After a history of catering to the high-fidelity world of true audiophiles, Bowers & Wilkins, the renowned British speaker manufacturer, has recently entered the realm of consumer-level audio. The latest addition to its more affordable line of products are the MM-1 PC speakers that will cost you a mere $499.95 (list). Ouch. But like most of B&W's designs, you can see and hear the quality you're paying for. The MM-1 features articulate and deep bass response and handles mids and highs with delicacy and precision. The design follows in the slick footsteps of the Zeppelin ($399.95 direct, ) and Zeppelin Mini ($599 direct, ) iPod docks with its minimalist black cloth and aluminum plate surface. If you value high design and your music collection resides primarily on your PC, the MM-1 is a solid investment.

Design and Features
Each speaker measures 6.7 by 3.9 by 3.9 inches (HWD) and weighs 1.9 pounds, with all the connectors and controls built in to the right speaker. An LED indicates listening mode, and on the left-hand panel (part of a thin aluminum band that wraps around three-fourths of the rectangular contour), there's a Power button and source selector. The right-hand panel houses Volume controls. The 3.5mm headphone jack can be found on the rear panel, along with an Aux input jack for MP3 players and other devices, while three cables (from left to right: the connection to the left speaker, the audio input-from-USB, and the power adapter jack) connect neatly into a recessed port on the right speaker's bottom panel. All of the necessary cables—including a 3.5mm aux—are bundled with the MM-1, I just wish they were slightly longer. My biggest gripe with the design: The speakers should be angled upward slightly toward your ears, or they should sit on stands.

The included remote has controls for Power, Volume, Play/Pause, Skip Forward/Backward, and Mute. It also offers some control for iTunes on your PC. The bummer here is that B&W continues to favor design over function for its remote controls: You don't get full menu navigation in iTunes (moving from artist to artist, for example), and the small egg-shaped design makes the remote hard to hold while trying to hit its buttons.

Audio Performance
B&W designs speakers that not only look amazing, but sound spectacular, and the MM-1 is no exception. They don't stack up against a pair of multi-thousand dollar B&W stereo speakers, but they compete quite well in the limited high-end PC speaker arena. Some of the standouts in this thin field: The Audioengine 2 ($200 direct, ) is a simple, high-quality flat response pair with a much lower price tag, and the cool-looking, orb-like Razer Mako ($400 direct, ) gaming speakers offer crisp highs and a booming low-end (with a big subwoofer to match), but is intended for a very different listener. Side by side, however, these units don't offer as musical an experience as the MM-1.

The low-end response produced by the MM-1 is impressive given the speakers' relatively small profiles. You can easily get more low frequencies out of a system with a subwoofer, but B&W has armed this system with plenty of bass. And the low end is balanced; it never sounds boomy or distorts, even at high volumes. There is some built-in digital signal processing, which I suspect adds some dynamic compression at high volumes to prevent distortion. Audiophiles may thumb their noses at this concept, as it means the signal is being altered, but the processing is fairly subtle and allows the MM-1 to get quite loud and still sound good. While playing Thom Yorke's "Cymbal Rush" and the Knife's "Silent Shout," both songs with tremendously deep bass hits, there was no distortion at high volumes, but vibrations caused the speakers to move around a little bit on my desktop during testing. At more reasonable volumes the speakers stood still, and at virtually all levels, the MM-1 sounded fantastic. It just might not be the system to buy if you're thinking of using it for blasting tunes at a house party. (If that's what you're looking for, the aforementioned Razer Mako should do the trick.)

Orchestral music sounds superb on the MM-1. Bernard Herrmann's Vertigo film score's harps and strings shined in my tests. The MM-1 reproduced the delicate, spooky sounds without any tinny side effects, and the lower orchestral instruments were portrayed with just the right level of low-end resonance.

This probably has something to do with B&W's choice to use a USB port rather than the headphone jack as an output, like most PC speakers do. (The Focal XS ($599 direct, ), another high-end wonder with a slightly less sexy, but more functional design, also uses a USB port.) This allows the speakers to bypass the computer's audio output—the digital audio signal is received via USB and processed within the speakers internally using a digital amplifier. That said, my iPod still sounded excellent when connected via the 3.5mm input, so the majority of the quality can be attributed to the excellent drivers—a 3-inch long-throw woofer for the low frequencies and a 1-inch Nautilus tube-loaded aluminum tweeter. Simply stated, each speaker has a dedicated driver for high frequencies and one for lows, and they are of very high quality, even for this price range.

It's easy to dismiss a product like the MM-1 because of its high $500 price. If your budget is limited, and you have the space to accommodate a subwoofer, you should consider our Editors' Choice PC speakers, Harman Kardon's SoundSticks II ($169.99 direct, ). But if money is no object and you want phenomenal speakers for your computer, the Bowers & Wilkins MM-1 is worth a listen.

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