PMC’s 35th anniversary was celebrated at the High End Vienna with star guests, live immersive music production demonstrations and a party for customers and friends of the business.
35 years after the company’s first pair of studio monitors was installed at the BBC Maida Vale Studio, PMC brought its newest professional loudspeakers to the High End with the build of PMC Studio Vienna – a fully working Dolby Atmos mixing studio – to demonstrate its role in the production of so much of the world’s music.
Visitors to the show were treated to live ‘on-the-fly’ demonstrations of immersive audio mixing with singer, songwriter and producer SOHN, and multi-Grammy Award winning mix engineer Steve Genewick. Using tracks from SOHN’s debut album Tremors, the pair remixed them, in real time, into Dolby Atmos, even incorporating suggestions from the audience members to produce entirely unique re-imaginings of the tracks.
The studio also played host to High End Show ambassador, Dominique Fils-Aimé, who presented the Atmos mixes of tracks from her new album, My World is the Sun. In addition, Steve Genewick and PMC’s Maurice Patist presented a ‘Behind the Hits’ glimpse from inside the inner sanctum of Capitol Studios, and also stripped bare some of the most famous and definitive jazz recordings.
For vinyl lovers, PMC’s flagship home audio speakers, fenestria, were used to demonstrate the skills and results of half speed vinyl mastering and cutting, with the world’s foremost practitioner of the art, Miles Showell.
Friday evening drew a capacity crowd for a party celebrating the company’s 35th anniversary. Distributors and retailers, members of the audio media, musicians, producers and close friends all helped mark this milestone in the company’s history. A short speech by co-CEOs Tom Loader and Oliver Thomas welcomed the guests before handing over to co-founder and chairman, Peter Thomas, who thanked everyone who has contributed to the business’s success over the years.
Before the guests were treated to sessions with SOHN, Steve Genewick and Miles Showell in the studio, a video documenting a recent re-visit to BBC Maida Vale by Peter Thomas was played to the assembled guests. In it, Thomas explained the circumstances that led to the birth of PMC. As engineering services manager at Maida Vale between 1985 and 1991, he was tasked with finding a high-performance studio monitor speaker that could handle the high sound pressure levels required by Radio 1 and Radio 2, while still retaining the accuracy, clarity and neutrality demanded by the BBC studio engineers.
Nothing commercially available came close to what was required and so Thomas, with his friend and FWO Bauch engineer Adrian Loader, decided to develop their own solution.
Based on transmission-line technology, what became known as the BB5, was sold to the BBC for use at Maida Vale, and that original pair could be seen still in situ in the control room, in the re-visit video. PMC was born and Thomas and Loader left their respective jobs and now, 35 years later, its speakers are used in the world’s greatest music and movie production studios, by artists, engineers, producers and broadcasting facilities and by the most discerning music lovers and audiophiles.
“Reflecting on the show, Oliver Thomas says, “We chose to focus on music rather than products. Instead of simply demonstrating loudspeakers, we invited a collection of PMC friends and industry experts, from Atmos mixing engineers to world-renowned vinyl mastering specialists, to share unique recordings and the stories behind them.
“By presenting these exceptional tracks through what we believe are the world’s finest loudspeakers, visitors experienced not just how the music sounds, but how it was created, mixed, mastered and intended to be heard.”
Tom Loader sums up the anniversary party, “Celebrating 35 years like this really reminds us that PMC has always been about people. Our staff, our customers, our partners and our friends — the relationships we’ve built with all of them mean everything to us. We simply wouldn’t be where we are today without them, and we’re hugely grateful to everyone who’s been part of the journey. We genuinely love what we do, and it’s that passion that continues to drive us forward.”