Kniferide wrote: Mon Apr 08, 2024 7:34 pm
I just bought a pair of PMC 6-02 for 1500...
These arrived this weekend. Here are my (long) thoughts after spending about 2-3 hours doing listening tests.
They seem to be fully functioning and have almost zero cosmetic damage. 1 little scratch on the bottom corner of one but they seem mostly unused. No idea why they were so cheap other than someone at Sweetwater fucked up. As far as sound goes, it is complicated. These are the first true 3 way monitors I have ever owned and that is taking some time to get used to. The low end is like a cannon. Too much at times but I havent played with the hi pass yet. They sound like someone put a nearfield into a sub cab. Seriously the best sounding lows of any monitor I've heard. The high end is what I would describe as... complex? There is a ton of definition that I am not used to hearing and it is distracting, at times to the point of unpleasantness. At a distance of 6 feet (minimum suggested distance) I feel like I am over focusing on each driver as opposed to hearing a whole package. If there is something weird in a mix or source, you hear it immediately and it is nagging. It is not fun to listen to music on these speakers at this distance, but I can see it being helpful for mixing without a doubt. It's not fatiguing, just not pretty to hear. My friend said they sound like wearing good headphones at this distance and I thought that was a good description. Everything is kinda too easy to pick apart.
So at first I was a little bummed and thought, Man, I just don't think I like these at all... then I moved back to about 8-10 feet and fucking A they sound great. The Stereo spread is really wide and there is a depth to the high mids that really is impressive. Acoustic guitar sounds "in the room" on them. Heather and I both love these speaker at this distance and she was sold on them as an idea after about 5 min of listening (she was doubtful, and they are ugly to gaze upon). At distance, the sublows and low mids completely fold and feel like they are shooting straight down the center. They remind me of a well balanced and high quality PA speaker like a Danely a little. Tonally, they are very very balanced, if not a little heavy at around 800hz for me.
Kinda makes guitars a little over aggressive, easy fix with the DSP.
I did a A/B test with Fluid FX80's that were already in the living room. Those are weird little concentric 8" speakers. When I switch, all the dimensionality of the high end collapsed into a single flat plane of sound and I started understanding what monitors like these are really for.
So here is the rub. My space is tiny, about 8'x9' and the sweet spot for these is too far from my sitting position. They are just too big. I'm going to play with them for a couple of weeks just cause, but will probably flip them for something smaller. Maybe some PSI or something. Honestly they are beyond the audio work I do and kinda wasted on me. My next project is looking like it is going to be recorded on a Teac 4 track R2R... wuh'da fugga mi doing with these speakers?
Heather said we could keep them in the living room, and she better be careful about the shit she says, cause I'll do it.