PMC Rocks Giant Monitors with Auro-3D

The maybe-up-and-coming Auro-3D surround format shared its demo room with PMC, the Britain-based Professional Monitor Corporation, which showed the largest monitor we have ever seen.

The QBL XPD ($175,000/pair) monitor has eight 12-inch woofers plus midrange and tweeter, is flat down to 12 Hz, and musters SPL up to an ear-shattering 134 dB (it clocked just over 100 in the demo so we left with our hearing intact). Why so much? For headroom, of course. People in recording studios don't like it when they push their monitors and they blow up. Among the stereo-only demos, the bassline of Donald Fagen's "Morph the Cat" never sounded better.

The Auro-3D demo featured what is described as an 11.1-channel system with five on the floor, four in the middle height layer, and two in a top height layer that is nicknamed VOG (voice of God). In height-unenhanced 5.1, the flute soloist in an orchestral recording was ravishingly beautiful and surprisingly delicate coming out of the bodaceous monitors. Then we moved on to the full 11.1-channel Auro experience. Those who have seen it before will recall how startling it is when the height layers are removed, one by one, from an Amsterdam street scene, and their absence tells you as much about their effectiveness as their presences. Newly added demo pieces included an overhead-swooping plane and a couple more classical recordings, one with pipe organ, and a vocal piece with soprano soloist and chorus. They beautifully captured the feeling of being in the churches serving as recording venues, with reflections soaring in their high vaulted ceilings.

COMMENTS
mikem's picture

Was that $175 bucks or 175K? Do they also provide a divorce attorney?

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