PMC DB1i Review

John Duncan

Well-known member
(finally)

Dinky, but no toy...

I’ve been a big fan of PMC for some time. Way back when I first joined the forum I was on the lookout for a midrange1 amp and speakers to go with my Cambridge 640C, and ended up with a Creek 5350 and the then-extant version of their Dinky Box, the DB1+. With their five foot-long transmission line giving infeasible amounts of bass from such a tiny enclosure and with substantial driver improvements over the original, they were deeply impressive. Sadly, I lost my way a bit and, in a fit of box-swapping ‘must buy something NOW’ angst I bought a pair of AVI Neutron Vs unauditioned, ostensibly to put in the kitchen on the end of an old Denon. As fate would have it, however, The WAF of the Neutrons was so high that they ended up usurping the PMCs in the living room. Despite not being as good as the PMCs in the bass department, the N5s stayed and the PMCs languished in the fabled JD Hifi Drawer before being inherited by a friend. If I’d known he’d subsequently swap them out for a pair of nails-down-a-blackboard Cantons then I’d have rescued them from him and saved myself a bit of grief further down the line...

However, fast-forwarding to recently...as you’ll all know, I ‘acquired’ one of the office-copy Unitis for ‘research purposes’ last year and I finally took the plunge and bought it three months or so ago. Having had some Neat Petite SXs in the house briefly, I was aware of how glorious the Naim could sound when let loose, and wanted to get a speaker that might allow it to reach its potential rather better than the Wharfedale Diamond 9.1s I’d been mostly using up to this point. Now, having heard (and lauded) the Neats, you might expect that this might be my starting point – a valid argument, but as discussed before, they simply were not going to be acceptable in our small living room; too wide, man, too wide. So the search was on for a compact standmount which would let the NaimUniti show of its best and would also gain acceptance from the final arbiter of all things hifi – Mrs JD.

The Neat Motive 3 had potential; sharing a PR (and thus cavernous boot) with Naim, it would have been easy to source a pair for an extended home demo, but size was again an issue – at 325 mill tall, they’re a good inch and a half taller than the PMCs, and had a sit-up-and-beg look that I couldn’t quite reconcile. No doubt they’d sound great if I’d tried them, sharing some of the SXs DNA, but it just wasn’t going to happen. I considered the DALI Mentor Menuet, which exude gorgeousness from every pore, but the one time I heard them on the end of a system I knew and loved, I was disappointed. Now I know how we all like something ‘new’, but I was rapidly coming to the conclusion that what I really wanted was the devil I knew...

Now, as it happened, it was Blue Murder sale time at one of my favourite shops, Unilet in New Malden, and what should pop through my door but a BM price list promising some ex-dem DB1is in walnut at a very attractive price. A quick phone call, a 20 minute drive with the boys (can we go home now?) and the deal was done2

Getting them home and onto the stands (before Mrs JD could protest), they shout quality. The walnut veneer finish (which I now much prefer over the, in retrospect, rather dowdy oak of my +es) was richly coloured, nicely bookmatched and beautifully applied. Not quite MA Platinum standard, but very attractive nonetheless (and, incidentally, knocking the SXs into a cocked hat). The shiny new metal ‘PMC’ badge seems a bit unnecessary but adds a bit of class, and the docs inside even let me know that they were built by ‘Ryan’ (thanks Ryan). Round the back, there’s a (slightly less ubiquitous nowadays) standard set of bi-wire binding posts, together with that tell-tale rectangular Transmission Line port.

Now, what with them being ex-dem, and with PMC recommending only 15 hours run-in to loosen them up, I took it as read that they were all ready to go, and so it proved. I start all new-gear audition sessions with two discs – Rush’s Moving Pictures3 and Joni Mitchell’s Court and Spark. I’ve heard them hundreds of times each in the 30-odd years since I first did, and know them inside out. The PMCs did them absolute justice; they kept a fierce grip on the drums in Tom Sawyer which can sometimes ‘bleed’ a bit on lesser systems, and Mitchell’s smoky voice on Down To You had a natural richness which made the Diamonds (which I had hitherto admired as one of the great budget loudspeakers) sound positively nasal in comparison.

The standard audition repertoire out of the way, the DB1is coped fantastically well with pretty much everything I threw at them; Back in Black sounded surprisingly, yet stupendously ‘studio quality’, Kat’s vocals on Eastmountainsouth’s eponymous debut (and swansong) were beautifully rendered, and live albums like Shawn Colvin’s Live and Diana Krall’s Live in Paris (frightful record, great recording) offered up pleasingly natural images of a concert hall acoustic (albeit in miniature, what with my listening position being a six-foot triangle).

Talking of listening position, I’ve found that this is very important for the PMCs (as it was with the Neat Petites). Get it wrong in my room (primarily having them too close together and me too far away) and the treble tended to disappear somewhat, whilst when right, voices and instruments lit up in a way that I’ve only rarely heard. On the down side, as I discussed a while ago when someone asked if they’d fit in an alcove, get it too wrong and they can sound disastrous; too near a corner and all that bass pumping out of the rear port simply overwhelms all the other frequencies and you’d be as well off with a pair of twenty quid service station jobbies. Are they the best speakers I’ve had in my house? No – I think that has to go to the Neat Petite SX. And, if I’m honest, they’re not as good value as they used to be (though there’s a lot of UK workmanship in there – Ryan included). Give them room to breathe, though, and they shine like few others, and no speakers I’ve heard – at any price - do what they do in such a compact package.

I’d trade up to their floorstanding brothers if I was allowed, but they’d be using the packaging to bury me in…

1 YMMV

2 a mwa ha ha

3 the 16/44 version rather than the recent 24/96 remaster, since I know it better.
 

jaxwired

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Feb 7, 2009
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Great review. You should write for the mag!

And I totally agree. I've owned and auditioned too many speakers and I found the PMC DB1i to be an exceptional speaker. Made me want to try moving up the PMC line. There is a live-ness to sound with those little monitors that is spot on. And I for one love the way they look. Congrats!
 

John Duncan

Well-known member
Depends - looks like I'll now be at a client at king's cross as of today for the next year or so, which is about 1h 15m on a good day. Better than the drive from Swindon I had a couple of weeks back when they closed the road and it took me three hours twenty though...
 

datay

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Mine needed to be 15cm from the wall for the transmission line to sound best - pretty close (and I know somone on this forum recommended closer, 8-10cm IIRC), much closer than a typical rear port (which I know is not the same as the transmission line). Away from corners, yes, but reinforced by the back wall.
 

garyw77

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Nicely reviewed and spot on.

I was looking for accurate stand mounts for my relatively small room and went with these in walnut too ;)

Best upgrade and decision i have made for my system, the soundstaging from these little beauties is truly amazing for the size, and detail sublime.

Delightful Dinkys' :clap:
 

John Duncan

Well-known member
chebby said:
Excellent review.

Thank you.

chebby said:
Would you still have bought them at full RRP ? (£1050 I think.)

If not, and if you'd had a grand to spend, what would you have bought instead?

I think so - I haven't really found anything else that has ticked all the right size/performance boxes at any price, tbh. Though ask not whether I would have, but rather whether I would have been allowed to...
 
With hindsight I'm a bit gutted I didn't take up the 'Blue Murder' sale at the time. Commitments elsewhere sidetracked my initial zeal for the PMCs, but I agree they do need a bit of room to sound best. In my living room they need around 10-12" from the back wall to really sing; this where the Totems really swung it. No matter where I placed them, within reason, their sound was consistantly good.

The DB1is are still amongst my favourite speaker bar non.
 

Inter_Voice

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John_D: I agree that PMC DB1i is a good pair of speakers. However in my case after audition with various other brands I eventually purchased a pair of Spendor SA1 which is of sealed box design that has no placement problem closed to walls. You may wish to see the link in my signature.
 

crusaderlord

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Yes i agree and from my own demo i found the PMC's are excellent speakers. I chose the Neat Motive which had the edge to my ears but liked them both better than the others i have heard. I am tempted to get a listen to the Neat Petite SX just to see if they have much of an edge on the Motive 3's. Nice review.
 
A

Anonymous

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Inter_Voice said:
John_D: I agree that PMC DB1i is a good pair of speakers. However in my case after audition with various other brands I eventually purchased a pair of Spendor SA1 which is of sealed box design that has no placement problem closed to walls. You may wish to see the link in my signature.

I also went for the SA1. Sealed design works so well in small British rooms, no bass boom and intergration is very good.
 

amwarren13

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Hi John,

I am going to pick up a pair of these to partner my UnitiQute - do you recommend bi-wiring them ?

thanks in advance.

Ashley

great review btw !
 

Craig M.

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ear said:
PMC DB1 Vs Proac 110? wich would win? anyone compared them?

i thought the db1i was a more rounded speaker. the proacs didn't have enough bass and i thought the treble was too prominent. i chose dynaudio focus 110 instead, though.
 

John Duncan

Well-known member
amwarren13 said:
Hi John,

I am going to pick up a pair of these to partner my UnitiQute - do you recommend bi-wiring them ?

thanks in advance.

Ashley

great review btw !

Thank you.

I'm not biwiring mine, and tbh when I had Neutron Vs the fact that they were single-wire only provided a degree of relief from worrying about whether bi-wiring or single-wiring sounded better. I therefore now just use single-wiring (albeit a very good one like QED Revelation or Chord Odyssey) and am perfectly happy. It is probably, however, worth creating small lengths of your chosen cable to replace the jumpers beween the bi-wire terminals, since these are usually of pretty poor quality. Then again, you may hear no difference at all. PMC themselves are even less anal about it and say:

"PMC recommend using a high quality thick multi-strand Oxygen Free Copper (OFC) cable between the amplifier and speakers. The use of 'exotic' cables has limited improvement on sound quality, so we would not advocate spending great quantities of money. However, if you are prepared to spend a great deal of money in this area, we would strongly advice you listen first to determine whether the outlay is worth the improvement."

I seem to recall they use Van Damme in their own test rooms, but that may be an urban myth. I also recall AEJim (of Acoustic Energy) saying something like "engineers would much rather create a single-wire speaker because they're easier to make higher quality, but the marketing guys insist because bi-wire's perceived as being better". Whether it is or not, I'm just not worrying about it any more.
 

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