PMC is 35, Tom Loader talks about the family business he now runs
At the Vienna High End show earlier this month PMC celebrated 35 years since the company was founded by Peter Thomas and Adrian Loader. Today the PMC is co-run by Ollie Thomas and Tom Loader, it’s very much a family business despite being so successful. Tom started out on the shop floor at PMC building loudspeakers and moved onto procurement before taking on the role of CEO with Ollie.Â
He summed up the anniversary thus “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.”
After the celebrations we sat down with Tom to discuss what’s what at PMC today.
The Ear: Have you got any new products to talk about this year?
Tom Loader: Not in the hi-fi world, no. Obviously, the prophecy launch was the big one for us. Back at the end of 2024 and the start of 2025, we started sharing that new range with the world. It’s been fantastic – really successful. People are loving it.
What’s interesting is that in some markets the prophecy 9 has become the most popular model. You’d naturally expect us to sell more of the smaller models, like the 1s and 5s, in terms of unit numbers, but the 7s and 9s are actually outperforming them in some territories.
The Ear: Really?
Tom: Yes. The Sevens and Nines are doing particularly well. That was partly deliberate when we developed the range. Previously, we had the twenty5.24 as a two-way and the twenty5.26 as our three-way model. A lot of people wanted something in between – a kind of three-way version of the 24 – and that’s why we created the prophecy 7.
Now we have two three-way models instead of one, and people have really responded to that. Often someone who starts looking at the 5 ends up buying the 7, and someone considering the Seven ends up going for the 9.
The Ear: They don’t look too big, do they? In fact, they seem smaller than the previous generation.
Tom: Yes, I think that’s true. They look more discreet and don’t take up as much visual space. Perhaps part of that is because they aren’t leaned back like some of the previous models.
One of the core aims of the prophecy range was to make it visually more attractive. We wanted the speakers to be beautiful pieces of furniture as well as great loudspeakers. That was very much part of the design brief.
Ollie Thomas, Elliot White and the rest of the design team all contributed to that. We also used a lot of natural materials, including cork gaskets. It’s great from a sustainability point of view, but they’re also beautiful materials and acoustically very effective, so you get a double benefit.
The key thing was that these speakers are going into people’s homes. They have to sound brilliant – it’s a PMC product, so it has to deserve the logo – but we also wanted people to look at them and think, that’s a beautiful piece of furniture and I want it in my living room. I think people often underestimate how important that is.
I haven’t had a chance to look around the show yet, but we do have a bit of a competition every year to find the craziest thing on display.
The Ear: I quite like one of the new Elipson products. They’ve done a speaker inspired by the old HMV dog logo – it’s a little white speaker with two pods sticking out. It’s quite mad, but fun.
Tom: Just one speaker?
The Ear: I think so. Probably a Bluetooth speaker or something similar.
Tom: We’ll see who wins the “craziest product” award this year. There are always a few interesting things at the show. I haven’t had much chance to look around because we’ve been incredibly busy. That’s been fantastic, though. This year we haven’t come with a new product launch. Instead, we’ve focused on giving people a unique experience.
As you know, PMC operates in both the professional audio and hi-fi worlds, which gives us some unique opportunities. One of those is what we’ve brought to the show this year: a live Dolby Atmos mixing studio.
The Ear: You did something even bigger in Munich, didn’t you? Was there any live mixing involved there?
Tom: No, in Munich we were only doing playback. We worked with Steven Wilson and it was great fun. This year, again in collaboration with High End, we wanted to take things to the next level. We’ve brought in Steve Genewick, the Grammy Award-winning mastering engineer from Capitol Studios, to explain how he works and demonstrate the process.
What’s fascinating is that we don’t usually get much insight into what mastering engineers actually do. We all know the music goes through mastering, but we rarely get to hear directly from the people responsible for it. Some of the things Steve explained were incredible.
My favourite session was with the artist Sohn. He very generously provided all of the stems from one of his tracks, and Steve mixed it live from stereo into Atmos during the show. How Steve managed to do that in less than an hour, I have no idea.
The Ear: I suppose he wasn’t expecting to release the result.
Tom: Exactly! But it was fascinating to watch Steve at work and see Sohn contribute to the process.
The Ear: Steve’s primarily a mastering engineer?
Tom: Yes, although he’s done some live work as well. We’ve known him for years because of his time at Capitol Records, which ties into the development of the PMC QB1.
The Ear: Remind me about that.
Tom: The QB1 is our flagship main studio monitor. It uses four ten-inch flat-piston drivers and was originally developed specifically for Capitol Studios in Los Angeles. They had two soffit-mounted spaces in their studios that needed filling, and they asked us to design something for them. The QB1 was the result.
We assumed that would be the end of it, but everyone who visited Capitol wanted a pair. It ended up becoming a commercial product and was hugely successful. Then someone decided they wanted even more output, so we developed the QB1 XBD with additional sub-bass capability. That was slightly mad, but it happened! The benefit of those relationships is that they constantly challenge us with new requirements. Every project teaches us something.
Engineers are always working within limitations. If engineers had their way, every speaker would be enormous. But constraints create innovation. The QB1 project was a perfect example. We had a fixed form factor and had to design the best possible loudspeaker within those parameters.
The Ear: The system you’ve got in the studio here – is that a replacement for the QB1?
Tom: Yes and no. We launched an entirely new range of main monitor systems at NAMM this year. The QB1 has now been discontinued and replaced by a new model called the 10-4. It follows a similar concept but is essentially a better, faster and more capable evolution.
What’s interesting is that some of the technology in the new monitor range comes directly from our hi-fi products. We’ve applied lessons learned from Laminair technology in products such as prophecy and the twenty5 series to the new professional monitors. The transfer of knowledge goes both ways between our pro and hi-fi divisions.
The Ear: Ever since Laminair came along, I’ve asked Ollie when he’s going to put it into the fact8 and fact12. Every year he tells me to “watch this space.”
Tom: It’s still “watch this space”!
The Ear: I’ll try to be patient.
Tom: The latest Laminair X technology is now found in prophecy and the new professional monitors. Fenestria uses the original Laminair design rather than Laminair X. So if we were ever to do something new in the future, perhaps around 2027, then it’s certainly possible that Laminair X would be part of it.
The Ear: Fenestria remains my favourite PMC product.
Tom: It’s probably my favourite too. The transparency of the midrange is extraordinary.
The Ear: Do you have a pair at home?
Tom: I wish! I have a pair of fact8s, which I absolutely love, but not Fenestrias. Peter Thomas has Fenestrias at home, and I helped him set them up. It’s a nice memory because I don’t often get the chance to sit down and simply listen to music with him.
We spent some time listening after the installation. I think he probably put on some Elton John. The speakers weren’t even fully run in, but the midrange was already stunning – so open, so spacious.
The Ear: A lot of manufacturers seem increasingly focused on wide dispersion these days. Bowers & Wilkins certainly are.
Tom: Yes, it’s interesting. We approach it from the perspective of making the loudspeakers disappear. We want listeners to hear the music, not the speaker. That’s why we use narrow baffles, carefully designed waveguides and diffraction control around the drivers. Fenestria takes that idea to the extreme. The midrange and tweeter section is incredibly narrow and isolated from the bass cabinet assembly. The result is exceptional openness and imaging.
Fenestria also incorporates many different engineering ideas – mass dampers, cabinet isolation and other technologies that all contribute to the final performance.
The Ear: Was Fenestria effectively a blank-sheet design?
Tom: Very much so. As our flagship product, it was an opportunity to ask: “What would we build if there were virtually no constraints?” Ollie Thomas led the project, but Elliot White – now our Head of Design – also played a major role. In fact, the first PMC product Elliot designed was the Cor integrated amplifier.
The Ear: PMC still makes the Cor?
Tom: Yes, although we don’t talk about it much. It’s a fantastic amplifier. We’ve learned a lot over the last decade, so there are undoubtedly things we could improve. Maybe even a power amplifier to go with it – that would be fun.