Supplying Demand

Definitive Technology Demand Series D11 Speaker System

- Mark Fleischmann

NATURE ABHORS A VACUUM, but wasting cabinet real estate is standard operating procedure among loudspeaker designers. With the notable exception of Atmos-enabled speakers and the occasional tweeter pod, the top panel of most speakers is a blank nothing. But does it have to be that way? Definitive Technology answered no, in effect, with its original Studio Monitor Series of bookshelf/stand-mount speakers (circa 2012) and does so again in this new update, the Demand Series. The D11 and D9 monitors (the former reviewed here) employ reflex enclosures that locate a passive radiator on the top panel in lieu of a more compact port, which would commonly be located elsewhere on the cabinet. Even more provocatively, the CS9060 center the company mated with our system includes an active driver on top, essentially augmenting the system’s subwoofer needs. A D-shaped indicator on the CS9060’s front illuminates when the active sub driver is active. I’ve never reviewed such a thing before. But it makes me see the vast desert of space found atop the typical horizontal center in a new and more skeptical light.

United They Stand

Definitive Technology was founded in 1990 and has landed numerous products on our Top Picks list since the brand’s inception. It is now part of the Sound United stable that also includes Polk Audio, Denon, HEOS, Marantz, and Boston Acoustics. Products are designed in San Diego, California and at a combined Definitive Technology and Polk engineering facility in both brands’ old hometown of Baltimore, where many of the same longtime engineers remain employed.