The Japanese company Fostex was founded in 1973 as an extension of “Foster Electric CO,” an important Japanese company in the development of electroacoustic products, both for sale under its own name and as a supplier to other manufacturers. One example of these monitors sold by Fostex is the famous 6301B, a mini-sized self-powered monitor that, after 20 years, is still a reference monitor.
What stands out in it is the wide frequency range achieved with a single cone of less than 4 inches. Fostex’s first significant move in the professional audio market came in the ’80s, when it launched into designing and manufacturing multitrack magnetic tape recorders. In the early ’80s it introduced three tape recorders: the A-2, the A-4 and the famous A-8, the first 8-track recorder on tape only ¼ inch wide, the classic tape used by conventional two-track recorders, still in use today at some radio stations. Building on the experience gained, Fostex moved into manufacturing multitrack systems in cassette format, which had four independent tracks and became very popular with beginners in sound or for “out of the studio” recordings. Both products, the ¼-inch tape recorders and the cassette-format multitrackers, were very popular products in home studios.
The necessary leap
The leap to digital technology was another project that Fostex took on in the 1990s, joining forces with Alesis to build a digital tape recorder, the RD-8, a Super-VHS format recorder, taking advantage of work previously developed by other manufacturers on video recorders, which are capable of working with signals of high enough frequency to handle digital data, in addition to the experience accumulated with these recorders, both in the mechanical and servo areas, over quite a few years.
Continuing its research, Fostex went on to develop hard-disk-based recorders, and in the mid-nineties it launched the DMT-8 portable digital recorder-mixer, whose big innovation was storing audio on a conventional computer hard drive. One of the latest products to come from Fostex was introduced at the AES show in Los Angeles in 2002: the NetCIRA communications network, used to distribute up to 64 channels of high-quality audio over a conventional computer data network, under the Ethernet protocol.
Despite all this research into the most modern digital technologies, the Japanese brand, true to its beginnings, continues to manufacture quality speakers and monitors, such as those featured in this test: the PM range. A series of low-cost studio monitors that are part of the extensive range of studio monitors.
All three together
The PM Series monitor range is a trio of monitors for recording studios as well as for broadcast work. The three models under review are the PM-0.5, PM-1 and PM-2, all of them self-powered. The design and development of the electronics, speakers and cabinet are all handled by Fostex.
The cabinet is a classic design, with simple but well-made finishes. They are built of good-thickness laminated particleboard. On the back of these monitors, a thick metal plate is screwed on, to the rear of which, inside the wooden cabinet, the transformer, crossover filters and power amp are mounted. On the exposed face of this metal plate are the power input connector, the signal connector, the power switch and the gain control. On the top model, the PM-2, this gain control is split between the high and low frequencies. The weight of the monitors ranges from 6.5 kilos for the smallest model to 14.7 kilos for the largest, with 11 for the middle one. All the speakers are magnetically shielded, an essential requirement nowadays for working in a studio alongside computer monitors, and although it is increasingly common to find TFT displays almost completely immune to this problem, it is still something to consider when choosing a monitor.
The material used for the woofer cones is paper pulp and polyamide, with a resin-based coating that waterproofs them and damps their resonant frequencies, making them better able to generate high sound pressure levels with low distortion. As for the high-frequency speakers, they are dome-type, made of polyurethane-based fabric, a material that is regularly used in studio monitors for the linearity of its frequency response and for a very pleasant sound largely free of pronounced resonant peaks.
Dome tweeters made of metallic materials such as aluminum or titanium, to name the two most typical, show considerable resonances which, although interesting for certain types of instruments such as brass sections, bring a higher level of distortion and therefore more tiring listening. But one of the problems manufacturers weigh most heavily when using this type of material in tweeters is the need to fit them with a protective grille to shield them from accidental knocks, which inevitably changes the speaker’s performance, dynamics and coverage considerably. Fabric, by contrast, although it can’t deliver as bright a top end, has the ability to deform and return to its original state after an accidental bump, which gives the manufacturer the assurance of not having problems at the customer’s home, on assembly lines or in transport.
The two speakers together cover a frequency range from 50 Hz to 20 kHz within ± 2 dB on all three models, according to the manufacturer’s data. These figures seem optimistic, and in the test considerable differences were detected in this regard among the three models, especially in low-frequency performance. The speaker complements are as follows: a 0.7-inch dome tweeter and a 5-inch woofer for the PM-0.5; a 1" dome tweeter and a 6.5" woofer cone for the PM-1; and again a 1" dome tweeter combined with an 8" woofer for the largest in the range, the PM-2.
And one by one...
PM-0.5
This monitor is presented by Fostex for nearfield use in small studios. It has 70 watts split equally between the low and high sections, supplied by a stereo power chip, which delivers third-harmonic distortion (the most significant for this measurement) of 0.01%, measured at a power of 25 watts into an 8 ohm load across the audible frequency band of 20 Hz to 20 kHz.
In the listening test, this monitor delivered good sound in the midrange and highs, and the tweeter proved correct, with a pleasant sound to work with. The low frequencies are limited first of all by the woofer, which can’t reproduce deep bass such as an upright bass or a kick drum, an almost impossible task given its size. This limitation has to be accepted by the user who chooses this model and, in the exceptional case of being forced to work at very low frequencies with it, a subwoofer will be needed, although from another range or another brand, as one is not part of Fostex’s PM range.
The frequency overlap in the crossover region of the two speakers, usually located in the vocal range, works quite well because the woofer takes care of almost all of this work, again owing to its small size. So, as the priests say: what God gives you with one hand (vocal clarity), he takes away with the other (little low-frequency extension). Even so, the evaluation of this monitor has been positive, setting aside the bass limitation, an ambition that can’t be demanded of this type of low-priced nearfield monitor anyway.
PM-1
This is also a nearfield monitor, the kind usually placed on a console’s meter bridge, a rather unsuitable location in most cases, since the console’s surface presents a plane off which the wavefronts bounce, creating early reflections or an alternative path for the sound, equally undesirable.
This monitor’s power rises over its little brother to 75 watts for the woofer and 45 watts for the tweeter, now with independent built-in power amps able to drive larger speakers, 1 inch for the tweeter and 6.5 for the woofer, with which to generate more sound power.
The dimensions and weights of this monitor compared with the 0.5 are uneven: while the dimensions have barely grown, 10 cm in height being the biggest difference, the weight has nearly doubled, from 6.5 to 11 kilograms. As for the quality of the sound supplied by the power amps, the manufacturer’s data show a very substantial drop in the distortion rate compared with the PM 05, with a value of 0.007% third-harmonic distortion.
The cabinet construction is similar on all three models, with abundant internal bracing that gives the whole considerable rigidity. The bass reflex tubes are cut and joined so they can bend at an angle so they fit inside the cabinet without trouble, since the length of the tube exceeds the cabinet’s internal dimensions. The outlets of both tubes are on the front of the cabinet, as on the other two models.
In listening, a considerable increase in the midrange was detected, with a strong emphasis on the voice, creating a sound that recalls to some extent the discontinued Yamaha NS-10s. The highs, even with a larger speaker and more amplifier power, don’t deliver what was expected, with the cymbals, as a typical example, sitting further back in the mix than other instruments. Reducing the listening distance to the cabinet to less than 2 meters improved the response, which came as a great surprise, since in the PM 0.5 test, though inferior, it behaved correctly regardless of distance, although never at more than three meters. In the case of the low frequencies, it also didn’t deliver what was initially expected of this monitor, given the expectations attributed to the greater power, the larger woofer and the greater weight of the assembly, largely attributable to the transformer. (The size of the transformer is directly related to the overall output power.)
In listening, an increase in the low-mid frequencies was noted, close to the sound of the beater hitting the kick drum head, but not the deeper sound of the kick itself, which was clearly attenuated, using a recording in which both should have equal prominence as the reference. Pushing the frequencies corresponding to this sound did not change the situation substantially, presumably because of the crossover’s low-pass limiter. Looking on the bright side, this frequency cutoff can be seen as an interesting safety feature, to keep the speaker from suffering under heavily pushed EQ.
PM-2
Intended as a mid-to-far field monitor for medium-sized control rooms, this monitor raises its performance to 120 watts for the high-frequency section and the same amount for the lows. The recipients of this power are a tweeter with the same characteristics as the PM1’s and a woofer that grows to 8 inches. On this model there is indeed a greater extension at both ends of the frequency band, upper and lower, resembling more closely the bandwidth figures given by the manufacturer, which are theoretically the same on all three models. The bass was clearly deeper and just what you’d expect from a monitor with an 8-inch woofer. The construction of the wooden cabinet follows the same lines as the previous ones, although on this model the mechanical transmission of vibrations from the woofer to the cabinet is higher, though within acceptable margins. In the midrange, overlapping an 8-inch woofer with a 1-inch tweeter is always more problematic, which means the sound is not as crisp as on the PM0.5, but in its favor is better balance across the whole band and a more powerful, rounder sound, especially in the lower part of the voice.
Conclusion
An acceptable value for the money would be a fair conclusion for this range of monitors, bearing in mind the possible need for a subwoofer, especially in the case of the PM-0.5, in which case you would have to run the numbers including this addition.
The three monitor models tested here share important similarities in construction, raw materials and design. Value for money is also a parameter on which all three offer an advantageous proposition, which is why all three appear together in this table. The last and definitive judgment, that of the sound, is left to each person’s listening test, bearing in mind that, along with microphones, monitors are the most subjective elements in the entire sound chain.
Recommended prices (as of this article’s publication date)
- PM-0.5: €230
- PM-1: €310
- PM-2: €380
