Kali Audio SM-8 Santa Monica Series 8” 3-Way Studio Monitor

Believe Everything You Hear

Kali Audio’s Santa Monica Series are the best studio monitors they’ve built so far. With unparralled accuracy, imaging, and translation, they present every detail of your mix with pinpoint precision and fidelity.

The SM-Series features user-editable DSP to process room calibration profiles on board, for a perfect fit in your room.

Kali’s Ultimate Speaker

Kali’s founding principle is to deliver the best possible product for the price. Our speakers have always been praised for their accuracy, translation, and ease of use. The SM-Series builds on these ideals, and incorporates the best available materials, components, and manufacturing.

The result is a high performance studio monitor that is ready for the most demanding mixing and mastering applications.

With onboard processing for room calibration, each speaker can be programmed with delays, trims, and EQs to deliver accurate response in your room.

ROOM CALIBRATION

The SM-Series gives users full control of 8 parametric EQs, delay up to 12ms, and loudspeaker trim. These parameters can be accessed and edited using our Kali Control Panel application, available for both Mac and Windows.

Importantly, since these parameters are processed by the same DSP hardware already in line, using user-defined DSP adds no additional latency to the system. Total digital latency is acceptably low to allow tracking using the SM-Series.

Onboard calibration removes the need for a dedicated room calibration processor. It also prevents some of the confusion and mishap that is possible with a plug-in based processor. Calibration is available for any source you could plug into the speaker, without needing to route it through software, and it will never be active on a mix you print.

DRIVERS

1-Inch Aluminum-Dome Tweeter

The SM-Series’ aluminum-dome tweeter delivers excellent dynamics, resulting in clear high frequency response without distortion. The tweeter uses a unique geometry to reduce high-Q ultrasonic resonances, eliminating harshness that can make metal tweeters fatiguing over time.

4-Inch Profile-Optimized Midrange

The SM-Series midrange is optimized not only for its own frequency band, but also for its role as the tweeter’s waveguide. The shape is precision engineered for ideal directivity, and peak-to-peak excursion is limited to under 1mm to prevent intermodulation distortion.

Flux Stabilized Woofer

The SM-Series woofer incorporates features that reduce magnetic flux modulation, bringing distortion down dramatically.

Paper is used for both the woofer and midrange cone material. Kali’s testing has shown that, despite its humble nature, paper is ideal in terms of stiffness, weight, and natural damping characteristics.

EASE OF USE

Recessed Input Panel

The SM-Series' input panel is recessed to allow for easier wall and ceiling mounting. It features inputs for XLR or TRS connectors, AES/EBU in and thru over BNC, and RJ45 (ethernet) for control.

The back of the speaker also features the trim wheel, which allows for precise 0.5 dB adjustments from -12 dB to +6 dB

Capacitive Touch Logo

The Kali logo on the SM-Series has a capacitive touch sensor, acting as a multi-function button to control basic loudspeaker functions like standby mode.

Multi-Color LED

The LED on the SM-Series changes color to indicate a variety of statuses, including the trim level, whether a user EQ is being processed, standby mode, and performance warnings.

USB Input

The USB-A input on the front of the speaker can be used to load firmware and tunings to the loudspeaker, even if it’s permanently mounted in place.

Mounting

The SM–Series features mounting holes on both the top and bottom of the loudspeaker. Kali recommends using a speaker specific U-bracket from Triad-Orbit, but any speaker mount with a 4.25 x 2-Inch bolt pattern that is capable of holding the SM-Series’ weight will also work.