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ESSENTIAL HIGH END MUNICH 2024 – PMC

Essential High End Munich 2024 is a series of promotional articles about the HiFi brands you really need to visit at the show. Read on for more about their philosophy, their products, what they are bringing to Munich and, of course, where they will be at this year’s High End Show.

PMC At High End Munich 2024 – It’s a tale of three halves for PMC this year at the High End: active, flagship and immersive.

GET ACTIVE

Following its hugely successful launch at the Bristol Show in the UK, the new Active twenty5i series will be making its European debut in room D106, atrium 3, and will be on demonstration, to great effect, throughout the show.

The four, two-way, models provide an optimised solution for music lovers looking for PMC’s studio quality sound, with its ultra-high resolution and clarity, from a fuss-free system that dispenses with the need for external amplification. There’s also an active upgrade for existing owners of two-way twenty5 and twenty5i speakers – 21, 22, 23 and 24 so they can also benefit from higher resolution, control, and transparency with a simple-to-install active upgrade pack.

Building on the company’s 30+ years of manufacturing class-leading studio monitors with active amplification, the Active twenty5i series brings the same approach to PMC domestic audio systems for the first time. With integrated electronics and perfectly matched amplification, the Active twenty5i models enable a superb performance without requiring a separate power or integrated amplifier. All the user needs to do is add a pre-amp or a streaming device to create a complete high-resolution system.

Each drive unit in the Active twenty5.21i, 22i, 23i and 24i models is directly coupled to a dedicated and perfectly matched 100w power amplifier, designed to control the driver with grip and precision. In circuit before the power amplifiers is a custom designed analogue crossover, which splits the frequency bands of the incoming line-level signal, from the balanced XLR or unbalanced RCA inputs, and ensures each amplifier is only amplifying the signals appropriate for its drive unit. The design of the crossover has been computer modelled and is specific to each model, with finely tuned roll off curves to ensure the perfect integration of each drive unit, excellent dispersion and low distortion. Pre-amplification, filtering and a dual-band power limiter, for non-invasive driver protection, guarantee studio quality performance with a pure, natural, authentic sound.

Owners of the PMC twenty5 and twenty5i series models don’t have to miss out on the active revolution, with the launch of the simple-to-install active upgrade. All the owner, or their hi-fi retailer, needs do is to remove the existing back panel and its integrated crossover and replace it with the new input/crossover/amplification back panel, which has a unique setting for each model, ensuring the flawless integration of the drive units. The entire start to finish installation should take no more than five minutes.

Experience the stunning performance of Active for yourself in room D106, Atrium 3

THE SPEAKERS YOU’LL NEVER HEAR

The fact fenestria is the pinnacle of PMC loudspeaker design, incorporating the proprietary technologies that have been developed and fine-tuned over the past 30 years.

A three-way, ultra-high-resolution passive twin ATL™ (Advanced Transmission Line) loudspeaker, fenestria incorporates, custom-made drivers, twin Laminair™ vents for improved aerodynamic ATL airflow, plus an innovative and elegant reflection-free module that both houses and isolates the treble and mid-range units. The result is aesthetically beautiful and highly engineered, conveying the emotion of a musical performance with more subtlety and refinement than any other loudspeaker.

The fact fenestria is the speaker you’ll never hear.

This isn’t meant flippantly, but literally. The five years’ research and development that went into its creation focused on the elimination of all unwanted vibrations from the drive units, cabinets and other critical components that are inherent in all loudspeakers. These reduce the clarity, precision and neutrality of the speakers, and introduce colouration that detracts from the musical experience. By engineering them out of the fenestria all you hear is nothing but the music.

As Peter Thomas, our founder and owner puts it, “fenestria is the perfect example of our holistic design approach. Our aim was to make the best passive loudspeaker we could, with a completely open mind when it came to the technologies and materials to uses. We looked at all options to achieve the purest, most transparent sound, and fenestria was the result.”

Ever since the company’s first product, the BB5 XBD Active, was installed at BBC’s Maida Vale Studio in 1991, the quest has been to create loudspeakers that are the reference for sonic neutrality. fenestria is the pinnacle of this process and represents the culmination of our 30 years of speaker design.

Since those early days, PMC has espoused the philosophy that there is only one way to design a loudspeaker, and that is the right way, whether it is for a professional studio speaker or a domestic hi-fi speaker. That is why all PMC speakers are voiced the same and have the same dispersion pattern and can be mixed and matched.

Nothing is more representative of PMC’s well known “from studio to home” approach to loudspeaker design than the use of the flagship fenestrias in one of the world’s leading professional mastering studios. Four-times Grammy Award winning mastering engineer, Darcy Proper, installed fenestrias in her New York studio, using the to mix an immersive audio album which brought her 12th Grammy nomination.

Hear music rather than a loudspeaker in room D106, Atrium 3

GET IMMERSED WITH PMC AND STEVEN WILSON

Further proving the “from studio to home” philosophy is the use of the PMC ci series as part of a vast immersive audio system being installed for legendary musician and producer Steven Wilson’s presentations on Dolby Atmos at this year’s show.

With a mixture of PMC professional studio monitors and the ci series, which are a firm favourite for home cinema installations, and have become the reference for Atmos Music mixing, it will be the largest such installation undertaken by a company whose speakers are found in the world’s foremost recording facilities. Using a system that features both PMC Professional and PMC Home Audio speakers reinforces the approach the company makes to speaker design.

A trio of the class-leading BB6 XBD Active monitors, as used by the BBC, Metropolis, LP:ME Dubai and countless other studios, make up the front left, centre and right channels. Surround and height duties will be undertaken by 14 models from the ci series, with the low frequencies handled by four of PMC’s BST awesomely powerful professional-grade subwoofers.

“This is a system unlike any other we have installed for a hi-fi event,” says Oliver Thomas, commercial director and head of design. “It will provide the audiophile visitors to the High End an opportunity to experience immersive audio on a system unlike any they have heard before, just like the ones used in major commercial studios for Atmos mixing, giving them a taste of what is actually heard by the artists and producers.”

Steven Wilson, one of the world’s leading songwriters, producers, and Grammy-nominated spatial audio mix engineers, will host a series of seminars throughout the four days of the High End, Munich, from 9th to 12th May, in which he will talk about his use of immersive audio in the creation of his music and as an in-demand remixer of classic works by other artists. Each presentation will include demonstrations of his immersive mixes, focusing on his latest album, The Harmony Codex, and some of the other artists’ mixes he has produced, which includes works by Tears for Fears, Ultravox and Roxy Music.

Get immersed with PMC and Steven Wilson in room K1, foyer 1, at regular intervals throughout the show.

Keep up to date with all our High End Munich 2024 coverage here