Standmounts don't 'do' deep bass, right?

PMC

by Ed Selley Saturday at 11:18 AM

What is the PMC twenty.21?

Having spent a little time looking at the affordable end of the speaker market - we have established the gently predictable result that we can't easily find ourselves recommending much other than the crushingly competent offerings from Q Acoustics. As such, while we wait for the next selection of challengers to try and steal the laurels of the 3000 Series, there is time to look at a more rarefied price point, in this case the princely sum of £1,500.

This is an interesting price to be looking for a pair of loudspeakers. Effectively, you can choose between the flagship of a more entry level range or the smallest model from a more expensive lineup. There are pros and cons to both approaches. Do you want more drivers, bigger cabinets and the culmination of everything that a range can deliver or would you prefer to have a rather smaller amount of higher quality components? One factor that might shape your decision is that conventional wisdom dictates that smaller speakers- nearly regardless of the quality of their components- cannot hope to rival larger ones in terms of bass output. If you want scale, you'll need a bigger pair of speakers.

The speaker you see here does not set out to disprove this notion- the laws of physics are pretty solid things and the presence of (much) larger speakers in the company's line up suggests they accept this too. Nonetheless, PMC is a company with a means of at least bending those rules a little. The twenty.21 is a two-way standmount speaker but one that packs a little extra something into that compact cabinet in the form of a transmission line. Is the PMC a means to deliver a little more welly from a small speaker?

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