It seems these days I begin my reviews with an account of how the component arrived in my living room. I won’t do that here. Instead, I’ll refer you to (a) my March 2026 editorial, where I explain why I’m sitting in my neighbor’s house listening to the PMC MB2 SE speakers, and (b) the My Audiophile Neighborhood episode detailing how we set up these monstrous, wonderful speakers, and how the review came about. Just for good measure, here’s a link to my account of my first mind-blowing exposure to PMC’s sound-reinforcement demonstration over on Soundstage! Global.
Are you back? Right. Time to get started. Retailing for US$49,999, CA$59,999, £34,095, or €39,900 per pair, including stands, the MB2 SE is part of PMC’s SE series of speakers, essentially dressed-up, fit-for-company versions of the company’s studio monitors. It’s important to remember that PMC stands for Professional Monitor Company, and it has its feet firmly planted in the pro-audio world. While we in the audiophile community are likely peripherally aware that PMC, which has long produced speakers for our insular little market, is one of the heavy hitters in professional sound reinforcement, it would take an experience like the one I had at High End 2024 in Munich to really get that point across.
Think of it this way. How many audiophile speaker manufacturers have won an actual Emmy Award? Just one: PMC, whose speakers are used by the BBC as their reference, and who boast a huge list of blockbuster movies in which PMC speakers have been used as monitors in production.
So there are two sides to PMC’s speakers. PMC lives in the pro-audio world, where its products are used to create music and film, and the home-audio realm, which we audiophiles populate. Back in 2020, I reviewed a pair of PMC’s Fact.8 Signature speakers and thoroughly enjoyed my experience with them. At that time, I had not had the opportunity to listen to any of the company’s larger speakers, nor had I heard any products from the pro-audio-derived SE line.
Now I’m here in my off-site listening room (ahem—neighbor Rob’s place), being faced down by a scaled-back version of the system that so impressed me in Munich.
As deep as a well
The MB2 SE is physically large, quite blocky, even brutalist. Its profile is that of a deep, wide, and tall rectangular box. With its open design, the matching stand does lighten the appearance of the MB2 SE, but this is still an imposing speaker, taller than my wife and wider than me. The book-matched, hand-selected satin walnut veneer dresses up its profile, especially compared to the pro-audio version’s businesslike flat-black paint. And the notch cut into the top-rear does streamline the MB2 SE’s appearance somewhat. But still, this isn’t the type of speaker you sneak by your significant other, hoping they won’t notice the sudden appearance of a pair of behemoths in the living room. Which, incidentally, is exactly what Rob did. His partner, Jing, deserves special thanks, given that she didn’t complain and in fact actually seemed to like the way these monsters look.
There’s a very good reason for the MB2’s size, a reason that circles back to PMC’s core technology—Advanced Transmission Line bass loading. There’s a maze behind that one big, crazy-looking 12″ woofer (more about that later), which, in PMC’s own words
places the drive unit at the end of a long, highly damped tunnel which absorbs all the unwanted mid and high frequency energy that is radiated from the rear of the driver, but allows the lowest frequencies to exit the line in-phase with the frontal radiation from the drive unit, greatly enhancing its bass performance.
Transmission-line alignment has been around since forever, but note the addition of the word advanced to PMC’s trademarked description. PMC has continuously improved its implementation of this technology, adding carefully specified foam damping along the pathway and adding resonance traps—bugaboos that go nowhere but serve to absorb certain frequencies. All this to say, PMC employs transmission lines in all its speakers and is firmly committed to the technology.
As part of the specifications for each of its speakers, PMC indicates the length of that transmission line. Within the MB2, the transmission line’s effective length is 10′, and it exits from the rectangular, foam-filled opening that’s directly above the tweeter.
An important consideration: I’ve heard PMC speakers at a whole bunch of shows over the years, and in my own house via the Fact.8 floorstanders. In all of these demos, PMC has been able to extract deep, satisfying bass from slim, compact boxes fitted with drivers hovering around the 6″ mark. Part of my excited anticipation prior to the arrival of the MB2s was wondering what kind of insane bass the MB2 would be able to generate with a 12″ woofer in a big enclosure. PMC quotes the MB2’s low-frequency ‑3dB cutoff as 20Hz. While that’s an in-room figure, I expected the MB2 to competently reproduce essentially unlimited bass. We shall see.
The woofer itself stands out—literally—due to its inverted basket. This unique design has one valuable benefit. Since it’s out in the wind, the basket’s cast-aluminum spars act like little radiators, extracting heat from the voice coil and thus reducing stress on the driver’s motor. The woofer also looks exceptionally cool, which is something I am not willing to disregard. It looks businesslike, aggressive, like nothing else. I kept half-expecting to see it start spinning, ready to launch itself out into the room.
Both the 3″ PMC75 midrange driver and the 1″ tweeter are soft-dome designs. The midrange, which is nestled within a shallow waveguide, deserves special mention, as it’s built entirely in-house—from the building up of the soft woven parts to the gluing and coating of the fabric, it’s all done by hand. The tweeter and woofer are manufactured to PMC’s specifications.
The MB2 does not ship with a grille, and none is available. The domed midrange and tweeter look especially pokeable, so you need to be fairly confident that visitors and children are well regulated.
Here’s a feature of the MB2 SE specifically, and of PMC’s speakers in general, that requires its own paragraph. The warranty on its passive home speakers is 20 years. I’ll say it again for those in the back of the room: PMC’s warranty on its non-powered home speakers is 20 years.
The MB2 SE is part of PMC’s SE Passive series. Several of the speakers in this line are duplicated in the SE Active line, which features internal amplifiers and active crossovers. But right now I’m focusing on the SE Passive line, which includes the IB2, with a single, conventional (not inverted) 10″ woofer; this here MB2; the BB5, which packs a 15″ inverted woofer; and the top-model MB2 XBD, which is very similar to the MB2 but adds another 12″ woofer in a separate cabinet in place of the stand.
There are three sets of binding posts out back, all connected by a single jumper. The crossover, with frequencies at 380Hz and 3800Hz, uses 24dB-per-octave slopes. At 128 pounds, the MB2 is a healthy lift; definitely a two-person job. That said, there are decent handholds, so it’s not too bad. Despite its weight, the MB2 is technically a standmounted monitor. The matching stand, which is nicely dressed in the same walnut veneer but with black accents, weighs in at another 37 pounds. Although it’s supplied with substantial spiked feet, I used felt discs to avoid scratches on Rob’s dark hardwood floors.
I powered the MB2s with several amplifiers in turn. First up was the Kinki Studio EX‑M1+ integrated amplifier that Rob has been using over at his place for a while now. Rated at a solid 215Wpc, it should have been powerful enough, but I wasn’t confident—I wanted to really be able to push the PMCs to their limit, and I was skeptical that the Kinki Studio had sufficient mustard for this task. So that’s why I threw up the Bat-Signal, calling in a favor from Lenbrook Americas to secure the loan of some top-end NAD Masters equipment.
While I was awaiting the NAD gear, Doug Schneider passed through Toronto and offloaded the Burmester 232 integrated amplifier that Phil Gold reviewed a couple of months back. The Burmester was destined for the Toronto Audiofest, and it made sense to leave it in town rather than drag it back with him to Ottawa. Since it was in the neighborhood, Rob, our neighbor Ron, and I couldn’t help ourselves—we just had to hook it up for a listen. Offering 95Wpc into the MB2’s 8-ohm impedance, the Burmester was essentially half as powerful as the Kinki Studio, and it showed. In order to reach the admittedly spirited listening levels that we enjoy, and which the MB2s encourage, we had to run the Burmester up right close to wide open, and that’s a nerve-racking feeling. Would it distort? Would it fry a driver on the PMCs? It didn’t distort, and there were no driver issues, but it still didn’t feel like it had sufficient power to do credit to these speakers.
So 100Wpc wasn’t enough and 200Wpc was okay—700Wpc should be just perfect, right? For the remainder of the review period, we spanked the PMCs with two NAD Masters M23 V2s, each strapped to mono. Let me tell you right now: this combination was the business. The M23s were fed by an NAD Masters M66 streaming preamplifier, which features Dirac Live room correction. While I did measure and set up Dirac with the MB2s, I spent the entire review period listening to the uncorrected, unprocessed signal. Toward the end of my time with the MB2s, I played around with the Dirac Live–optimized signal path and discovered that there’s great value in this form of processing—but that’s another story.
I first hooked up the M23 V2s to the MB2s with Audience Au24 SX speaker cables. This was a great matchup, and I’d likely have left them in place, but the banana-plug connections stuck out a touch too far, given the space available on the limestone fireplace mantle. I replaced them with Crystal Cable Art Series Monet cables, as the spade lugs provided that extra inch of clearance, which made all the difference. And man, did these cables sound amazing in this configuration.
While Rob, Ron, and I were setting up the M66, I made the mistake of fumbling with my phone as it was feeding a Rush song—I think it was “The Spirit of Radio”—to the M66 via Qobuz Connect. Somehow I made the M66 crank up to full volume. That’s 700 hard-core, solid-state watts. I almost shat myself. It was insanely loud, the loudest thing ever. Jet-engine-at-close-range, air-raid-siren loud. The right woofer bonked into its stops with a sharp crack. It only took a couple of seconds for me to fumble the volume back down, but I thought for sure I’d destroyed the MB2s.
I thought back to something Doug Schneider had told me. PMC co-founder Peter Thomas had worked in the BBC’s R&D department, and one of his duties was to evaluate all of the professional monitors on the market. This involved testing many to the point of destruction to find their limits. If indeed I had smoked the MB2s, I hoped Peter and his son Oliver Thomas, who’s co-CEO along with Tom Loader (son of PMC’s other co-founder, Adrian Loader), would cut me some slack . . .
After we’d caught our breath, I slowly ramped the system back up. To my surprise, the MB2s showed no sign of strain or damage. The relief in the room was palpable. I think the moral of this little slice of misfortune is that these are rugged speakers. That’s in no small part due to PMC’s pro-audio heritage, and likely there’s some carryover from the elder Thomas’s experience with blowing shit up.
As wide as a church door
But Thorpe, tell us what the MB2 sounds like! Drop the puck already!
The MB2 is a magnificent speaker in every way. That’s a bold statement, but I’ll stand by it. Its first and most obvious characteristic is its complete ease, its effortless nature no matter the listening level. Part of me wants to say that the MB2 has dynamic poise, but that’s selling it short. I think it’s more like a dynamic attack. While the MB2 presents music on the plane of the speakers—without recessing it or moving it forward in any way—this speaker just snaps out at you. It accelerates; it defies gravity. A random track that Qobuz decided to play on me, “Stranded Pearl” from Giant Sand’s Provisions (16‑bit/44.1kHz FLAC, Fire Records/ Qobuz), placed Howe Gelb’s voice directly in front of me, lifelike, realistic, and with a sense of reality that I so very rarely get from hi-fi. The detail was astonishing. Beyond the feeling of Gelb’s voice being so real, I was intimately aware that he was singing into a microphone, that the microphone compressed his voice, and that the MB2s re-animated and rehydrated his voice back into a signal that the speakers reproduced.
I could still enjoy the music—holy hell, could I ever—but with the MB2s on point, I could hear so far, so deep into the music that it felt like I was traveling down the wires, back through the microphone, and emerging into the recording studio. That makes sense, I guess, as the MB2 is first and foremost a tool that’s used in recording studios.
The MB2s presented images with a superb sense of realism, placing them firmly in position, with appropriate size and depth. The backup singers on “Stranded Pearl” were breathy and sensual, just behind and to either side of Gelb, distinct in a way I’d imagine would be extremely helpful to someone mixing an album. I don’t want to wax on about the MB2’s imaging, because it just seemed to naturally flow from this speaker’s dynamic mastery. The images the MB2s threw out felt so real and natural that I stopped paying attention to them and sank into the overall gestalt of how the PMCs presented music.
As I sit here typing, looking up askance at the pair of MB2s, I get the feeling that much of this speaker’s sense of musical realism, of its sense of dynamic speed, is due to that midrange dome. It feels like it’s leading the charge, pulling the rest of the speaker along for the ride. It’s quick through the midrange but delicate where required. Qobuz must have realized that I really do like Giant Sand, because it kept playing more of it. I can’t complain, since the MB2 has a wonderful way with male voices. On “Forever and a Day” from Tucson (released under the band’s large-ensemble moniker, Giant Giant Sand; 16/44.1 FLAC, Fire Records / Qobuz), I just turned up the volume. There was still that incredible dynamic speed, but now I wasn’t just in the studio, I was at a live performance, that small increase in level enhancing the rhythmic stride of this Tex-Mex plate of rice and beans.
This is a major part of the MB2 SE’s appeal. The louder you crank it, the better it sounds. But hear this—it also sounds fantastic at low volumes. This points to the MB2 being a well-designed, well-provisioned speaker. Giant Sand needs a good juicing, but not too loud, as you have to be able to talk to the waitress over your beer, make sure she got your order right. It’s bar music, but there’s no need to be right close to the band—you need a dark corner in which to sell all that black-tar opium.
You see what’s going on here? The PMCs are right and truly drawing me in, placing me within the goings on in the music. These are musically satisfying speakers. So much so that I find them leading me into a reverie whenever I try to explain why. Let me try again.
The MB2’s soft-dome tweeter is exceptionally well behaved. It totally keeps up with the speed of the midrange, and it refuses to harden up even when it’s playing treble-heavy music at high volumes. It’s smooth and grain-free, yet it conveys heaps of detail. Swapping over to an unknown-to-me album by Marta Sánchez, For the Space You Left (16/44.1 FLAC, Out of Your Head Records / Qobuz), I cued up “Frost Bloom,” which is a fun solo-piano piece that jumps all over the place. There are some crazy tinkly notes that sound like Sánchez is actually hitting the strings inside the harp of the piano, and the MB2s just snapped those accents out at me. Soft domes, in my experience, tend to sound soft, relaxed, slightly reticent. Not here. The MB2 is far from a polite speaker, and its tweeter delivers an incredible amount of information. That said, it does retain the most endearing feature of its breed—it encourages long listening sessions through its utter lack of grit and distortion; it gets out of the way while drawing you right into the recording.
I’ve been saving the best for last. The MB2 does indeed slam out unlimited, effortless, satisfying, world-class bass. When we three neighbors first hooked up the MB2s to the NAD amplification chain, one of the first tracks we played was Colin Stetson’s “Awake on Foreign Shores” from New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges (16/44.1 FLAC, Constellation Records / Qobuz). Rob was sitting beside me as Stetson let loose with his effects-laden bass saxophone. “It sounds like he’s using a cedar roofing shingle for a reed,” he said. This is a great demo track—from the fundamental note on up there’s an insane number of overtones all fighting for space, layer upon layer, and the MB2s shook the room, pressurizing that large space. The overall effect was one of power, of deep-seated terror, an alien invasion.
When we pushed ahead to “Lord I Just Can’t Keep from Crying Sometimes,” the MB2s added a feeling of sickness, of dread, to this deeply disturbing track. Long, droning pressure waves shut us all up, pushed us back into our seats. I kept jabbing at the M66’s remote, raising the volume one notch at a time, trying to find the limit—which would give out first, the MB2s or us? About halfway through the track, I knuckled under. It was too powerful, too frightening. Even at these absurd volumes, the MB2s remained clear and stress-free. This wasn’t my ears reaching a limit, as I didn’t feel any sense of strain or discomfort. Instead, it was an unwillingness to allow Stetson to punish me any further. As I backed off the throttle a couple of notches, I noticed Ron and Rob visibly relax. There’s no real reason to play any speaker that loud, even though the MB2 can easily reach such levels.
With more-conventional music, the MB2’s low end continued to shine. I spent several sessions listening to Rush, from Permanent Waves through Moving Pictures, and the MB2s resolved this complicated, busy music in a manner that was extremely endearing.
A couple years back, the Toronto Transit Authority installed a green roof on their vehicle-storage facility near the lakeshore. As if they hadn’t anticipated this, the roof became home to a metric fuckton of nesting gulls. So many that their shit started to eat through the roof itself. In order to deter the gulls, the smooth-brains at the TTC decided to install a “noise cannon” on the roof that fires off twice per hour. This facility is about two miles from my house, and it’s still loud enough to scare the living hell out of my dog. It’s a distant, concussive boom. I’m telling you this because Neil Peart’s kick drum at the start of “The Camera Eye” from Moving Pictures (40th Anniversary) (24/48 FLAC, Mercury Records / Qobuz) immediately brought to mind that noise cannon. Peart’s kick drum starts off in the distance, slowly moving forward in space until it’s in line with the bass and guitar. Even at reasonable, normal listening levels, I could feel the sharp report from Peart’s pedal striking the drumskin, could sense a very real pressure wave launching out into the room. It was a notable effect, greatly increasing the sense of realism and elevating my enjoyment of this track.
’Tis enough, ’twill serve
All this to say, the MB2 SE is one of the most musically satisfying speakers I’ve experienced.
It seems that I was destined to review a pair of MB2 SEs. Over the last two years, I feel like I’ve been ascending an ever-steeper slope, climbing up a cliff where a different, new, astonishing speaker awaited me on every ledge. I’ve had the DALI Epikore 11s—the velvet hammer—followed by the equally hard-hitting Epikore 9s; then the Bowers & Wilkins 801 D4 Signatures took my breath away, as did the combination of the 805 D4 Signatures with two DB2D subwoofers. Just last month the Sphinx Element 3s wrapped me up in a cocoon of silk and honey, and I couldn’t have been happier.
All of these speakers I’ve listed, with the exception of the 805 D4 Signatures, retail for large chunks of money, all within spitting distance of each other. They all sound dramatically different, each pair having a distinct flavor. From the hyper-realistic 801s, with their in-your-face imaging and whip-crack bass, to the native richness and extended, silky treble of the DALIs, right through to the intimate, wraparound luxuriousness of the Element 3s—so wildly different, yet all serving the music at the end of the day. I’d be happy listening to any of these speakers for the rest of my days.
But now I must be close to reaching the summit of Jason’s speaker adventure. I’ve been listening to the MB2 SEs for a couple of months now, and with the start of every track, of every listening session, I’ve found myself looking up at these monstrous speakers and thinking to myself, I could live with these. I would very much like to live with these.
. . . Jason Thorpe
jasont@soundstagenetwork.com
Associated Equipment
- Turntables: VPI Prime Signature, European Audio Team Fortissimo S
- Cartridges: European Audio Team Jo N°8, DS Audio DS 003, Goldring Ethos SE, Ortofon MC 90X
- Phono preamplifiers: Aqvox Phono 2 CI, Hegel Music Systems V10, EMM Labs DS‑EQ1, Meitner Audio DS‑EQ2, Mola Mola Lupe
- Preamplifiers: Hegel Music Systems P30A, Meitner Audio Pre, Simaudio Moon Evolution 740P, NAD Masters M66
- Power amplifiers: Hegel Music Systems H30A, NAD Masters M23 V2
- Integrated amplifiers: WiiM Amp Ultra, Engström Arne
- Digital source: Meitner Audio MA3
- Speakers: Focus Audio FP60 BE, Aurelia XO Cerica XL, Totem Acoustic Sky Tower
- Speaker cables: Siltech Royal Single Crown, Audience Au24 SX, Nordost Tyr 2, Crystal Cable Art Series Monet
- Interconnects: Siltech Royal Single Crown, Audience Au24 SX, Furutech Ag‑16, Nordost Tyr 2, Crystal Cable Diamond Series 2
- Power cords: Siltech Royal Single Crown, Audience FrontRow, Nordost Vishnu, Audioquest Thunder
- Power conditioners: Quantum QBase QB8 Mk II, AudioQuest Niagara 5000
- Accessories: Little Fwend tonearm lift, VPI Cyclone record-cleaning machine, IsoAcoustics Gaia III Neo loudspeaker isolation footer
PMC MB2 SE loudspeaker
Price: US$49,999, CA$59,999, £34,095, €39,900 per pair, including matching stands
Warranty: 20 years, parts and labor
PMC
Holme Court
Biggleswade, Bedfordshire, SG18 9ST
UK
Phone: +44 1767 686300
Website: pmc-speakers.com
