PHOTOS: Bowers and Wilkins MM-1 ears on

We have a play with the new PC speakers

21 November 2009 6:01 GMT / By Stuart Miles

Announced in early November, we've managed to score a photo gallery and ears on with the new Bowers and Wilkins MM-1 PC speakers that according to the company will "revolutionise the experience" of music, video and games.

The speakers, which as you can see from the pictures look like two large towers, are stylishly designed, bringing with them some of the styling found on the B&W Zeppelin and the Zeppelin Mini.

It's to be expected. After all the product has been built by the same team behind the company's Zeppelin iPod speaker, and each channel contains a full range, active, near field monitor with two drive units that include an aluminium dome tweeter for snazzier treble.

Bass output shouldn't be too much of a problem either, says the company, thanks to various proprietary DSP techs that have been crammed in.

There's a headphone jack in there so you can switch over to quiet mode while at your desk and the whole system connects to your PC or Mac via a USB socket, so it can do the audio encoding and processing itself rather than letting your computer do it.

Sound wise, we heard a very early pre-production model (we actually saw them a day after the announcement, but they were empty shells) and are happy to report that they produce a very mellow sound that would happily fill your desk with sweet music. We were subjected to Seal, Razorback, and Pink, not a great choice admittedly, but the speakers coped well even though B&W were keen to point out a lot of work was still to be done. It would be interesting to see how they perform with some Dylan for vocals and Crystal Method or The Prodigy when turned up loud.

We will wait for the final thing before giving a verdict, but from what we've heard so far, if you're looking for PC speakers with good sound and great style, this might just be the thing.

We will keep you posted.