Напольная акустика — PMC PMC15 XBD

The PMC15 XBD is a three-way, four-driver active reference system made by the British firm PMC, conceived as a dual-cabinet system for large-format recording, mixing and mastering rooms. It takes the standard PMC15 and adds a second low-frequency enclosure, the SUBxbd, continuing the XBD approach that PMC began with the BB5 and BB6 XBD more than 35 years ago. Each channel is a tower of two boxes that can stand freely, sit in vertical or horizontal stacks, or be soffit-mounted side by side.

Key specs that matter

Every channel carries two 15-inch bass drivers, one per enclosure, a 75 mm soft-dome midrange and a hand-built 34 mm soft-dome tweeter. Amplifier power per channel is 800 W for the tweeter, 800 W for the midrange and 2,000 W for each bass unit, a total of 5,600 W. PMC quotes a frequency response of 16 Hz to 25 kHz, a maximum continuous level of 116 dB and a peak of 133 dB. Each cabinet measures 1040 mm high, 432 mm wide and 790 mm deep, plus 20 mm for the bass driver surround. The master three-way box weighs 97 kg and the SUBxbd 87 kg. Inputs accept analogue and digital signals up to 192 kHz.

Engineering and use context

The 15-inch woofers were developed in-house and use double-stacked magnet assemblies and three-layer voice coils of 3 inches. Both enclosures use Advanced Transmission Line bass loading, with an effective line length of 4.0 m per tower. The midrange is the PMC75v3 dome, fitted with the n-compass dual-profile waveguide to keep dispersion wide through the crossover region, and together with the tweeter it is shared with the PMC10 and PMC12 systems. Control sits in the Master36, a rackmount DSP and amplifier unit that drives the tweeter, midrange and woofer of the master cabinet, while a separate power20 amplifier feeds the woofer in the XBD box. The DSP handles digital crossovers and excursion protection, and all settings are made over a standard LAN through the browser-based SoundAlign2 interface.

Pairing

No external power amplifier is needed, since one Master36 and one power20 serve each channel, so the system takes its feed directly from a mixing desk, monitor controller or preamplifier through analogue or digital links. The rack electronics have to be housed near the monitors, and the combined 184 kg per tower calls for a floor or soffit structure able to carry that load.

Alternatives

The PMC12 XBD is the related dual-cabinet active system from the same generation, sharing the tweeter and PMC75v3 midrange with this model.