PMC

prodigy5 Floorstanding Loudspeaker

£1,995 RRP

The clue's in the name. The Professional Monitor Company Ltd. has been making reference-quality loudspeakers for pro audio applications for three decades now and has more recently begun to make so-called 'domestic' monitors, too. It has subsequently garnered quite a following amongst people who like their music loud and proud, alongside a deep and gutsy bass – just as you'll hear at a live concert.

PMC achieves this by adopting transmission line loading – a distinctive and relatively complex way of configuring the inside of a speaker cabinet. It means that instead of venting the bass or mid/bass driver out to the room by way of a bass reflex port (to put it very simply, a hole in the cabinet) or not venting the driver(s) to the room at all (as in a sealed box, infinite baffle design), an elaborate 'tunnel' arrangement is used inside the cabinet.

The prodigy5 here before you is the company's entry-level floorstanding design. At £1,995, it's less expensive than almost all PMC speakers – but still ticks the critical boxes. It is transmission line-loaded and made in Luton, Bedfordshire – rather than being shipped halfway around the world. It's been carefully voiced to appeal to fans of the brand despite being significantly less expensive than you'd expect. Its little brother, the Prodigy 1, is a standmounting version using the same drive units but in a much smaller cabinet.

PMC's Keith Tonge says that making the new prodigy series speakers wasn't easy. “Creating a model with all the benefits and tech of our high-end products in a far more affordable package was a big challenge, and doing all this in the UK was no mean feat. We were determined they had to have all our attributes of transparency, resolution, imaging and, above all, be fun, dynamic, and an engaging character… We wanted to bring the knowledge behind these cutting-edge designs to far more music lovers than before.”

UP CLOSE

The prodigy5 comes in no-nonsense Silk Black, and you have to pay extra for magnetically attached grilles. Even though the finish isn't lavish, it is smooth and functional. The speaker is a 2-way design, as you'd expect at this section of the market, and sports PMC's 27mm soft-dome tweeter and natural fibre long-throw LT 130mm mid/bass driver. It's pretty small at 905x185x233mm, so it is ideal for compact listening rooms as it won't dominate the space.

PMC says that the tweeter is already used in some of its near field monitors employed at “some of the world's leading music-making facilities” – which is quite the claim to make. It's said to be very reliable (a key criterion in the pro world), low in colouration and blessed with a smooth off-axis response. It features ferrofluid-cooling and a compact neodymium motor assembly with an aluminium heatsink. The mid/bass driver has also already appeared in PMC's pro monitors, used in “the world's leading Dolby Atmos mixing suites”. It's a long-throw design that's been specially made to work with transmission line loading.

These drivers are knitted together with a crossover that sports steep, 12dB per octave filters and does its thing at 1.7kHz, which is a little lower than is par for the course with 2-ways. It comprises a military-grade, through-plated, glass-fibre board with pure copper tracks; hand-selected components are used. All of the above sit in a 10kg cabinet that's built to PMC's stringent standards. The company says that the completed speaker is measured and then listened to alongside the reference model before being signed off by its assembler.

It is distinguished by PMC's so-called Advanced Transmission Line bass loading technology. We are told that the 1.96m internal transmission line is carefully damped with acoustic material to absorb the upper bass and higher frequencies radiating from the rear of the bass driver. The lowest frequencies are allowed to pass down the line and emerge from the front vent in the same polarity as the bass unit's output so that the vent acts like a second low-frequency driver. Transmission line loading gives consistent air pressure inside the cabinet, allowing the mid/bass driver to work in a more uniform way – in turn, reducing low-end distortion. At the end of the port are twin Laminair vents for an orderly flow of air to prevent chuffing and aid breathing.

Frequency response is said to be a wide 35Hz to 25kHz (-3dB), and sensitivity is put at 87.3dB (1W, 1m), which is good for a small floorstander. The minimum impedance is a claimed 6 ohms. Keith Tonge says: “This is a pretty easy load, fairly resistive, which will not be a problem for lower-cost amplification or valve amps. Another good measurement to gauge the stress that a speaker will put on an amplifier is the phase of the impedance response, which stays within +/-45 degrees for the prodigy speakers”. Recommended amplifier power is 20W to 250W. As well as being pretty easy to drive, I found the prodigy5 to be easy to set up; it works well close to a rear boundary wall and likes a little toe-in. I used a range of amplifiers to drive it, including Musical Fidelty's excellent M5si integrated; the source was a Chord Hugo TT2 DAC.

THE LISTENING

For its company strapline, PMC rather immodestly calls itself “the music makers” – and in the case of the prodigy5, at least, it's not wrong. It's less visually imposing than rivals such as B&W's 603 S3 and Monitor Audio's Silver 300 7G, yet the table turns when you listen to it. It has a strong, confident, articulate and direct character that contradicts its downbeat looks. Indeed, it's a most enjoyable listen; it homes in on the music's rhythms and dynamics and makes sure that you know all about them.

You may think that this fast, grippy, engaging speaker might be a little tonally forward – as there's a recognisable 'type' that's feisty and fun but uncouth. Actually, though, the prodigy5 is surprisingly smooth; it's not dull or bland, yet the midband and treble don't shout at you, and nor does the bass boom just for the sake of it. Indeed, it has a very grown-up sound, which rather contradicts the compact and simple styling. Feed it some thumping eighties stadium rock in the shape of Simple Minds' Up On The Catwalk, and this little floorstander really rises to the occasion. This is a hellish track with a muddled and spasmodic production, so it's hard to get a grip on things. Yet you get a surprisingly ordered and controlled sound from this speaker; it's not the most forensically detailed design I've ever heard, but it gets the big picture absolutely right.

The track's thumping bassline powers along, sounding very tight by the standards of any reflex-ported loudspeaker; it makes the music sound like it's on a mission due to its urgency and drive. The midband is reasonably smooth and dextrously captures the swirling keyboards and guitar stabs. Singer Jim Kerr's expressive vocals sound intimate and powerful. Up top, hi-hat cymbals are crisp and biting, just as they should be – and the result is a big 'wall of sound' which really immerses the listener.

Vaughn Williams's beautiful Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis (Neville Marriner, Academy of St Martin in the Field) is carried surprisingly well for a speaker who excels with rock. Tonally, the prodigy5 is a smoothie and can sound opaque compared to more expensive designs, but it can still easily capture the brooding beauty of this epic classical composition. The massed strings have a good amount of body and a pleasantly rich and sonorous tonality. Stereo imaging is enjoyably expansive, with good stage depth, too – and decently accurate image location within the recorded acoustic. As with the Simple Minds track, this speaker goes loud at the drop of a hat – it never sounds compressed or laboured and generally has a sunny, enthusiastic demeanour.

That's why it's an absolute hoot with fast, pounding electronic music. Last Rhythm's Last Rhythm – a banging house tune from the early nineties – is where this speaker's heart is. Any chance to serve up a solid, pounding bass drum is taken with relish, and it loves to show off its innate speed and agility – plus, of course, its excellent bass extension for a speaker of this size. Although the prodigy5 isn't as capable as more expensive PMC designs, it's still really talented at the price and makes most of its rivals sound like the audio equivalent of dad dancing. It's not a particularly analytical speaker, yet it loves to have fun with whatever music you feed it – and therein lies its charm.

THE VERDICT

PMC says that the prodigy5 can trace its lineage back to the PMC QB1 flagship studio monitors, and there's definitely a taste of pro audio in its makeup. It has a strong, solid and unflappable sound, with a decent degree of detail and lots of rhythmic and dynamic energy. Keith Tonge calls this “one of the most significant product launches we have made, arguably second only to the launch of the Fenestria, which pushed our design work to the current limits and led to technology being trickled down into these designs.” He's not wrong – this is a great-sounding, compact, affordable floorstander that just loves to party.

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