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PMC result6 Monitor Review

Rate this studio monitor:

  • 1. Poor (headless panther)

    Votes: 220 91.3%
  • 2. Not terrible (postman panther)

    Votes: 16 6.6%
  • 3. Fine (happy panther)

    Votes: 2 0.8%
  • 4. Great (golfing panther)

    Votes: 3 1.2%

  • Total voters
    241

amirm

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This is a review, listening tests, EQ and detailed measurements of the PMC result6, active professional monitor (speaker). It is kindly sent to me by a member and costs US $3000 for a pair.
PMC Result6 Professional Studio Monitor Active Speaker Review.jpg

I have to confess: this is one ugly looking monitor! Let's hope all the accents are functional. The bottom grill hides a transmission-line like port.

Back side is simple which is fine by me:
PMC Result6 Professional Studio Monitor Active Speaker back panel balanced Review.jpg

Others may want the dip switches to change the response. Speaker is designed and manufactured in the UK.

I didn't notice until late that the reference axis is top of the woofer ring, not the tweeter. I used the latter but know from experience it will only make tiniest difference.

Temps in the lab were pretty low, around 50 degrees F (10 degrees C).

If you are not familiar with my speaker measurements, please watch this tutorial first:

PMC result6 Measurements
As usual we start with our family of anechoic frequency response measurements:
PMC Result6 Professional Studio Monitor Active Speaker frequencxy response anechoic CEA-2034 m...png

I hope you are as shocked as I am to see such a chewed up response. Combined with poor directivity, this is a colored speaker which is the antitheses of what a professional monitor should be. Needless to say, early and predicted in-room response are very poor:
PMC Result6 Professional Studio Monitor Active Speaker early window frequency response reflect...png

PMC Result6 Professional Studio Monitor Active Speaker predicted in-room frequency response re...png


Sadly, I forgot to measure the port. The drivers do tell a story as far as lack of neutrality:
PMC Result6 Professional Studio Monitor Active Speaker frequencxy response driver measurements.png



Company advertises wide directivity and we kind of see that if we ignore the variability:
PMC Result6 Professional Studio Monitor Active Speaker horizontal beam width measurements.png

PMC Result6 Professional Studio Monitor Active Speaker horizontal directivity measurements.png


PMC Result6 Professional Studio Monitor Active Speaker vertical directivity measurements.png


At 86 dBSPL, the sweep was clearly but at 96, I could already hear distortion during the sweep:
PMC Result6 Professional Studio Monitor Active Speaker relative THD Distortion measurements.png

PMC Result6 Professional Studio Monitor Active Speaker THD Distortion measurements.png


Waterfall shows the expected resonances:
PMC Result6 Professional Studio Monitor Active Speaker csd waterfall measurements.png


Finally, here is the step response for fans of that:
PMC Result6 Professional Studio Monitor Active Speaker Step Response measurements.png


PMC result6 Listening Tests and Equalization
At first listen, the impression was that of slight brightness but also lack of clarity. Both were fixed mostly with my quick and dirty filters:
PMC Result6 Professional Studio Monitor Active Speaker Equalization.png

Turning the filters off, hid the piano notes in one of my test tracks. Overall impression will be highly dependent on what content you play.

Sub-bass performance was good for speaker's size. About 60% of that spectrum was reproduced with reasonable amount of distortion. This is far better than typical bookshelf speakers that don't even play that region.

Related, I was able to play fairly loud until I could detect tonality changing. This was with one speaker.

Conclusions
I had no preconceived notions when I entered this test. But as soon as I ran the first sweep in the lab, and saw the very uneven response, I knew disappointment was in my cards. Not only is the frequency response all of the place, but distortion is quite high as well. The only highlight is ability to player lower in the range.

Company really needs to pay more attention to objective measurements and perform proper listening tests. If they had done this, they would have produced a far better monitor. Their competitors even on a bad day, produce far, far better monitors.

I can't recommend the PMC result6. It is an embarrassment for the company.
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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
 

Attachments

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This has the “bat” style frequency response curve. Is there any psychoacoustic reason this might be preferred? I wonder if this effectively acts like a loudness contour where those mixing at a lower level perceive the PMC is better because it has boosted the bass and treble.

For the money, there are definitely way better options!
 
A PMC monitor in test ! Great !
I hope you are as shocked as I am to see such a chewed up response
Indeed ! What a mess.
at 96, I could already hear distortion during the sweep
You said something similar for he 8050: hearing distortion at 96dB unless you cut the bass.
Overall impression will be highly dependent on what content you play.
... which is the exact opposite you want from a monitor !

PMC has quite a reputation (although it's mostly based on bigger models).
Those results here are embarrassing.

At $3000 (around 2500€ VAT included here) a pair, that's around the price of a pair of Neumann KH150 or Genelec 8050, isn't it ?
 
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The FR is a shared family trait:

newplot.png

Which is also shared by some old Dynadio or NHT, you can see that the DI is very close and the on-axis follow the batman pattern :(

newplot (3).png
newplot (1).png


Score is 2.7 and goes up to 5.9 with a simple EQ. With a perfect subwoofer the score is 5.3 and goes up to 7.9 with both EQ and Sub.
Even with bass boost, I would use a sub and of course room correction with this speaker and then it is not great but also not bad per see.

The DI is not flat: the EQ is trying to flatten both the FR and the PIR.
It can only do that by tilting the on axis down as you see. Nearfied, which is likely the main use case for this speaker it is not necessarily a good optimisation strategy and going for a flat ON is better. A bit farther away, the 3 curves are significantly flater.

filters_eq.jpg
 

Attachments

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    newplot (2).png
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Last edited:
This has the “bat” style frequency response curve. Is there any psychoacoustic reason this might be preferred? I wonder if this effectively acts like a loudness contour where those mixing at a lower level perceive the PMC is better because it has boosted the bass and treble.

For the money, there are definitely way better options!
Most likely loudness contour shenanigans cos this won't sound good at 80dBSPL average and it didn't in a friend's studio
 
Are we sure this is intended for normal monitor duty, and not a "bad home stereo simulator" like auratones? This would be great for checking what your mix would sound like on a knock off pair of mid tier B&Ws...
Well, why not to purchase a pair of mid tier B&W then ?

Quote from PMC :
This active two-way reference monitor offers all the attributes for which PMC is world-renowned: high resolution and detail, accurate, extended bass, consistent tonal balance & wide dispersion.
 
I've said it once and I will continue repeating it: 1/4 TLs don't work in small boxes. They never have. They never will. You can't make them lossy enough in a small box. The rest of the tuning is just bad.

I will note: the PMC 6 (the modern version of this) is a far, far better speaker than the Result series... Which are bad.
 
I feel embarrassed to be British at this point. Apart from KEF every other British brand seems to have just gone and dived into the deep end. Linn and NEAT and Naim were already swimming there. But B&W, Tannoy, PMC, ATC, what have you sold your souls for?
 
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