Stories by: Brent Burmester

PMC hasn't been around long, but it has quickly become a name synonymous with high-quality speakers. Everything in the company's domestic range is good-looking, with high build-quality, real wood veneers and simple understated designs, and they appear little different from the boxy norm. That's because their real advantages lie beneath the surface, in the form of PMC's mastery of transmission-line bass loading. This technology featured in the floorstanding OB1 and returns here in the diminutive DB1+--billed as the smallest transmission line monitor in the world.

The SXH2 headphone amplifier has a lot to live up to on the musical reproduction front. The SXH1 drove a pair of Sennheiser HD-600s like they were born to it. In anticipation of even better from the new boy, I plugged in a fresh pair of Sennheiser HD-650s--these are serious 'phones of indisputable pedigree that should reveal anything untoward going on in the sonic department. Driven at the low-gain setting, what I heard was all good.