior to installation. Foam bass port bungs are supplied for low frequency tuning as required
Assembly complete, connection was made to an Arcam A25+ amplifier, fed from a Volumio Rivo streamer, Project Debut Carbon turntable and Rega Fono Mk2 phono stage. After a week of running in, it was time to experiment with cabinet placement in my 18m² room. In truth there’s little complaint regardless of where you place these speakers and they don’t demand excessive rear space to avoid boominess, which is always a bonus.
After some finessing, half a meter from a rear wall, and set two metres apart is their sweet spot for my lounge, without the supplied port bungs (of which MA includes two per speaker, for their upper and lower cabinets).
The benefits of having a speaker that’s so fuss free to accommodate are hard to overestimate in this area of the market, as most buyers won’t have the luxury of a compromise-free listening space, and knowing that the 300 7G will hit the ground running will add to their appeal for many (this trait was also apparent in the Silver 100 7G standmount models that we reviewed in March ’24).
MA’s trademark HiVe II rear bass ports are sited top and bottom of each cabinet, to aid room tuning
Performance
Where better to start an appraisal of the sonic capabilities of any floorstander than with reggae. As you may have noted in our recent review of Audio Resurgence’s Kraken AR6A, Bob Marley and the Wailers’ seminal Exodus recording is looming large on our playlists right now (to will in the bluer skies of summer perhaps?), so it was with a 24-bit/96kHz recording of Guiltiness via Tidal that proceedings commenced.
How floorstanders handle lower frequencies is always a litmus test, and I can report that the Bronze 300 7G commits itself adeptly, offering an ample yet extremely taught bassline that leaps into the room without a trace of the ponderous chuffing that has dogged such designs in years gone. Instead its bottom end is as tight as Mark Wahlberg’s six pack.
However these frequencies only form part of this speaker’s package, and are thankfully accompanied by a gorgeous palette of mids and highs, where the majority of the instrumentation and vocals sit in this recording. In particular the cymbals found their discrete position into the aural image, with their crispness standing tall alongside the underlying beat without being overwhelmed. Voices were not neglected either, with Marley’s deceptively languid tones sounding rich in timbre and captured in a delivery that the Bronze 300 7G seems tailor made for.
The familiar Monitor Audio C-CAM gold dome tweeter returns in the seventh generation, with improvements to timing and reduced distortion
Switching from a digital source to vinyl while continuing the Island Records theme has me dropping the needle on U2’s 30th anniversary box set of their The Joshua Tree album. Hearing the driving machine gun menace of Bullet The Blue Sky as its opening drum salvo echoes around my room, accompanied by the track’s swift cavalcade of bass notes, sounds impressively laden with apocalyptic fury.
The soundstage is laid forth in a neutral way with guitar and vocal elements being framed by the song’s demonic rhythm section, showcasing its cinematic production as producers Eno and Lanois surely intended. This speaker’s natural presentation and detail is perhaps a factor that most contributes to the tension of the track, as it gets projected into the room with the proverbial goosebumps that remain after fadeout, placing my senses somewhere within the distant expanses of the American West.
Twin 6″ inverted dome drivers per cabinet, with the lower one dedicated to bass and the upper covering bass and midrange
Cool under pressure
Both of the above tracks have a level of bombast which really plays to the strengths of a floorstander. However with the detail shining through, it was time to hear how more accomplished recordings with added timing demands fare. Peroration Six is the final track from Floating Points’ excellent debut Elania, and while most of this album has a wealth of ambient cuts that are abundant with texture, the album closer takes things in a different direction, with intensity from the off stemming from its combination of keyboards, guitars, strings and drums, coalescing into an increasingly urgent tone through to its abrupt cut out.
I mention this as it’s quite a test track that many speakers struggle to keep pace with, but via the MAs, for a speaker at this price the timing is exquisite, with a soundstage that places the listener at the centre of the intended musical mayhem. And throughout the Monitor Audios remain calm, collected, and as unflustered as having Acker Bilk on the turntable.
Magnetically attached grilles are included if needed, although given the speaker’s bass drivers are sans dust caps and the tweeter sports its own protective mesh, the 300 7G is less exposed than most without the covers installed
Such results are truly impressive and it tells us a great deal about how speaker technology has advanced. Thinking back to the 1990s when I was building my first system, mid-priced floorstanding speakers seemed competent in the context of what was available at the time, but compared to today’s generation of products, they sound woolly and less controlled in comparison.
Thankfully nowadays the price of admittance into a more sophisticated listening experience is lower and arguably with smaller spaces better served. Why is this? In truth there are several reason, with CAD modelling reducing lead times, and advancements in materials and technologies to name but two. However, it is also clear that decades of development of a tried and trusted design leading to a winning product achieving a higher level of excellence is also a winning formula. The Bronze 300 7G epitomises this approach.
Front baffle detail, revealing its 11mm depth and layered wood construction for added stiffness
In summary
The value shown in making incremental gains has been demonstrated in many industries and with the Bronze 300 7G, Monitor Audio is showing how this can be applied to loudspeakers.
There is nothing revolutionary about how MA has achieved what it has in this speaker, but the improvements across the board multiply to create a whole that’s much greater than the sum of its parts. Combine that with this speaker’s lack of fussiness in positioning and with partnering gear, and you have a floorstander with a performance level that could only be dreamed of at this price only a few years ago. I can’t recommend them highly enough!
