Celebrating their 25th anniversary, PMC have dubbed their first integrated amplifier 'cor', which has been designed and hand-built by PMC in the UK and works entirely in the analogue domain.

We caught up with Sam Encel, Director at Interdyn who represents PMC in Australia, in Munich who said:

The cor integrated is an amplifier that adds no sonic character of its own to the music. It follows exactly the same design ethos for high resolution playback as used in the creation of all PMC’s loudspeakers, namely musicality, transparency and neutrality, where nothing is added and nothing is taken away. The role of the amplifier, like the company's speakers, is to reproduce the music exactly as it is meant to be heard.

PMC says that every element of the cor has been developed with purity of sound at the top of the criteria list.

The cor features four unbalanced RCA analogue inputs as well as a pair of balanced XLR inputs. There's also a set of direct inputs that connect straight to the power amplifier.

Unashamedly, the cor integrated does not feature any digital inputs in an intentional move to remain true to the analogue purist.

Entering into the consumer side of audio electronics for the first time, PMC says they made no compromise. All the components used were selected only after extensive listening tests, including the black PCBs and the volume control, which, together with the tone and balance faders, are motorised using the finest technology from professional mixing consoles, and are remote controllable via the extruded aluminium remote control that echoes the style of the amplifier.

Power output from the Class A/B design is said to be conservatively rated at 95 watts into 8 ohms and 140 watts into 4 ohms.

The surging popularity of headphone listening also hasn't been overlooked. The cor features an auto-sensing true audiophile Class A/B headphone amplifier.

Whatever the sensitivity of the connected headphones, the cors headphone output has enough drive to make them sing, while protecting them from overload and maintaining a musical, neutral and transparent sound.

PMC draws upon the much respected work of Sidney Darlington from Bell Labs. The PMC designers auditioned many different configurations of transistor implementation before settling on the Darlington design, which was found to provide the best transparency.

The output devices are at the forefront of modern transistor technology and incorporate temperature sensors inside the transistor. When combined with PMC’s proprietary first stage module, this means optimum temperature tracking, resulting in phenomenally low distortion, lower heat and greater stability.

Peter Thomas, PMC's founder and owner added:

For many years my passion has been developing amplifiers for our professional loudspeakers, and now a pure analogue amplifier for the consumer world, designed from the ground up. I wanted to take our holistic approach to loudspeaker design, one of musical purity, and bring it to the electronics, through the reduction of noise and the amplifying of nothing but the music.

I am thrilled and delighted to be able to present the cor integrated, the realisation of a dream come true, that has been driven not by commercial pressures, but by the desire to do it right.

According to Interdyn, global availability will be very limited on the PMC cor. Local pricing has not yet been announced but expressions of interest are encouraged via local PMC stockists.

For more information visit the PMC brand page.