PMS built by Albert Li/Canada

Dr. Troels,
First of all, I have to say thanks again for sharing your design and your experience with me. The sound is quite promising and they’ve only been playing for 3 days but are opening up with lot of details and kicks. The sound is pretty balance with a touch of warm and lush. I enjoy the lower spectrum the most and it makes the double bass, kick drum and cello so admirable. The track 11 of Café Blue – Patricia Barbar – was the reference to compare with my horn set-up. The PMS obviously win that for a noticeable margin. This speaker has the ability to draw my attention to music. It also has the ability to let me hear the authentic impact of a full scale big orchestra.
I put more vertical bracing for interior reinforcement and stuffed the entire box and the 4.3 liter mid range box with 100% wool. The size of the box is exactly the same as per your design.
I certainly will give a detail report after careful listening and tweaking if necessary.
Please do forward your advice if there is anything I could make them better.
Thanks, Albert

- some months later:

Dr. Troels,
As promised, here comes the detail report after some good critical ears listening with various music, from pop to classical. The speakers since been running for almost a month and the speakers were driven by my new built ‘ moskido ’ 38w rms per channel.

The sound overall is nicely balanced with admirable sweet, warm mids and very delicate, smooth highs. The lower spectrum is one of the particularly outstanding area with lots of powerful kicks. Tested with the Audiophile CD, we confirmed it goes down to 35hz, and we could feel the air movement when playing down to 20hz.

These speakers work extremely well on live recordings. You could almost touch the stage as if you’re very close to the performers and you can feel the airy sound around you. Thanks for the good design that we don’t have to spend much time as usual to find the sweet spot for the speakers, just simple positioning will do the trick.

What surprises us more than expected is its ability to make the listening room completely disappears. They play the recorded ambience as recorded, not in a falsely-echo kind of way, and simply allow you to identify what's on the recording. The big-sounding instruments like piano, kick drums, double bass and cello sound real. Patricia Barber ‘ live in Paris’ comes alive. We almost could touch and see what was going on the performing stage. The sense of impact and coherence was there.

To compare with my horn set-up, the PMS is a bit inferior in dynamic to horn.

Unfortunately horns still sound like horns, they sound more forward and edgy to my ears. Luckily the PMS cabinet coloration is not much noticeable, it confirms the concept works not only in theory but also works in practice. I enjoy every minute with it.

Anyway, if anyone reading this report is ambitious, don’t hesitate to try building one for yourself. They are hard to build, but you won’t be disappointed. Couple of my friends, after listening, asked me to build them the speakers. I imagine I’d be damn busy if I promise.

Regards, Albert

Albert, thanks for your thorough report on your PMS project. I'm pleased the intentions behind the project seem to be fulfilled. A speaker must be experienced over a certain period of time and with a wide range of musical sources. It's very easy to be taken by a newly finished project. All the hours going into it and the joy of seeing the finished self-made home alter.
After some weeks you start to realise strengths and weaknesses with your project and that every speaker is the result of a lot of compromises as has been discussed particularly during the JA8008 project.
Considering the cost of the PMS drivers, I still think it amazing the quality of sound we can get these days from a modest investment.
Best regards, Troels