[bob katz]

Originally Posted by DanDan

Hi Bob. I have not heard any of the high end speakers typically used in the US for Mastering so I can't make those comparisons. However I did audition quite a few monitors here before I settled. I had Meyer, Genelec, Klein and Hummel, three other PMC's and ADAM S3A. I very luckily had a pair of IB1s here for an extended trial. I can say with certainty they are the best speakers I have ever heard. Quite a few engineer friends visited and all agree on that.
The Bass is extended, no sub needed, and is very very fast.
The mids are uncannily natural, voices have a almost eery reality about them. The top is surgically flat and extended revealing every little detail.
Therein lay the problem.

Dear Dan Dan: Thanks for the revealing review. I am very attracted to these PMCs at least by their specs. I am very familiar with the "flat high end" issue as I encounter it with the Lipinskis, but after much work in choosing associated electronics they sound great with great material and "tolerable" with awful material. Putting an attenuator in front of the tweeter amplifier in a biamplified situation does not help, in fact it hurts because you are affecting the level just above the crossover point and ruining the frequency response at that point. Instead you want to make some form of modified X curve, in as transparent a manner as possible. I have not had to do that with my Lipinskis after making absolutely sure that the bass and lower midrange response in the room is absolutely flat and extended. I have to audition these PMCs in a good environment.

Also, their extended response would make me have to rethink my entire subwoofer approach. I'd have to build a custom bass manager with two different low pass filters so I could feed "below 80 Hz" for the LFE channel to the subs and "below 40 Hz (or whatever)" to the subs for the last tickle of bass extension.

BK