PMC Fenestria Install, Not The Most Straightforward!

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Hi Everyone,

I was hoping to do a blog a week or so before Christmas about a successful install of a pair of the PMC Fenestria’s Speakers, the first pair sold into the UK in fact, but unfortunately it wasn’t the smoothest installation which after a 2nd visit yesterday proved 100% that it is the room that is the issue, I have always said that your room is the most important part of your HiFi which really does get overlooked by a lot of HiFi Enthusiasts and this really did prove it so I thought it would be worth writing a few words on the issue encountered as I definitely learnt a thing or 2.

So the customer, Hi Steve, like me is a big PMC enthusiast, he has a PMC Cinema room + in other rooms he has a pair of 24′s, 26′s and Fact.8′s so as soon as he heard we had the Fenestria’s on demo he was straight in here and was suitably impressed and ordered a pair. Keen to get them in before Christmas PMC were very helpful and with just a few days to spare we went to the customers house to install them, before we get stuck into the issue we were having I should state they were going into a nice size room and were to be driven by a Naim NAC 252/NAP 300 and ND555 Streamer so they should have just slotted in nice and easy and worked a treat as they had some great kit behind them the reality was quite different.

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So I arrived at the customer’s and with some help from PMC we started to assembling the Fenestria’s which really is a 2 man job and before you knew it we had everything connected up and was ready to enjoy some music so the customer queued up a few tracks and then the issue materialised, basically the mid range and treble sounded gorgeous but the bass was all over the place, I have never heard anything like it before, it just overpowered everything, so not to be beaten we spent the next few hours moving them around the room to several different locations, not the easiest job at 80KG’s each, but wherever they ended up we still had the uncontrolled bass, even the experienced guys from PMC had never heard such a bad room before, so in the end we had no choice but to admit defeat and leave it that we would revisit it in the New Year, which we did yesterday.

Now I must admit I was 100% expecting that we would try a few things but in the end I would have to pull the speakers out, I was even thinking I may take them home which wouldn’t have been the end of the world :) So thinking of different options I took my demo pair of Wilson Sabrina’s with me to see if a different speaker would help but we encountered exactly the same issue, so then we tried the PMC Fact.8′s and again the bass was uncontrolled, so that proved to us that it wasn’t the Fenestria’s that were the problem but it was 100% the room, but we did find that in a couple of areas of the room the bass boom was significantly less and using my demo track of choice, the classic ‘Teardrop’ by Massive Attack we actually found 2 small areas in the room where the sound was pretty much as good as in my demo room but you really had to be in that small sweet spot, in the rest of the room is was still quite poor, luckily the sweet spot was exactly where the customer was thinking of sitting so we set up the listening position here and left much more hopeful that a solution could be found.

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I still think a little room treatment and maybe even some small DSP applied could really help so we are looking into this now, but I can hostly say I have never heard a speaker behave like this before but in life you will always get faced with certain challenges and as long as you give it your best shot and hopefully learn something along the way then it is actually good experience whatever the outcome and one thing is for sure the Fenestria’s sound so damn good it is definitely worth a little effort to really get the best from them and I am sure by the time we are finished we will have them really singing :)

To Be Continued ……..

Cheers,

Paul.

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Fenestria's in CORNERS??????

Crikey that's pushing it. The ones I hear fairly regularly are well out from corners and at least a couple of feet from the back wall. Quite good with a Naim Statement amp driving them and they're unburstable used thus ;)

I'm also thinking he has all that PMC kit and he's using Naim amplification, where's the Brystons, surely that's what the speakers might have been designed with?

That room is definitely not suitable for those speakers, I bet it was harsh, bright and generally a mess.

They don't even look right in that room, better hope someone doesn't open that door into the left one, and a large window next to the right one [emoji6]

Methinks he'd be better wasting, sorry I mean spending his money elsewhere, like, on a new room first.

Even reducing the width of that unit so the speakers can get into the room a bit would help I'm sure, were they tried in front of the unit closer together? If I spent that sort of cash, I would be expecting to be bouncing off the walls with delight at the sound quality, if not they'd go straight back.

Craziest thing I've ever seen. Most speakers will sound rubbish jammed in the corners like that, doing it with big transmission lines you're just asking for trouble. That needs a total re-think. Okay so DSP might sort it to a degree but...really?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Macca

Craziest thing I've ever seen. Most speakers will sound rubbish jammed in the corners like that, doing it with big transmission lines you're just asking for trouble. That needs a total re-think. Okay so DSP might sort it to a degree but...really?

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I know pretty much bugger all about HiFi but that was my thoughts too [emoji6]

I'm also thinking that BEFORE I sold someone a set of speakers costing that much, a site visit might have been first priority [emoji6]

I think I can say this - The Fenestrias don't boom as such at all BUT, they will overpower and overwhelm if used in too small a room and with less than correct matching gear I feel. In the large space I hear them in regularly, a Naim Statememt amp will give volumes to push you to the back wall (I don't know the wattage on paper here), while giving a sense of clarity and realism I've not really ever heard from Naim before (I think current streaming amps they make now are pretty good too - at a price - and the tractor look and feel of old Naims has long gone from such products, which is nice). Mind you, two hundred grand on the amp and speakers alone before sources is a hell of a lot of money, although people do spend this amount.

That system as pictured looks to me like one of the larger B&O installs we used to do. This speaker goes here and the other one over there, and I want the main source 'console' put here please..... That way, it'll be out of the way and still impress visitors.

See, The PMC QB1 is more my gear-lover's bag*, fully active and I suspect deafening with it, but you just can't fit monsters like these into a domestic environment, hence the Fenestria, which is passive to suit the intended market and vertically disposed to make it usable domestically. they've GOT to be better than the hideously priced Wilson confections I've seen for loads more money and heard (big box sound, but nothing spectacular by large pro monitor standards), which use good but not excessive drivers in lavish multi faceted cabinets which is where the cost goes...

* https://pmc-speakers.com/products/pr...nal/active/qb1

https://pmc-speakers.com/products/pr...active/qb1-xbd :stalks: - The very best PA system EVER???

Just my thoughts. Not for me really to question dealer recommendations now as I'm no longer a dealer, but the route I'd have suggested possibly wouldn't have meant shutting the door after the horse has bolted with dsp, room treatment add-ons and other crap...

Surely none of those speakers pictured will work very well in the corners of a room?

Thanks for all the responses guys, it was always going to be a challenge as the customer only wants them to go where they are at the moment and he isn't keen on room treatment to ruin his decor and he love's Naim so we can't add anymore power easily so we are going to try a couple of PSi Audio Active Bass Traps as below and I have contacted Minidsp about trying one of their Dirac boxes but I'm hopeful that the bass traps will work as I'd rather not add anymore electronics into the system, the good news is that this needs to work just for the customer in his listening position, he doesn't care how the rest of the room sounds.

https://www.psiaudio.swiss/avaa-c20-active-bass-trap/

We won't be beat :)

The Problem Room and the PMC Fenestria Update!

Hi Everyone,

Firstly I just wanted to say a quick thanks to everyone who came to our Fyne Audio open day on Saturday, way more people than I expected, really impressive turnout for a speaker brand that most people had never heard of 12 months ago so thanks again everyone, maybe we should offer free Whisky at every open day :)

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So onto the point of this blog, I get asked quite a lot from customers who read the original blog explaining how important the room is to any HiFi install and how we recently encountered this head on when installing a pair of the excellent PMC Fenestria’s before Christmas if the issue had been resolved yet, and the good news is that yesterday we got the Fenestria’s singing as they should.

Basically there was no real reason why the speakers wouldn’t work in the room as it is a nice size room driven by a high end Naim system, it turns out that we think the issue, which was 2 very large bass lifts at 2 certain frequencies, is caused by the composition of the stud wall behind the speakers as the rest of the room is solid wall.

So active bass traps were tried at the back of the room a couple of weeks ago which helped a fair bit but not enough really, to use this option it was recommended that 4 traps should be used ideally, one in each corner, this wasn’t really feasible so it was back to the drawing board, I knew what the answer was but it was finding the right implementation.

For me DSP in HiFi is massively overlooked, the rest of the world seems to welcome it’s advantages but for whatever reason in the UK it is frowned upon, personally I think this is the future of hifi as it is just getting better and better, I was first introduced to a system I liked with Dirac in the Arcam Cinema Receivers and Processors, this was the first EQ system that I actually liked and actually prefered to not using any EQ, so it was a matter of finding a good enough solution to slot into a Naim system which has it’s own challenges.

Testing the Idea of putting the Trinnov between the Naim NAC 252 and NAP 300, worked a treat :)

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Step forward Trinnov, this is something I have tried in here a few years ago and was impressed then but just couldn’t see if anyone would adopt it but in this situation it is the perfect solution other than the fact you are looking at just over £6000, saying that if you want to hear your system at its best then if you can eliminate the problems with the room it is money well spent, especially on a system at this price.

And this was the case here, after a quick few measurements it showed the 2 big bass lift issues which once the processing was complete it almost eliminated, it actually did such a good job we actually put a little bass back in but by controlling these issue it allowed the mid and treble to shine through as well as giving a much tighter central image with better separation, focus and soundstaging, in this scenario the difference was chalk and cheese and I should mention that the Trinnov was totally invisible, you still kept the Naim sound that the customer loves and the Fenestria’s sounded just like they do in our showrooms, so other than the extra cost in this system it really did let the system shine and the music come through with no negative side effects.

I should say though that DSP shouldn’t just be used when you have a issue, you may think your room is fine but I am quite confident once you have tried something like this in your system you would prefer it, hence why most of the recording studios use solutions like Trinnov as if you can eliminate the room to hear the music more accurately then it really is a no brainer.

Anyway I’ll get of my high horse :) but the main thing is that this install almost felt like a case study on what can go wrong when the room isn’t on your side, I was confident we’d find a solution but was relieved when we finally did so now we are happy as the customer can enjoy his upgrade and music again.

Cheers,

Paul.