B&W PM1- An Amazing Little Speaker

I have an audiophile friend that is always surprising me with how good his system, which is the opposite of my low wattage SET amp with high efficiency speaker system, can sound. He normally plays through large Maggies, but last night he had his 75 watt Audio Research tube amp playing through these tiny B&W speakers and I was shocked at how good they sounded, even without a sub. In fact, the speakers were sitting just inside the Maggies and I didn't realize until he told me that it was the B&Ws that were playing (although a A/B comparison probably would have been obvious). The imaging and soundstage were excellent and I was hearing a lot of the micro-details that I have come to expect from my system. Also, acoustic instruments and vocals, the real strength of SET amp setups, sounded amazingly good. The bass, if not powerful, was very crisp and punchy. Of course, it didn't hurt that his room is fairly small and very well treated.

I think it just goes to prove that there are many ways to achieve the same objective. It is often not so much the particular design type, but the execution that matters.

This has me interested in hearing some of the big B&Ws.

Anybody else have a similar experience with small speakers?

 

Oh yea many times, but especially with my Boston Acoustic CR6 speakers.
I've blown some minds with these inexpensive little jewels.