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Professional monitors turn sleeker and smarter for stylish domestic settings
- Hertfordshire-based company’s new speakers stand tall
PMC’s FB1 floorstanders may be based on studio speakers, but Andrew Everard finds them a fine domestic choice – with or without their partnering amplifier packs
The Professional Monitor Company, based in Hertfordshire, has an enviable following among music professionals in the UK and elsewhere. But while the speakers may measure up, until recently the range has been more functional than stylish. In short, PMC’s speakers tend to be big and pig-ugly, as the advertisements featuring pop star Robbie Williams leaning on one of his MB1 speakers, PMC coffee mug in hand, make only too clear. To win wider domestic acceptance, therefore, something had to change, beginning with the design of the TB1 (Tiny Box) nearfield monitors and the slimline FB1 floorstanders. Yes, the model name does mean ‘Floor Box’.

Standing exactly a metre tall, the FB1 is a two-way speaker using what designer Pete Thomas calls a ‘transflex’ design, and it comes in a variety of superb real wood finishes. The main feature, drivers aside, is the rectangular vent at the base of the front panel, which forms the end of the 3m-long hybrid transmission line/reflex system folded up inside the speaker. The bass driver is placed about a third of the way along the tapered inner chamber, which is lined with foam to ensure that high frequencies are absorbed and only the bass emerges at the vent, enabling it to act like a second bass driver.

This allows the remarkable frequency range claimed for the FB1s; no other design of similar compact dimensions claims a bass as low as 22Hz, and when I tried a few test tones through the speakers they certainly lived up to the promise. To hear such bass coming from speakers of this size, using only one 17cm bass unit for each channel, is something of a revelation; it will amaze those who believe that the only good speaker is a truly huge speaker.

A useful extra for the speakers is a pair of plinths, which raise them by a further 3.5cm. Finished in a satin black effect, they attach to the speakers’ spike-threads using Allen bolts, then accept the spikes, usefully widening the speakers’ footprint a little for improved stability as well as adding to their visual appeal. I tried the speakers both self-spiked and with the plinths in place, and found the latter configuration does give a tighter, better bass.

The drivers here, sourced from Vifa, are relatively prosaic – the 17cm driver uses a doped paper cone and the tweeter an aluminium alloy dome and the usual ferrofluid cooling – but they’re built pretty substantially, the woofer, for example, having a cast magnesium alloy chassis. The crossover is based on that in the smaller TB1s – not surprising given that the drive units are the same – with 12dB/octave slopes switching between the drivers at 3kHz, and allowing a stable 8 Ohm load, as well as relatively high 90dB/ W/m sensitivity. Biwiring or bi-amping is accom-modated by twin sets of speaker terminals connected with ‘jumper bars’, both terminals and links being gold-plated. The speakers can handle amps of up to 150W, and deliver peak output of over 110dB at 1m – more than enough for most needs.

But there’s an intriguing alternative to connecting the FB1s straight to conventional amplification: the speakers can be run straight from a preamplifier, in a self-powered configuration. PMC is the UK distributor for Bryston, the Canadian amplifier manufacturer, the two companies having developed an extremely close working relationship.

Many of the company’s studio monitors are active designs, using Bryston amplification, the two companies’ reputations for solidity of construction and quality components coming together to create systems with a reputation for being bombproof.

In the case of the FB1s, mounting-points on the rear of the speakers allow the innovative Bryston PowerPac monobloc amps to be bolted on. Available as either the 60W PP60 model or the 120W PP120, these are based on established stereo power amps, but are designed to be mounted on or in walls in home cinema set-ups, or, as here, bolted straight to the rear of the speakers. Short tails of speaker cable then link the PowerPac to the speaker it’s driving, and the main connections are an IEC mains input and a preamp-level feed, either on an unbalanced phono socket or a balanced XLR.

Weighing just 2.6kg apiece (the PP60) and 4.5kg (the PP120), the Brystons are keenly priced, add only a few centimetres to the depth of the FB1s, are bolted on low down to add stability, and when used with a suitable preamplifier could well provide a cost-effective alternative to a conventional configuration of power amp and long speaker cables.

Performance

I began my listening by using the PMC speakers conventionally, in this case on the end of a Musical Fidelity pre/power amplifier combination. The sources were the MF X-Ray CD player, this being joined later in the test by Sony’s new SCD-XB940 Super Audio CD player, which I’ll be reviewing in these pages next month. The speakers were mounted on their plinths, for reasons I’ve already explained, and located about 20cm out from a solid rear wall, very slightly toed-in and well clear of any side walls.

Fresh from the box, they were anything but impressive, sounding tight, constrained and rather uninspiring. It took a good few days’ use, both at usual listening levels and ticking over with some Radio 3 at background levels when the house was unoccupied, before these speakers started to fulfil their promise.

Initial impressions were of a rather dry sound, short on bloom and substance, but it soon became clear that the PMCs are rather level-dependent, sounding slightly lack-lustre at pottering volumes, but really coming into their own when you’re in the mood for serious listening, and the levels are raised somewhat. Not that you need the speakers to be shaking the walls and rattling the window-frames before they do their stuff, but at sensible levels they seem to change gear and get into their stride, and are then capable of delivering a truly thrilling sound.

Summing up the sound of the FB1s can easily be done in two simple words – ‘that bass!’ – but the speakers go way beyond their prodigious low-level delivery. They present recordings in a superbly informative fashion, achieving very high standards of clarity and, most important of all, integrating perfectly everything from the slightest shimmer of high percussion to the thunder of orchestral basses and drum. Soundstaging can be taken for granted, the fresh, wide-open treble delivering spatial and ambient information with equal transparency, and when the scale of the music demands, that low end can be just as spine-tingling.

A work such as the Walton Spitfire Prelude and Fugue (Daniel/ Bournemouth SO; Naxos, 5/99) has glorious impact and attack, the brass and strings getting full measure, and the swell of the orchestral forces being equally magnificent, while even a simple recital disc such as Gervase de Peyer’s programme of French clarinet works (Chandos) highlights the speakers’ magical ability with instrumental timbres.

The FB1s may lack the illusory warmth and low-end fatness of some similarly priced designs, but their taut, accurate bass slam and tunefulness come into their own with everything from the grumble of low organ notes to the cello voice in the small-scale version of Britten’s Simple Symphony on the Maggini String Quartet’s disc (Naxos, 9/99), and the drama of Arcadi Volodos’s Carnegie Hall live set (Sony, 4/99).

These speakers are never dull, delivering that ‘pin you to your seat’ quality that ensures one disc leads to another. As unforgiving of poor recordings as they are of partnering equipment with an overt sonic character – one result of the monitor heritage – they thrive when matched well and fed a high-quality signal.

But it gets better: after a week or so of use, and now fully aware how the FB1s sounded on the end of known amplification, I switched to the Bryston PowerPacs, the PP120s bolted on the rear of the speakers, and connected to the preamp using long runs of Musical Fidelity’s NuVista interconnect cable. The synergy was apparent, the combination revealing even better high treble detail while giving the bass just a smidgen more grip and drive. Small improvements, but definitely worthwhile ones, the Bryston/PMC pairing sounding both unburstable and totally assured, whether with the rich acoustic of the Suzuki/Bach Collegium Japan St Matthew Passion (BIS, 3/00) or the rhythmic demands of the Chailly/ Concertgebouw disc in the Gramophone Award-winning Varèse ‘Complete Works’ set (Decca, 10/98). Discs as diverse as these and some close-miked jazz on Super Audio CD were played through the system using the Sony player, and every recording tried proved to be a revelation.

Eliminating smear or boom low down, entirely free from spit or splash in the treble, and serving up an explicit, attractive midband that brings instruments and vocals to the listener in vivid style, the PMC B1s defy that ‘analytical but uninvolving’ myth about speakers that have pretensions to monitor status. They’re hugely enjoyable, especially when driven by the bolt-on Brystons, to an extent that lesser speakers sound either coloured or just plain dull.

We invite you to experience the Bryston SST² Series amplifiers

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