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Look-out! PMC entering the ultra-high-end speaker market

Flint

Flint

Prodigal Son
Superstar
One of my favorite companies, PMC, changed the studio monitor world forever when they launched in the 1990s, and while I rarely recommend their products here because of their high cost and difficulty in finding dealers, they make some of the best sounding loudspeakers in the world regardless of price.

Now they are launching their first line of speakers intended for the home user market, kicked off with their statement speaker, the fenestria. Based on their legendary transducer designs, their carefully tuned transmission line bass cabinets, and employing some of the core technologies I have felt deserved more attention in speaker designs (like vibration transmission control and such), these look to be amazing products. I cannot wait to hear them.

www.audioxpress.com/news/pmc-impresses-at-high-end-2018-with-new-fenestria-flagship-loudspeaker

At 54K Euros, or about $65K USD, these are definitely not cheap. However, aside from the high quality hardwood side panels damn near every material and design decision is intended to actually improve performance - not just be there for show. Yes, the massive solid aluminum "nest" baffle is necessary to eliminate vibration transfers to and from the midrange and treble. I have seen firsthand how important that sort of work is to the accuracy and low distortion of the least linear component of any home audio system.

I am excited.

The one thing I am less thrilled about concerning these speakers is their extremely low sensitivity (86dB SPL 2.83V/1M). In a normal room one would need a large amp to get acceptable SPLs for a high end system, and we all know how expensive a super-well performing 400W per channel amp can cost.
 
Yes, it is a trade mag writing up the announcement from the High End show in Germany. It is not a review, other than the author's opinions about the company in general.
 
Thanks for the post Flint, I always love reading about new speakers. Especially ones with a lot of out of the box thinking regarding it's design, not the usual rehash of whatever speaker technology a given brand has on. It's looks they started the design with a clean slate, however I have a couple of questions.

First the nest, tweeter and midrange unit looks like it is almost an open baffle. With a some kind of concave reflecting cavity behind the nest unit, I have probably misunderstood the technology, but just saying what it looks like to me.

Second given the speakers low sensitivity, and PMC Studio Monitors history. Shouldn't this speaker have been made an active speaker, or maybe like Paradigm's Persona have at least the bass being actively powered?

I really hope they bring this to AXPONA 2019, so I can have a listen to this interesting speaker. Otherwise I might be hard pressed to hear it as the nearest consumer dealer to me is Irvine CA.
 
TitaniumTroy said:
First the nest, tweeter and midrange unit looks like it is almost an open baffle. With a some kind of concave reflecting cavity behind the nest unit, I have probably misunderstood the technology, but just saying what it looks like to me.
Click to expand...

The idea of the nest is to allow the speakers to provide ideal dispersion (notice the shape of the baffle and the extent of the rounding over). With the dome midrange, I am estimating the total width of that section is about 6 inches, which means there will be baffle reinforcement at frequencies down to about 564Hz, which is likely lower than the high pass crossover for the 3" dome. The distance to the reflective surface of the enclosure behind the nest appears to be about 10 inches, which gives you a baffle step null frequency of about 338Hz. That is, again, likely to be well below the crossover frequency for the midrange driver. The tweeter is on a wider baffle than necessary for good reinforcement in its operating range, and the large round over of the nest edges will eliminate diffraction. In all, this is a solid acoustical design.

TitaniumTroy said:
Second given the speakers low sensitivity, and PMC Studio Monitors history. Shouldn't this speaker have been made an active speaker, or maybe like Paradigm's Persona have at least the bass being actively powered?
Click to expand...

People who want PMC sound in an active speaker can buy their studio monitors. They don't get the cool looks of this speaker, but the performance is stunningly good. Something I've heard many times in the high end audiophile industry is that consumers for $20,000+ speakers generally don't want active speakers because most believe changing amps makes a huge difference to the performance and they demand the ability to replace the amps to meet their desires. With an active speaker, PMC would alienate damn near all of the audiophile market. Maybe in the future PMC will release a version of this beast in an active variant, but that would be targeting a niche.

Ultimately, this is a business and they need as many customers for this thing as possible.
 
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