UREI 811S
The monitor that showed up in the truck, the film theater, and the ad pages - a Time-aligned workhorse engineers trusted to tell the truth.
Overview
Most of what's known about the UREI 811S comes from the people who mixed on it, not from a spec sheet. The model turns up repeatedly in period trade coverage as a working monitor. It got installed, used hard, and rarely written about the way flagship consoles were. In a 1987 Mix profile, engineer William Mueller described the 811s in his remote truck as "tight" and "good enough" to cut on. He kept the high-frequency drivers turned back a touch, and material mixed on the truck translated into the main studio "generally right."
The 811S belongs to UREI's Time-aligned monitor family, and the company's own advertising from the period lays out the shared design. In a 1980 Modern Recording spread, UREI billed the family as including 800-series Time-aligned crossover networks, Altec custom 604 duplex drivers paired with a UREI high-frequency horn for extended and more uniform high-frequency response, and pressure-controlled apertures for damping, efficiency, and low distortion. The copy promised clean reproduction "from low levels to the threshold of pain." That's marketing language, but it identifies the lineage the 811S shares with its siblings. UREI's advertising in DB Magazine (February 1980, p.15) similarly presented the Time-aligned family as three models in different sizes, positioned for control-room work rather than home listening.
The 811S differs from the larger 813 in scale and application. The 813 was the big control-room standard that studios name-dropped. The 811 was the smaller cabinet that fit where a full-size main monitor wouldn't. Period installs bear this out. A 1983 Mix feature on Crescendo studios describes the film-mixing theater, a Chips Davis LEDE room, as using UREI 811s as its monitors. A 1984 Studio Sound visit to Bee Jay's B room lists UREI 811s alongside Auratones, with JBL 4310s available as secondary monitors. A 1992 Mix classified for a complete facility lists both 813s and 811s in the same room, the big mains plus the smaller UREIs.
A 1990 Mix classified offering a package of two UREI 811s describes them as "in excellent condition and presently in use." The 811s also surface in broker inventories and studio-sale ads through the late '80s and early '90s. Audio (March 1981, p.86) noted that UREI invested heavily in quantity buying of parts and ran a purpose-built, acoustically treated listening room for testing. That's worth keeping in mind when judging a used pair, since the company's own QC was taken seriously.
Buying one today means buying a monitor with a specific personality. Engineers who worked on them describe the top end as something you may want to tame — Mueller's habit of backing off the HF drivers is a common refrain — and the Time-aligned crossover means driver condition matters enormously. The Altec 604 duplex drivers at the heart of the family are serviceable but not getting younger, and a pair that's been in a working room for twenty years will have been driven hard. Original cabinets turn up in studio liquidations and broker lists more often than on the open collector market, so patience and a willingness to buy from a closing facility are assets. The 811S isn't the flashiest UREI — that honor belongs to the compressors and the big 813s — but it's the monitor that did the quiet, constant work, and the period record shows it.
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