PMC prophecy5 Floor-standing Loudspeaker Review

Enclosed in an attractive wood grain finish, the prophecy5 features advanced drivers, crossovers, and a unique transmission line system to provide the highest quality playback of movies and music. The prophecy5 benefits from PMC’s experience in pro audio and building studio playback monitors.

The prophecy5 is a speaker with the PMC Pro Studio heritage. It is, however, tastefully designed to fit into a domestic living area. The advanced drivers, crossovers, and transmission line components are built into an attractive wood-grained enclosure. This attractive enclosure has a small footprint, taking up roughly the same amount of space as a small bookshelf speaker on a stand. Despite its small size, the prophecy5 plays with authority. The detail retrieval of the prophecy5 is outstanding, yet the overall impression is one of relaxed musicality.

If you have not heard of PMC, don’t worry. They could be one of the best-kept secrets in audio. Unless you keep up with pro studio recording, PMC is not a common brand that most people, and even audio enthusiasts, have knowledge of. If you keep up with the Secrets of Home Theater reviews, you may have read some of our articles featuring PMC.

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PMC twenty.22 Monitor Bookshelf Speakers Review – HomeTheaterHifi.com

PMC remixes Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue” and “Sketches of Spain” for High End 2019 – HomeTheaterHifi.com

Even if not well-known, PMC has been around for some time. PMC was founded in 1991 in England by Peter Thomas, who worked on developing improvements for loudspeakers at the BBC, and Adrian Loader of FWO Bauch. The product of two audio enthusiasts, PMC had humble beginnings. Like many loudspeaker companies, they were started in Thomas’s home, the basement, and backyard.

Catering to the pro studio clientele, the company began by building studio monitors for the recording industry. Today, their studio monitors are used by the classical labels such as Decca and Harmonia Mundi. The motion picture industry has relied on PMC monitors for production work on some of the biggest movie blockbusters, including Titanic, Mission Impossible, Game of Thrones, Iron Man 1&2, Spiderman 1,2,3, and countless other movies. PMC is also one of the few companies that have been awarded an Emmy^® for their innovations in audio reproduction.

Despite the company’s success, they are still a medium-sized business. The company is family-owned, and Peter Thomas’s son now works and helps his dad run the business. They employ people who are enthusiastic about audio reproduction. In addition, you will not find robotic assembly lines at the company. When you purchase a PMC product, you are getting a hand-built product. The folks at PMC believe that dedicated craftspeople ensure you get the best-built and performing loudspeaker.

I was very curious to hear the new PMC prophecy5 speakers because of their reputation. Would their domestic speakers live up to their impressive studio heritage? Would the new PMC prophecy5 deliver music the way I would like it presented? This review will attempt to answer those questions.

The PMC prophecy5 speakers are designed to fit in small to medium-sized rooms. They are slim towers that feature 2 high-performance drivers that, at first, appear like dozens of other speaker designs, but there is more going on underneath the attractive cabinet. Every aspect of this speaker is precisely focused, designed, and built to the highest standard.

What sets PMC apart starts with the cabinet. The wood panels that house the drivers and components are made from precision-machined machined highly specified HDF material. Much care is given to the accuracy of the joints and the choice of modern bonding agents to create what PMC calls a homogeneous, flawless structure.

Inside these cabinets, PMC houses its advanced transmission line, or ATL architecture. Not many loudspeaker manufacturers use transmission line technology. This is because of the challenge of making the advantages work without flaws. A transmission line is basically a long tube with a speaker driver on one end and an opening on the other end. The benefits of the transmission line are more bass extension and efficiency for the driver. However, if not engineered properly, there could be problems in frequency response and resonances from the tube. PMC has made it its mission from the start to achieve the best performance from their transmission line designs by ensuring proper dimensions for the transmission tube and by using specially manufactured damping material to control resonances and ensure accurate frequency response.

At the base of the PMC prophecy5 speakers is the metal structure known technically as LaminairX. The LaminairX module finishes the transmission line and is where the air from inside the speaker is vented out. Looking like metal grates at the bottom of the speaker, the LaminairX internally has metal fins that extend upward into the box and transmission line. The metal fins are of different heights. The heights of the metal fins and the size are all determined by careful engineering. What these precision-machined fins do is to provide aerodynamic control of the air passing through the transmission line. As designed, the LaminairX negates turbulence and drag, which reduces resistance and harmonic distortion by up to 3dB. This helps the PMC prophecy5 speaker achieve impressively low distortion. This lowering of bass distortion helps not only the bass but helps the mid-range clarity of the speaker. The LaminairX module provides a weighty base for the speaker and helps the foundation of the cabinet, so it feels stable on the floor.

The mid/bass driver of the PMC prophecy5 speaker has been carefully designed for the cabinet. Transmission line enclosures require a specific set of requirements different from drivers manufactured for other types of enclosures. To determine the suitability of a driver for a particular transmission line cabinet, PMC uses a software-controlled laser displacement sensor. With this device, PMC can rapidly analyze the behavior of the driver and the suitability for the particular cabinet it will be used in. Although the process of measuring speaker drivers this way is time-consuming, it ensures that PMC will give their loudspeakers the best combination of bass extension, headroom, and low distortion.

The high frequency, or tweeter, of the PMC prophecy5 is a soft dome. Although other manufacturers use metal or some other type of hard dome, PMC favors the soft dome on all its designs. This ensures consistent sound and performance for their entire line. The qualities PMC favors in the soft dome are low moving mass, which delivers high sensitivity and excellent time domain performance without excessive overhang or ringing. This produces an accurate sound that is very natural and non-fatiguing. I need to mention also that the tweeter is mounted on a wave guide baffle to control high-frequency dispersion.

The crossovers for the PMC prophecy5 and all other PMC speakers are meticulously crafted. PMC believes that the crossover is the heart of the loudspeaker. In order to build the crossover to control the drivers in a speaker system optimally, PMC begins with an extensive look at topologies of crossovers to establish a baseline crossover. Once the baseline crossover is built, the listening phase begins. This is when each component in the crossover is evaluated and modified for best performance. After each prototype is refined, an extensive suite of measurements is performed to corroborate what is being heard to what can be measured. PMC considers this step critical to developing the most natural, accurate sound from the speaker. The devotion to voicing of the speaker by ear is part of what sets PMC apart from much of the competition.

When the PMC prophecy5 speakers arrived, I was impressed by the well-designed packaging. I made sure I took a picture of how the speaker fits into the shipping containers for when I needed to send them back. Once out of the box, I was immediately impressed with the look and the handsome cabinet. Since the PMC prophecy5 is designed to work in small to medium-sized rooms, I placed them in my small listening room.

My small listening room measures 11 feet 9 inches by 13 feet. In my small “music room” I have used for the review the following equipment: Rega Elex R amp, Rega DAC, Rega Aria MC/MM pre amp, Rega RP6 turntable, Rega Ania Pro cartridge, Cayin LA-34 Plus integrated tube amp, Rotel RC-1590 pre-amp, Rotel RB-1552 MkII amp, cables are Rega and AudioQuest.

PMC provides an excellent owner’s manual with instructions on how to set up their speakers. I followed as closely as I could to their recommendations. The PMC prophecy5 speakers were placed 27 inches from the back wall and about 3 feet from the side walls. The speakers measured 6 feet each from my listening position. I toed in the cabinets slightly toward my listening spot. This setup provided a near-field-like listening experience, which I happen to like quite a bit.

When Mario and Stefan began performing together, I was following their shows at the downtown Camino Real hotel in El Paso, Texas. Under the gorgeous stained glass dome roof of the bar in the hotel where dark-haired, beautifully dressed senoritas and well-dressed hombres gathered, I was able to hear the music that would eventually become the tracks to their Grammy-nominated debut album on Telarc, Jazzmenco. So, of course, I had to use their music as part of my listening enjoyment for this review.

The sound was so enjoyable that I had to focus on what I was hearing. What I heard is that the PMC prophecy5 speaker has a way of recovering the decay of the notes. The attack of the note is spot on and contributes to the timing and rhythm.

I skipped to the track, Guitarras Romanticas, just to hear the two guitars playing a duet. There are no other instruments, and I could focus on just the sound of the two instruments on this beautiful track. The PMC prophecy5 speakers reproduced the ringing strings of each instrument with the distinctive character of each guitar. As each note was played, it seemed to float until it gradually decayed to silence. The nuanced finger picking and interplay of the musicians was reproduced in a way that made the recording sound real, human. Spectacular is how I would sum up this listening session.

As for me, I was busy looking through his latest offerings, when surprise, I found an old record that held special value for me. It was Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream conducted by Andre Previn on EMI Angel (ASD3377). In the late 1970’s I became aware of this recording through Harry Pearson and The Absolute Sound. For those who remember, Harry Pearson had a short list of recordings that he considered accurate, natural-sounding, and exceptional. This version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream was one of them.

When I first heard this recording on a great system (Infinity RS Reference II, ARC SP 10, D75, Threshold S/500, Oracle turntable), I was blown away. Back then, I worked as an audio salesman for Soundquest in El Paso, Texas. I would use this album as one of my go-to demo records. So, of course, I had to have this record in my collection again. With the PMC speakers on hand, I knew I had to listen to this gem.

When the stylus hit the groove, the sound of the massed strings through the PMC prophecy5 was glorious. Tympani, percussion, and bass were reproduced with exceptional clarity and heft. I did not use a sub. In my small listening room, I found the PMC prophecy5 speakers delivering the weight of the orchestra. Dynamics on the PMC were also very good to exceptional. The clarity was just wonderful. This recording is so good that every nuance from every section of the orchestra was clearly revealed by the PMC prophecy5 speakers.

This recording on a good system features a very natural sound. I couldn’t wait to hear the voices, because voice is, after all, something that our ears can hear, whether things are right or wrong in a recording. The voices in the case of this album are a duet between a solo soprano and mezzo-soprano supported by the chorus and a children’s choir. The PMC prophecy5 played this section with authority. Now, the PMC did something I had not heard before. When the soprano and mezzo-soprano were taking their breaths and letting the notes fly out, there was a clarity that was amazing. It was as if I could see the air coming up from their diaphragms and through their chests and out of their mouths. I guess the best way to put it would be to say that the PMC prophecy5 transported me through time and space to the location of the original recording. Doubt what I am telling you? Get your own copy of this LP, if you can, and listen to it on the PMC prophecy5. I guarantee the journey will be worth it. Now that’s what I say our hobby of audio is all about.

Although the PMC prophecy5 is not low in price, the technology and build, and especially the sound, are comparable to products costing considerably more. The PMC prophecy5 is thus a great value and a great loudspeaker.

Cooper, my furry audio buddy, says we should give the PMC prophecy5 speaker five woofs out of five woofs. The slim, compact PMC prophecy5 plays big and loud if you like, but has exceptional low-level resolution for quiet listening sessions. I enjoyed a very good performance with all the electronics I used. Even the small Cayin tube amp could push the PMC prophecy5 to high levels in my room. The best compliment I can give this speaker is that they impose very little of themselves. The PMC prophecy5 allows the music to blossom into the listening room with dynamics and excellent timing.

During the review period, I kept wondering how the PMC prophecy5 would do with much better, more expensive electronics. Don’t get me wrong, I got very good results with the electronics on hand, but…I wish I still had the Naim New Classic System that I reviewed a while back for the Secrets Team. Naim New Classic System: NSC 222 streaming pre-amplifier, NAP 250 power amplifier, NPX 300 power supply Review – HomeTheaterHifi.com Based on my memory of the sound of this system, I think those components paired with the PMC prophecy5 would have delivered a truly magical sound.

I know that $6,500 for a pair of speakers is not in everyone’s budget. However, consider that when you purchase the PMC prophecy5 speaker, you are getting a hand-built, expertly-crafted loudspeaker from a family and group of dedicated audiophiles. When you consider the craftsmanship and the studio sound quality, you may well think, “This is a great bargain!” I sure do. My highest recommendation, and a must hear in this price range, or well above.