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PMC TB2

loudspeakers

Tiny boxes pack a punch with clarity and finesse.

It may seem a little strange to describe as "tiny boxes" cabinets some 40cm tall, 30cm deep and 20cm wide, with an all-up weight of 8.5kg apiece but that’s what the "TB" in the TB2s’ model designation stands for, and by PMC standards these are truly miniature speakers. The company has its roots - and still does much of its business in the professional monitoring speakers from whence cometh the "PM" part of its name, and of late has delighted in scaring showgoers with its mighty studio monitor speakers.

Fortunately the big stuff was only on static display at the recent Bristol Sound & Vision 2001 show, but the PMCers there were bubbling with tales of a massive multichannel (10.2—channel, in fact) rig they’d put together in co-operation with Bryston for the 2001 CES, with truly awesome results. The set-up was used to play music, not film material, and was demonstrated in total darkness in a large room. Those attending report that the results were certainly striking.

Oh, and the other news was of acquisitions and removals: PMC has taken over the Musical Technology speaker brand, best known for strange cabinet shapes and products named after birds of prey, and relocated to new premises in Luton, the better to cope with its growing production. It now sells in 32 countries and via 60 British dealers, offering everything from smallish domestic use speakers right up to massive active home-cinema systems, the BB5 XBD-C costing £16,800. Yes, for one centre channel speaker!

The TB2s are right at the opposite end of the price-range, and the least expensive model the company sells. £700 buys you a pair of these speakers in a variety of stylish wood veneer finishes, while with an eye to home cinema use - there’s a matching TB2M-C centre speaker at £375 - they can be ordered as the TB2M with magnetic shielding, to protect TV sets’ picture tubes, at an extra £50. However, should your desire for a pair of speakers with studio heritage extend to a utilitarian look, they can be ordered (as the TB2S) in best functional basic black — in this case a durable "roadcrew-proof" textured paint - at £100 a pair less than the wood finishes.

Enough options for you? I’m sure I can come up with a few more, as we’ll discover later in this review. For now, it’s enough to note that the two-way TB2s have beautifully finished and solid-feeling cabinets, with the cherry of the review pair looking both contemporary and very luxurious.

The beauty extends within, too, and quite literally so: the inner faces of the 18mm Medite cabinet are also veneered to "balance" them. What’s more, even the radiused edges of the baffle are designed to reduce reflections and improve imaging.

The drive units here are exactly the same as those used in the FB1 speakers I so enjoyed in Gramophone’s July 2000 issue, namely an aluminium alloy dome treble unit and a 17cm doped-cone mid/bass unit built on a stiff magnesium alloy chassis. The two drivers are connected using a biwirable crossover of extremely high quality and fed via very good internal cabling. It’s worth noting that this last is not always a given even in very expensive speakers, leading some to question the value of expensive speaker cables.

Anyway, the bass here is tuned using PMC’s own version of transmission line technology, which is a folded tapered tube effectively 1.5m long linking the rear of the driver to a mouth on the back panel of the cabinet, which is filled with resistive open- cell foam. This ensures the speakers give prodigious bass for enclosures so compact, but this low end is delivered in a controlled, tuneful and very assured manner, allowing it to integrate well with the bright and informative, but sweet, midband and treble.

The TB2s are by no means power-hungry speakers, thanks to their combination of 90dB/W/m sensitivity and 8 Ohm impedance, but PMC still recommends they be used with amplifiers of at least 50W per channel. That, as we’ll see in a moment, proved not to be a problem. Meanwhile, positioning is just as easygoing: stands some 50-60cm tall are advisable, and beyond that it’s a matter of ‘suck it and see’ in your room.

Amazingly, I found very little loss of sonic balance even when the speakers were popped on top of my reference floorstanders as a temporary measure during the 10-20 hour run-in suggested. However, they did give of their best when used atop the ubiquitous sand—filled Atacama SE24 stands, which are rigid, heavy and well-damped. I used them well clear of side and rear walls, and toed them in slightly toward the listening position, giving optimal imaging, though the TB2s aren’t critical in this respect.

Performance

As with the FB1 speakers back in July last year, I started the TB2s off on the end of Musical Fidelity amplification, and fed by the Marantz CD7 CD player. This proved a felicitous match, the sound being gutsy, rich and above all beautifully detailed.

However, the lure of the intriguing system I’d hatched up with PMC's Keith Tonge proved hard to resist for long. The idea was to use the speakers with Bryston PowerPac modules. Why? Well, PMC distributes the Canadian amps in the UK, and rear-panel mounting points for these compact monobloc power amplifiers can be specified when ordering the TB2s.

The active speakers were then to be combined with Bryston’s £1550 BP-25 remote-control preamplifier, which is a slimline, beautifully built but admittedly somewhat functional-looking device. It’s also designed with a simple aim in mind - offering a clear signal path from source to power amplification.

My suggestion was to use the smaller PowerPacs - the 60W - PP60s, at £475 apiece - but Keith’s enthusiasm for the £950 PPl20s ("Boy, that should get the TB2s jumping" — he can be so rock’n’roll sometimes...) led me to try each set of amps in turn. These were connected to the preamp using long (7m) runs of Musical Fidelity’s very fine Nu-Vista interconnect cable.

Which proved to be the best combination? Well, the upshot of all this experimentation was that yes, the PP120s do give the TB2s amazing dynamics, power and sheer clout, but in smaller rooms ie those small enough for the TB2s to be better-suited than the bigger FB1 floorstanders - the PP60s, combined with the speakers high sensitivity, will be more than sufficient for must needs. That’s useful in another way, too - no small matter is that opting for the smaller PowerPacs will also save you £750 a pair over the cost of a brace of PP120s.

As one might hope for an amplification/speaker system with an all-up tag (excluding cabling) of some £3200, the Bryston/PMC combination delivered a sound that put very little between the listener and the music. True, the use of the superlative Marantz CD player helped and brought the system total up to well on the wrong side of £7000! - but whether with the glorious Susan Graham disc of Mozart and Gluck arias (on Erato - an April Editor’s Choice) or the BIS disc of the music of Fritz Kreisler featured in the same issue, the balance here was consistently open and expressive. Detailing via the PMCs is as rich as the bass, allowing both music and performances to be held up for close inspection, or simply enjoyed in a relaxed, smooth fashion.

Even more impressive is the system’s ability to handle larger works such as the Boulez/Vienna Philharmonic recording of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde on DG. The low-end weight on offer here is frankly astonishing from enclosures so small, giving music appropriate scale and power - though if you crave more, PMC will sell you a matching subwoofer, the XB 1P, for an additional £750 and integrating beautifully with the midband and treble to superb effect.

I played choral music through the system, the Bach Collegium Japan's St Matthew Passion on BIS sounding dramatic and well-balanced, and a range of music from Vivaldi concertos to Philip Glass’s Koyaanisqatsi, and never once did I crave the extra extension ostensibly on offer from bigger speakers.

Indeed, only when switching from the TB2s to the FB1s I’ve been using as one of my references was it apparent that the bigger speakers offered even greater low-end conviction. This was apparent with symphonic works, while solo piano gained vital scale and impact in the lower octaves of the left hand. But for all that, the compact TB2s remain a highly impressive design.

The beauty of the TB2s is that they are speakers able to give up around 95 percent of their potential even with relatively modest amplification. They sounded good when connected to the Musical Fidelity X-A200R integrated amplifier, reviewed last month, and even proved enchanting on the end of NAD’s £300 C350 amp, though admittedly the latter is a design with a widely envied reputation for punching well above its weight.

I even tried biamping them with Arcam’s A65/P75 integrated and power amp (review to follow soon), and again the character of the speakers was unmistakable. However, it’s really with some very superior amplification - and I’m thinking in terms of Musical Fidelity’s remarkable A3CR products, the Naim NAC 112/NAP150 pairing tested in March this year, or indeed the Bryston preamplifier and PowerPacs that these speakers are able to reveal all of their true potential.

Yes, that could be said to make them demanding of the system with which they’re used, but there is another way of viewing things. And that’s to say these are speakers you could buy to use with modest amplification, confident that they’ll grow as the system upstream of them is improved. It’s this future-proofing that makes them very special indeed.

We invite you to experience the Bryston SST² Series amplifiers

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