Greenie512

See bottom of review for more final pictures ...

Two facts before I start: -

(1) I love Seas Excel drivers – there I’ve admitted it. When I first built the Thors I loved them from the first second music came out of them and the next day I put my Missions on Ebay.

The reason I stated this is now I clearly hear paper drivers as slightly “slow” and “fuzzy”, compared with the speed and precision of the Excel magnesium cones. Of course a lot of people don’t like the Excels because of their very quality feeling they’re not natural??

(2) My room is very bass light, so I’m not going to get/hear the real bass capabilities of any speaker in this room.

So from the word go, when you run the PMS’s up you know you’ve got a dam good speaker. Initially the mid sounded a bit honky but this soon passed. Let’s break the sound down: -

Tweeter – just as I like it - you can not hear it. Yes all the highs are there but it doesn’t draw attention to itself – unless there’s some “screech” on the recording itself.

Mids – Now I thought they couldn’t be as good as the Excel mids but with the woofer taking the strain off them they do. I’m hearing little things I’ve not heard out of the Thors.

Woofer – definitely adds that lower end and fills the sound compared to a MTM design. Although they are only 8” the can deliver the impact of peaks and are delivering heaps of musical bass. So the overall effect is a much bigger sound than the Thors. Designed to 35 htz I’m sure they are producing this, what I’m not getting is any room support which with a good room in this respect would make these speaker rock.

Overall – well, firstly another problem with my room is it’s an odd shape and acoustically off balance. Well Troels description of “comes with room” is spot on! These are the first speaker that seem to ignore my room and provides an instant spot-on stereo image. The wide baffle also helps with this distribution, not quite electrostatic presentation but getting there. Currently I have the speakers about 700mm out from the wall and I don’t think need moving out more than that.

I had been playing not too demanding music until this morning. Most of us have a “destruction” disk be it church organ, classical or electronic music. Well, mines The Flaming Lips “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” not everyone’s cup of tea but the Battle track is a heap of electronic sounds from screeching highs to deep rubble lows. The PMS said thank you and give me more – yikes, Bjork and the Dissassociates just sound great, vocal and lighter music is dealt with aplomb. I can always tell a good sound when I want to listen to the whole CD and not skip to something else and these speaker have that effect – sit back listen and enjoy.

So these are definite “keepers” and will live in my main system from now on.

Now what’s going to happen to the Thors then?? Hummmm might eBay them then I can buy the correct Excel drivers for the PMS-Excel …… now there’s a thought – but not for some time yet! And hey I might just stick with these paper drivers they that dam good.