PMC and Bryston at Ber Street, Thursday 1 October
On Thursday 1 October we are handing our Norwich demonstration room over to PMC for the day. Three sessions — 11am, 1pm and 3pm — each running an hour to ninety minutes, with Craig from PMC presenting all three.
Two systems will be set up: the fact.12 signature driven by a Bryston Bi-200 integrated amplifier, and the IB2 SE with a Bryston BP-19 preamplifier and a pair of 7B monoblocks behind it. Chord Company cable throughout.
Two things make it worth the journey.
The first is that this is the first time Bryston have been heard at Martins. The Bi-200, the BP-19 and a pair of 7B monoblocks all arrive at once for it, and we are as curious as you are.
The second is that PMC bring Bryston into Britain themselves. They have handled the Canadian company's electronics here for years, so every box in both systems bar the cabling has been chosen by people who make one half of it and import the other. You could call that a rigged demonstration. We would call it the fairest one you are likely to hear, on the grounds that nobody knows what a PMC wants from an amplifier better than PMC do.
Two speakers, two different arguments
The IB2 SE is a studio monitor and looks like one — squat, and not remotely interested in being furniture. It spent its working life in control rooms and it still behaves as though somebody is about to ask it an awkward question.
PMC have been making speakers of that sort since 1991, when Peter Thomas came to loudspeakers by way of the BBC and started the company with Adrian Loader. Their first product ended up at BBC Maida Vale, Metropolis Mastering and Decca. There is an Emmy on a shelf at PMC, which is not something many loudspeaker companies can say.
The fact.12 signature comes at the same problem from the other end. Tall, slim, narrower than a sheet of A4 — the speaker you buy when the domestic argument has to be won alongside the audio one. Folded inside that cabinet is more than three metres of transmission line, which is PMC's whole argument: the cabinet is a tunnel that loads the bass driver, not a box with a port in it. The bass stops when the note stops.
What they ask of you
The IB2 SE wants space. Give it room and you hear why studios bought them. Put it in a small lounge and you will hear a large speaker in a small lounge, and no amount of amplifier will talk it out of that.
The fact.12 signature will go almost anywhere. What it will not forgive is a modest amplifier — it is not a sensitive speaker, and underpowered it stays polite and never quite wakes up.
Which is where Bryston come in.
More amplifier than PMC ask for
Bryston have been building amplifiers for longer than PMC have been building speakers, and they are the sort of company that publishes its distortion figures and then dares you to find the noise.
The fact.12 signature gets the Bi-200, which is Bryston being practical: their preamplifier and their power amplifier in a single chassis, so you save a shelf and a pair of interconnects. The IB2 SE gets the full separates, with a pair of 7B monoblocks giving it rather more power than PMC ask for. That looks like showing off, and partly it is. But headroom does its work in the half-second after a kick drum.
If the pairing strikes you as the wrong way round, with the less sensitive speaker on the smaller amplifier, it is a fair question and Craig is the man to put it to. And if you like your specifications in advance, we have gone through all three Bryston components separately.
The comparison worth making
It is between the two systems. They want different rooms and, arguably, different owners, and hearing them an hour apart will tell you more about which sort of listener you are than any amount of reading will.
Come at eleven, one or three
Sessions start at 11am, 1pm and 3pm on Thursday 1 October, each running an hour to ninety minutes, with Craig on hand for the awkward questions. Places are limited by the size of the room, so tell us which slot suits: call 01603 627010 or drop us a line, and we will put your name down.
If the day is no good, both speakers are on our website along with the rest of the PMC range. But you cannot hear a specification, and the whole point of the first of October is the chair.
