Los Angeles, CA (May 28, 2025)—Adding to its Project Santa Monica line of studio monitors, Kali Audio has introduced the SM-8, an 8-inch model.
Making use of the company’s 3-way coincident architecture approach, the SM-8 is a 3-way monitor with an 8-inch woofer, and a 4-inch midrange with a coaxial 1-inch metal dome tweeter. Acting as an acoustic point source, the SM-8 sports unique geometry around the midrange intended to provide a seamless transition to the edge of the speaker. According to Kali Audio, off-axis lobing is largely eliminated in the SM-8.
The woofer design has been refined, adding features said to reduce magnetic flux modulation, bringing distortion down.
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The midrange has been optimized not only for its own frequency handling, but also for its role as the tweeter’s waveguide. The tweeter is an aluminum dome with a special geometry thought to reduce high-Q ultrasonic resonances.
THD of the loudspeaker is reportedly less than 0.5% and lower frequency response is 37 Hz at -10 dB. With 300W of total power, the SM-8 can deliver 119 dB SPL peaks, allowing for reference-level listening at up to 5 meters from the loudspeaker.
The speaker features user-editable DSP to control parametric EQs, delays, and trims per loudspeaker for room calibration. This is all processed natively on the speaker’s own DSP chip, allowing for a less complicated signal chain and no additional latency while processing room calibration.
Users can program these DSP features using a USB drive plugged into the speaker, or by networking speakers together via Ethernet. While networked, changes in processing settings happen in real time, and multiple tuning profiles can be toggled between.
The monitor is available now with an MSRP of $2,499.
