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There's just no way around it: I've never seen-or heard, actually- a monitor quite like this before. Leave it to PreSonus to find a new way to combine materials, modern design and a touch of oftforgotten classic design into a reasonably priced and effective yet unusual nearfield monitor.
The Sceptre S8 ($750 street, each) employs an eight-inch (glass-reinforced paper) woofer and a 1.73-inch horn-loaded high-frequency transducer with their most notable design feature: a time-aligned, coaxial, concentric woofer/tweeter arrangement that is highlighted by the use of a square horn. Time-aligned coaxial drivers were largely popularized by Tannoy (I was personally weaned on the DMT12), but the S8's design will trigger fond memories from veterans of 1970's Urei 813B mains with their blue styrofoam-coated horns.
Beyond this nostalgic aspect, the S8 exhibits all modern, or postmodern, traits. They're self-powered (90 watts of Class D amplification per driver, crossed over at 2.2 kHz and 2.4 kHz for the S6 and S8, respectively) with input level trim ( non-stepped), three filtering/voicing options (low-end "boundary" attenuation, tweeter level with boost or cut, and HPF at 60,80 or 100 Hz), and front-ported with self-protection (both thermal and current-output limiting). Cabinet construction is where Presonus broke the mold with an ABS-type plastic enclosure and a similar (yet harder) faceplate/baffle, weighing in at a mere...