E-Mu PM5 Brochure

RECORDING MARCH 2006

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For as long as E-MU Systems has been on the recording

musician’s radar—and that’s a long, long time, going back to

the Drumulator and Emulators in the early ’80s, and to large

modular synthesizers before that—I don’t think we’ve ever

seen a speaker with the E-MU logo. The PM5 is in keeping

with the company’s tradition of bringing us systems and

devices that enhance the studio experience without break-

ing the bank.

Front (and inside)

The PM5 is a discreetly dark-grey box with slightly round-

ed edges and corners, standing 11.5" tall, 6.9" wide, and 9.8"

deep. That’s a modest footprint and should allow positioning

in just about anybody’s setup no matter how space-restricted.

Aside from the greyish logo and the tiny lettering Precision

Monitor along the bottom, the only color accent is the power-

on light in blue that turns red to indicate overload.

Along most of the width at the bottom is the bass port;

above in the center of the fascia sits the 5" low-frequency

driver (a glass fiber cone for you tech heads), and near the

top is the 1" Neodymium soft-dome high-frequency driver.

The box weighs 14.3 lbs.

Each driver has its own power amp, each listed

as 40W RMS into 4 ohms, with a Signal-to-Noise

Ratio referred to full output of >98 dB and THD

of <0.2%. The crossover frequency is at  2.5 kHz,

the type is an active second-order Butterworth.

That’s all pretty standard stuff so far.

Back

There’s a heatsink protruding from the upper

part of the rear. Below it, all at the same height,

are the inputs and controls. On the left is the

Neutrik Combo XLR/TRS balanced analog

input socket, further in is a female unbalanced

RCA connector, and between the two there is a

toggle switch that turns out to be a mystery. The

manual says “Select either balanced (XLR or

TRS) or unbalanced (RCA) analog inputs with

this switch”. It doesn’t switch between the input

connectors: they’re both live at all times, any

signals received at both connectors at once will

be mixed, and the manual cautions against this.

What it does do is to alter the level of the signal

going into the power amp to an appropriate set-

ting for an unbalanced or balanced line.

Next on that line of items is the Input

Sensitivity Control Knob. It has a center detent

B Y   L O R E N Z   R Y C H N E R

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