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Living Voice vs PMC?

Just about to ship my B&W's and now the question is what to buy. I've been looking at the Living Voice Avatars and could locally get a pair of PMC OB1+'s which I've auditoned before and very much liked them.

As I'm planning on buying a Mastersound Due Venti integrated the Living Voice speakers should be the better choice as they seem to fit a tube amp better, but I've never had a chance to audition these speakers and can only go by reviews and what I can find in the forums.

I did prefer the PMC's to my B&W 703's as they sounded somewhat warmer and the bass was a bit stronger.

Would like to hear from anyone who may have had the chance to hear and possibly compare these speakers as I'll have to take my pick sometime soon and am not sure what to do yet, however, I do lean towards the Living Voice line as they seem to allow me for a bigger choice of amps.

Thanks
krauti
shadorne's avatar
shadorne
7,491 posts
 
The PMC OB1+ does not use the same high quality midrange as in the bigger
PMC's - it uses the Vifa D75MX (which is cheap and compresses quite easily).
IMHO, better to get a "real" PMC - the ones with their own big
3" dome or an older used PMC model that uses the high quality ATC mid
dome. Two cents.
ryder
1,748 posts
 
I agree with Shadorne on the bigger PMCs. If you can afford it, you should look at EB1, a 3-way which features a Sonolex tweeter, dedicated 3" midrange driver and 10" woofer. If out of your budget, you might want to look at the Harbeth SHL-5. This speaker may change your life forever. Great transparency and very coherent throughout the spectrum largely contributed by the Radial woofer, a proprietary driver exclusively manufactured in-house by Harbeth that gives the warm and fresh Harbeth sound.
sashav
72 posts
 
EB1 has the same Vifa midrange driver as OB1, so if that is the criteria there is no point going to EB1.
You want to look for speakers that use ATC or PMC (not Vifa) dome midrange, there are several manufacturers that sue them.
In PMC lineup, the first one is IB2.
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