PreSonus Sceptre S8 - CoActual Active Studio Monitor

The first time you hear Sceptre-series CoActual™ 2-way studio monitors, you’ll discover fine nuances of your music that can’t be reproduced by conventional designs. The Sceptre’s panoramic soundstage, fine detail, and stunning dynamics will astonish you. This exceptional performance is the result of an advanced coaxial design that works integrally with a 32-bit processor running Fulcrum Acoustic’s TQ™ Temporal Equalization Technology™.

PreSonus CoActual technology—the core of every Sceptre-series studio monitor—is the combination of custom transducers in a state-of-the-art coaxial design with heavy-duty DSP running TQ algorithms.

The coaxial conundrum

Speaker designers have long been aware that coaxial designs offer the advantages of a single point source for a consistent acoustic center and a symmetrical dispersion pattern. But until now, designing coaxial systems without a variety of acoustic anomalies has been extremely expensive.

Solving the problems involved in coaxial designs requires massive amounts of DSP and subtle, sophisticated transducer design, which is why such systems have, in the past, been limited to very high-end systems with external processors.

However, Fulcrum Acoustic’s amazing, cutting-edge technology has allowed us to overcome the usual design problems of coaxial systems while taking advantage of coaxial’s unique properties. Thanks to custom transducers and TQ algorithms designed by Fulcrum’s Dave Gunness, Sceptre CoActual monitors deliver clarity and coherence that has previously only been available in ultra-high-end systems.

The royal Sceptre

The Sceptre S8 CoActual Studio Monitor combines an 8-inch low/mid-frequency driver and a 1-inch (25 mm), horn-loaded, high-frequency transducer into a single coaxial unit with aligned voice coils and front-firing acoustic ports.

The Sceptre is biamplified: Each transducer is powered by a 90W RMS, Class D power amp with an internal heat sink. Each Sceptre has its own internal power supply with IEC connector and a power switch with on/off LED.

All Sceptre-series monitors have a balanced XLR and ¼-inch TRS line-level inputs with A-taper level control.

To this package of custom transducers, powerful DSP running custom software, and first-rate power amplification, add a rich set of acoustic adjustments and full speaker protection, and you have a new, affordable close-field monitoring standard for project studios and commercial facilities.

As you expect from PreSonus, Sceptre studio monitors use top-quality components and construction quality fit for royalty—and they look regal, too!

Coaxial done right with TQ™

Each Sceptre monitor contains a DSP chip that enables the use of Fulcrum Acoustic’s TQ algorithms. The processor is used to manage horn reflection, linear time and amplitude anomalies correction, performance contouring, and dynamic and excursion limiting.

The result is coaxial speakers that perform far better than all but the most expensive studio monitors.

You wield the Sceptre

In addition to making possible the Sceptre’s coaxial design, the monitor’s onboard DSP provides user-adjustable contour features for optimizing the monitors for your mixing space. This enables full integration into any studio environment.

A four-position Acoustic Space switch controls a second-order shelving filter centered at 100 Hz, with four attenuation settings (no attenuation, -1.5 dB, -3 dB, and -6 dB) so that you can account for the boundary bass boost that occurs when the monitor is placed near a wall or corner. If you don’t want to roll off those lows, set it to 0 dB.

You also can adjust the Sceptre’s overall sound and response using its performance controls.

Safety Matters

Any loudspeaker is subject to an assortment of environmental and performance problems, and Sceptre monitors offer protection from most common of these. RF shielding protects against radio frequencies that could be induced into the signal and become audible. (If you’ve ever heard a radio broadcast unexpectedly coming out of a guitar amp, that’s the result of RF interference.)

Sceptre monitors also provide over-temperature protection to avoid heat-related issues and current-output limiting to prevent damage should there be a short circuit on the speaker terminals.

Finally, the power amplifiers have a “soft startup” so that you don’t get damaging pops in the speakers when you power them up.

Features

• CoActual technology combines DSP time-correction and point-source design for symmetrical soundstage and micro-definition imaging
• Unique coaxial transducer integrates 8-inch (Sceptre S8) or 6.5-inch (Sceptre S6) midrange driver and 1-inch (25 mm), horn-loaded HF transducer with Coaxial Speaker Coherence Alignment
• Powerful DSP provides critical Temporal Equalization™ with multiple FIR filters
• Acoustic-tuning controls:
  • HF Driver Adjust (0 dB, +1 dB, -1.5 dB, -4 dB)
  • Acoustic Space settings (0 dB, -1.5 dB, -3 dB, -6 dB)
  • High-pass filter (Off, 60 Hz, 80 Hz, and 100 Hz, -24 dB/octave slope)
  • Sensitivity (+4 dBu to -10 dBV)
• 180W RMS, Class D biamplification with internal heat sink
• RF shielding, current-output limiting, and over-temperature protection
• Balanced XLR and ¼-inch TRS line-level inputs with A-taper level control
• Amplifier “soft start” feature eliminates popping on power-up
• 102 dB maximum continuous SPL
• Internal power supply with IEC connector
• Power switch with on/off LED