#PSB ALPHA P5 DRIVERS#

Jim Milton has been interested in high fidelity since his college years in the late 70's. Removing them made no sonic difference and they look nice without grilles, so its dealer’s choice on your part. Paul Barton told me that the grilles are acoustically transparent and for my listening, I kept them on. I’ll talk more about the overall sound quality a bit further into my review. The Alpha P5 frequency response is rated at 55Hz to 21kHz but will play down to 37Hz in-room. If placed on a bookshelf, be sure to leave some breathing room for the port on the back (at least a foot and a half). They perform best on speaker stands but may need some added upward tilt to accommodate the inverted tweeter which should be aimed at the listener’s ear level. Their in-room sensitivity is 89dB, so they can sing loudly with little power. The PSB Alpha P5s are rated for amplification in the 10-90-watt range and paired well with my Emotiva UPA-1, 200-watt monoblocks. My overall impression was that these speakers are very solidly built, and a lot of thought has gone into their design.

#PSB ALPHA P5 DRIVERS#

A one-inch thick front baffle secures the drivers in place. That material is also placed inside of the empty spaces where it can absorb internal standing waves and not just around the outside edges of the wall. The filler consists of fibers that are like furniture stuffing with lots of cloth fibers and not just fluffy pink insulation. There is internal bracing and a special filler material to help reduce internal reflections and minimize speaker cabinet resonance. The veneer is seamless and looks very nice and clean. The outside edges of the cabinet are rounded, and the vinyl veneer comes in black ash (my review samples) or walnut. A 1.5-inch port is located on the back along with five-way binding posts that accept any type of speaker cable connection including bare wires. The removable magnetic grilles are made of micro-perforated sheet metal.

A fourth-order Acoustic Linkwitz-Riley filter (usually found in high priced speaker designs) is used to get a perfect blend between drivers and reduce distortion. You may notice that the tweeter on the Alpha P5 is placed below the woofer which allows it to work with the newly designed crossover network to create an even sound field whether you are listening to them while standing or seated.

The tweeter has a wave guide that helps smooth the transitional frequency hand-off to the mid-woofer. 75-inch black anodized aluminum ferrofluid-cooled tweeter. The PSB Alpha P5s are a compact two-way bass reflex speaker with newly designed, hand-built drivers consisting of a dual-layered voice coil 5.25-inch polypropylene woofer paired with a single.

Psb alpha p5