Nocs Monolith

The Nocs Monolith is a Swedish wireless speaker, CNC-machined from local birch plywood and assembled by hand in Lund, so the grain on every cabinet is different.

Inside is a five-way driver array with two 6-inch dual vented woofers and around 150 watts of Class-D amplification, quoted from 30 Hz to 20 kHz. Up to eight can be linked into one system, and two can be paired for stereo.

What Apple Home actually does with it

This is an AirPlay 2 speaker rather than a HomeKit accessory.

• It appears in the Home app as a speaker you can play to, and as an AirPlay target in Control Centre.
• You can assign it to a room and group it with HomePods for synchronised multi-room audio.
• Siri can send music to it by room name.
• It can be the audio output in a scene or an automation.

You cannot switch it on or set its volume from the Home app the way you would a light. Those stay with the speaker and its own app.

Alongside AirPlay 2 it supports Bluetooth 5.0, Spotify Connect and Tidal Connect.

Before you buy

The birch construction is the reason to buy it and the reason to think about placement: it is a piece of furniture, and it wants to be seen.

A stainless steel version exists at a considerably higher price.

At around $1,500 it sits between mainstream wireless speakers and high-end active designs. Hear it against both.

Specifications