PSB PWM-1 ON-WALL SURROUND SPEAKER SYSTEM
A COMMON notion among audiophiles who dismiss on-wall speakers is that speakers need to be positioned well out into a room in order to get big, spacious sound. But that kind of thinking misses the point. For many, on-wall speakers can be an excellent option if you don’t want to dedicate your living room to a hi-fi or home theater audio system, but also expect dynamic and enveloping sound that’s a step above what you’d get from in-wall speakers.
While there are plenty of on-wall and in-wall speakers made specifically for the custom installation market, I usually prefer offerings from established audiophile speaker manufacturers, especially ones known to combine performance with value. That description fits PSB perfectly, and for many years I have used the company’s now sadly discontinued Synchrony One speakers as my real-world reference when reviewing products for Sound & Vision. Given PSB founder Paul Barton’s superb track record with standard speakers for hi-fi and home theater, I was eager to hear what he could achieve with models designed specifically for installation up against a wall.
PSB’S PWM1 (Performance Wall Mount 1) speaker is the smallest of a new three-model range of on-walls designed to blend visually with flat-panel TVS. The PWM1 is closest in height to a typical 50-55-inch
TV, while the PWM2 and PWM3 match larger screen sizes. Both the PWM2 and PWM3 are three-way speakers with additional drivers for higher output. The PWM2 has dual woofers and mid-range drivers, while the seven-driver PWM3 features an additional woofer pair for even greater power handling. All three models are available in a
modern-looking black or white satin finish, with color-matched fabric grilles that attach using hidden magnets to maintain a smooth look.
PSB felt that a full set of five PWM1S would be plenty to deliver the surround-sound goods in my medium-sized 15-foot by 12-foot room. At 14 pounds, the PWM1’S cabinet feels dense and stiff, and it has a narrow slit-like port on one of the end panels. The driver array consists of a pair of four-inch carbon fiber cone woofers flanking a one-inch titanium dome tweeter mounted in a shallow waveguide. Four inches may sound small, but PSB says the woofers were designed to take full advantage of the internal volume and port tuning of the PWM1’S cabinet to optimize sensitivity, bandwidth, and power handling capability. The back panel features dual sets of five-way binding posts to permit bi-wiring or bi-amping, although
I kept things simple with single cable runs all around. While most installations will have the PWM1S that are used for the front channels arranged closely around the edges of a TV screen, for my test I decided to spread them out further to enhance stereo imaging and soundstage width.
As with any decent surround setup, a subwoofer was needed to add bottom-end heft. PSB sent along one of its CSIR
SUB on-wall subwoofers, a wall-hugging model that matches the stealthy look of the PWM1S and is similarly available in black or white. The CSIR SUB is designed to take advantage of room boundaries to increase output and can be installed in several different ways depending on your setup. The included bracket allows you to literally hang it on the wall like a picture frame. If you don’t want to drill holes in your wall, a floor pedestal lets you install it upright on the floor, which is how I used it. A third option is to lay the CSIR SUB which has a slim five-inch-deep profile that makes it easy to squeeze under furniture or into a corner, flat on its back firing upwards.
Two key design choices account for the CSIR SUB’S slim form factor. First, it uses a special shallow long excursion 10 inch-woofer with a flat foam core sandwich surface. Second, it’s a passive unit with no space given over to an amplifier—a built-in feature on most other subwoofers. To drive the CSIR SUB, I paired it with PSB’S CS 500W dedicated subwoofer amp, a class-d model that delivers a hefty 500 watts into four ohms. The amp is designed to sit in your A/V equipment rack with other electronics components, connecting to the subwoofer via speaker cable.
While the CS 500W lacks amenities found on many subwoofers such as a remote control or customization app, it does let you adjust settings like crossover, phase, level, and equalization via its front panel display. A preset equalization setting is provided to match the CSIR SUB, but there is no auto room correction or other fancy setup features. The amp can drive up to two CSIR SUBS simultaneously, with a back panel switch provided to adjust the amp’s impedance accordingly. Powering up the amp can be carried out directly using its front-panel switch, remotely by 12-volt trigger, or using a signal-sensing automatic mode. The wall-hugging slimness of PSB’S sub comes at a cost, however: a combined $2,198. That’s quite a lot more than even the company’s priciest conventional powered model, though the price is in-line with two-piece “architectural” subwoofer solutions from other manufacturers.
SETUP
To avoid drilling holes in my walls for a temporary installation, I set up the PMW1S using 22-inch-tall speaker stands placed against the walls that positioned the tweeters slightly above ear-level. As mentioned above, I situated the front left and right speakers wide in order to maintain a fully dimensional soundstage—about eight feet apart, which put them at about the same angle from the listening position as my Synchrony towers would be in their regular spot. The PWM1 that I used as the center channel speaker was placed horizontally on the cabinet under my TV, while the surround channel speakers were put on tall stands against the room’s side walls and slightly behind my listening position. Meanwhile, the CSIR SUB subwoofer sat on its floor pedestal up against the front wall just to the inside of the front left speaker.
Fine-tuning the crossover between the PWM1S and the subwoofer proved to be critical, as any misalignment resulted in a notable mid-bass bump that dominated the sound. I eventually settled on an 80Hz crossover, with the subwoofer level tuned by ear. For most of my
evaluation I drove the system with Denon’s flagship AVRX8500H receiver, but also used Yamaha’s RX-V6A, a much more affordable 7.2-channel model, to see how it would work with more modest electronics. Both receivers proved able to drive the five-channel PWM1 system to realistic cinema-sound levels without strain, although clearly with better authority and grip when I used the beefier, more powerful Denon.
PERFORMANCE
The opening few minutes of the Philip Glass soundtrack for the movie Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters offers a great way to get a quick read of the capabilities of any speaker. It starts with a whisper of wind chimes and quiet glockenspiel, and the transparent clarity of the PWM1’S titanium dome tweeters brought out the bell-like tone of those high-pitched percussion instruments. After, you hear deeper-sounding tubular bells and strings, and then kettle drums that swell the volume up to eleven. The PWM1S handled this rapid dynamic sweep without breaking a sweat, delivering plenty of bite from the plucked double basses, and snap from the martial-sounding snare drum rolls. Despite the wall placement, the soundstage had good dimensionality, but it was mostly projected forward into the room rather than extending back behind the speakers like I often experience with in-room models.
Moving on, I played “Little Boy Blue” from Holly Cole’s Temptation album. This is the type of music I often complain about hearing at audio shows where it seems like every room is showcasing some variation of a sultry female singer accompanied by an acoustic bass, though it does let you hear what’s going on in a system.
The CSIR SUB conveyed Dave Piltch’s bass lines with plenty of weight and authority, while my careful tuning of the CS 500W amp’s crossover settings made the pluck of each note blend smoothly between the PWM1S and the subwoofer. Like many sealed models, the CSIR SUB sounded tuneful without any blurring of notes. And Holly’s husky voice came across as smooth and rich through the PWM1S, but with plenty of clean detail as opposed to sounding soft or dull.
For some butt-kicking surround action I fired up a scene from Mission: Impossible— Ghost Protocol where agent Hunt escapes in a van with the IMF secretary as they are attacked by Sidorov’s forces. Bullets soon fly and the van plunges into a canal. The CSIR SUB delivered impressive
impact and punch for such a compact subwoofer, although I didn’t experience the pants leg-flapping air movement some larger subs are capable of generating. As you would expect when using a system with five identical speakers, the surround blend was superb, with a truly seamless sensation of envelopment. Overall, the PSB system was able to deliver as much output and dynamic range as I would ever want in my room, although in a significantly bigger space you may want to seek out the company's larger PWM models.
The system’s center channel speaker is a PWM1 simply rotated to a horizontal orientation. Flipping a speaker sideways like this can sometimes create issues with uneven off-axis response, but I found that the PWM1’S high-frequency output remained even as I
moved to various off-center seating positions. Dedicated center channel speakers often emphasize the upper mid-range and low treble to enhance dialogue clarity, but the PWM1 didn’t need this type of assistance: I heard the same smooth but detailed sound as the main left and right speakers, which made dialogue buried in a difficult soundtrack mix easy to follow.
CONCLUSION
Most of us don’t have the luxury of a dedicated listening/viewing room and need systems that can cohabitate with partners and kids and accommodate other activities in a shared, multipurpose space. Even so, there’s no reason why we can’t expect that setup to be an audiophile-quality one. PSB’S Pwm-based system strikes a balance between stealth and performance exceptionally well, delivering the goods for both movies and music-listening while remaining conveniently out of the way.