Philharmonic BMR Monitor Semi-Objective Review - Road Show Stop 1

[alexis]

Sorry about the fingerprints. I didn't want to wipe them for fear of scratching them.

These are some of the best BMR cabinet pictures I've seen recently. I shipped your BMR today. If you find fingerprints, I must also fear of scratching them. Both BMR measured well before boxing them.

 

[alexis]

So to confirm - for the US only the squarer cabinets are available - they will be generally in the wine colored veneer with limited runs in piano white and black? You will also get the choice of black or white woofer? In Taiwan however there are limited runs of curved cabinets in other colors too like the red that has been shown? I assume the curved cab's are more $$$, because they are sure are pretty otherwise.

Speaking of the woofer - this is a 6" woofer while the f206 uses a similar but not identical 5.25 for mid and 2x6.5 for bass. How then does the BMR go lower? Is it all about the port tuning? It's not like the cabinet is bigger for the BMR.

Hope this helps on the cabinets:

1. US has only square/rectangle/non-curved cabinets (Well - Except my personal pair. I couldn't resist...)
2. US will have mostly wine-color walnut cabinets, and a few black and white (Dennis already pre-sold some of these, so if you want black or white, I'd suggest you contact him for a small deposit)
3. All woofers will be white going forward (unless some special circumstances) Our last black woofer pair went to Steve Dallas.
4. Taiwan has curved BMR in Feb 2021 using Burl veneer like the upcoming BMR Tower in the US market. Curved is more expensive and more rigid because the sides are thinner MDF layers laminated together, extra labor and materials are required to construct these cabinets. See the picture:

The curved cabinet BMR in Taiwan also receive red copper binding posts and wire upgrades (Do I think it would make a sonic difference, highly unlikely, all customers buying Curved cabinets want the red copper binding posts because of the looks)

 

[Steve Dallas]

These are some of the best BMR cabinet pictures I've seen recently. I shipped your BMR today. If you find fingerprints, I must also fear of scratching them. Both BMR measured well before boxing them.

Obviously, I will need those measurements!

 

[aarons915]

I probably should stop making statements based on memory. It is there at ~1dB, and ~1dB is what we see in my office measurement.

It is also visible in the plot @alexis posted. There is a 1 to 2dB bounce, bounce, bounce starting just above 1K, centered at 2K, 5K, and 15K.

But... We are applying a huge magnifying glass to what is objectively excellent frequency response. I think I pulled that 2K peak down by 1dB, which is nothing. This would not cause the speakers to sound overly bright without some kind of environmental contributor, which brings us full circle.

I do agree a 1 db cut seems small but it depends on how large of an area you're talking, a very low Q cut is taking quite a bit of energy out of the highs and according the Toole's research on the audibility of resonances, a low Q, 1 db resonance is well above the threshold of audibility. I don't think many people would say the R3 have any issues in the ER either but I've found them to be a bit harsh and the only explanation that makes sense to me is the small peak around 2700Hz in the ER curve. I only cut that down by .7db but it's enough to smooth out the highs, so I do think the ER curve is also very important but no I don't think it would make a speaker sound "bright".

Regarding the BMR, Dennis did just clarify that the new ones are padded down a bit in the highs so my comments are entirely based on the original version, the new version seems even better and the cabinets are beautiful of course.

 

[Kachda]

Hope this helps on the cabinets:

1. US has only square/rectangle/non-curved cabinets (Well - Except my personal pair. I couldn't resist...)
2. US will have mostly wine-color walnut cabinets, and a few black and white (Dennis already pre-sold some of these, so if you want black or white, I'd suggest you contact him for a small deposit)
3. All woofers will be white going forward (unless some special circumstances) Our last black woofer pair went to Steve Dallas.
4. Taiwan has curved BMR in Feb 2021 using Burl veneer like the upcoming BMR Tower in the US market. Curved is more expensive and more rigid because the sides are thinner MDF layers laminated together, extra labor and materials are required to construct these cabinets. See the picture:

View attachment 103797

The curved cabinet BMR in Taiwan also receive red copper binding posts and wire upgrades (Do I think it would make a sonic difference, highly unlikely, all customers buying Curved cabinets want the red copper binding posts because of the looks)

Thanks. Out of curiosity, why will the curved cabinets not be made available in the US off they are being sold in Taiwan? I understand they are more expensive to make, but once made arent the costs the same to ship thr boxed version or curved version? Or is it because the box will be made in the US for the ones sold here?

 

[alexis]

Thanks. Out of curiosity, why will the curved cabinets not be made available in the US off they are being sold in Taiwan? I understand they are more expensive to make, but once made arent the costs the same to ship thr boxed version or curved version? Or is it because the box will be made in the US for the ones sold here?

They can be made available in the US. It's just we were unsure of the demand (How many curved pairs we should order for the US market?). In Taiwan, all curved cabinets are pre-ordered - people pay the deposit, wait for a few months, and pay the rest right before they are shipped. Pre-ordering enable us not to worry about inventories. We are very small operations.

 

[Kachda]

They can be made available in the US. It's just we were unsure of the demand (How many curved pairs we should order for the US market?). In Taiwan, all curved cabinets are pre-ordered - people pay the deposit, wait for a few months, and pay the rest right before they are shipped. Pre-ordering enable us not to worry about inventories. We are very small operations.

Makes sense, perhaps you can give US folks the option to put a deposit for ordering a curved one as well? It just looks so much nicer

 

[redboat77]

Some poor vanity photos taken with a potato camera...

View attachment 103746

View attachment 103747

View attachment 103748

Thanks. Those are awesome photos, and really show how beautiful these are. And thanks for the review!

 

[Steve Dallas]

Home Theater Subjective Review
Not many more words left in me.

I had planned to take a lot of measurements of the BMRs in the home theater application, but I simply ran out of time. What I did manage to accomplish is dropping the BMRs into a menagerie of unmatched speakers to see how they would perform. This is somewhat interesting, because there is no matching center channel available. One could perhaps talk Dennis into selling a single Mini Monitor to be run standing up and get something near a match. Perhaps.

Recall this tidbit from the first media room review to refresh your memory on my setup and add the Sony UBP-X800 BRD player I forgot to mention:

Peachtree Nova 150 integrated as USB DAC and front pair amplifier
Denon AVR-X4700H as DAC and preamp and center/surround amplifier
Roku Ultra as video source

Speakers normally used in this room are the aforementioned Revel F206s as the front stereo pair, a Revel C25 as the center channel, and 4x Polk 65-RT in-walls as side and rear surrounds. Subs are a pair of SVS SB-2000s.

You can surely guess the signal path, but to be clear:

Sony X800 (or Roku Ultra) -> Denon AVR -> Peachtree Nova 150 -> BMRs

The Denon powers the center and surrounds. The Denon's front amps are turned off, and the front pre-outs drive the Peachtree in HTB mode. The Denon's sub-outs drive the pair of SVS subs.

Testing consisted of saving my configuration to a USB drive, then running Audyssey XT32 MultiQ from my phone. I thought it might laugh out loud when I set the BMRs to "small," Audyssey behaved itself. I set a +3dB @ 20Hz custom curve for the fronts, turned off all the silly stuff, and let it do its thing.

I slapped in my BRD of "Ford vs. Ferrari" and settled in for 2 hours of immersion. And promptly forgot I was testing speakers. <- anticlimactic ending over there

Being thoroughly disappointed in myself, I gathered the family in front of the screen the next night for a little "Guardians of the Galaxy" streamed via the Roku. Then, an incredible epiphany hit me! That's not true. I immediately forgot I was testing speakers. Again.

And THAT is precisely what is required to pass this test. The BMRs blended as if they totally belong in my home theater setup, and with their wide directivity, I did not notice they were not the Revels. They effortlessly sound effected, exploded, soundtracked, and dynamic ranged their way into the background.

For one final test before packing them up, I went back into the Audyssey app and limited correction to 1KHz, then watched part of Sting's Live in Berlin BRD. The BMRs excelled there as well, because of course they would.

THE END

 

[alexis]

Makes sense, perhaps you can give US folks the option to put a deposit for ordering a curved one as well? It just looks so much nicer

Absolutely. It's just we weren't sure about the demand for curved cabinets. Write to Dennis and I think he would be happy to provide options. We will do our best to communicate when we plan to order next time.

 

[Dennis Murphy]

Home Theater Subjective Review
Not many more words left in me.

I had planned to take a lot of measurements of the BMRs in the home theater application, but I simply ran out of time. What I did manage to accomplish is dropping the BMRs into a menagerie of unmatched speakers to see how they would perform. This is somewhat interesting, because there is no matching center channel available. One could perhaps talk Dennis into selling a single Mini Monitor to be run standing up and get something near a match. Perhaps.
THE END

There's no matching center because all you really have to do is order one BMR with the tweeter rotated if you need a horizontally mounted speaker, or just run it as is vertically if you have the height. On its side, the horizontal directivity will be much smoother than an MTM. Far off axis, there will be a narrow dip at 4 kHz as the midrange and tweeter go out of phase, but that's much less audible than the deep and wide suckout you get with a horizontal MTM in the upper midrange. You could also have Jim Salk build the WMTW BMR center I designed, but for most applications that wouldn't be necessary. I also suspect the Ascend Horizon WMTW would work, but I haven't heard it.

 

[Kachda]

Absolutely. It's just we weren't sure about the demand for curved cabinets. Write to Dennis and I think he would be happy to provide options. We will do our best to communicate when we plan to order next time.

Cool. I’m on the list for the roadshow, will give me a chance to audition them to see if I want to switch. Thanks.

 

[alexis]

Not the best lighting because the curved BMR sits on my desk, yes desk, I'm less than 1 meter away and they still sound wonderful. I changed the black woofer to the lovely white woofer on the red curved sample. Couldn't resist to take a picture.

 

[Kachda]

Not the best lighting because the curved BMR sits on my desk, yes desk, I'm less than 1 meter away and they still sound wonderful. I changed the black woofer to the lovely white woofer on the red curved sample. Couldn't resist to take a picture.

View attachment 104684

Not my kind of color but looks good. Personally i would find the tweeter not being completely straight very bugging... but that’s my OCD

 

[honn]

Not my kind of color but looks good. Personally i would find the tweeter not being completely straight very bugging... but that’s my OCD

hahah same, I immediately noticed.

 

[Steve Dallas]

Yeah, I would not last a single minute with that crooked tweeter. Allthethings must be plumb and level around here!

Speaking of things around here, things are happening around here...

You want measurements? And words? You will get many of both!

 

[alexis]

Yeah, I would not last a single minute with that crooked tweeter. Allthethings must be plumb and level around here!

Speaking of things around here, things are happening around here...

View attachment 104742

You want measurements? And words? You will get many of both!

Crooked tweeter is how I identify sample vs. production version. Glad to see the black woofer "production" pair arrived safely!

 

[Dennis Murphy]

Yeah, I would not last a single minute with that crooked tweeter. Allthethings must be plumb and level around here!

Speaking of things around here, things are happening around here...

View attachment 104742

You want measurements? And words? You will get many of both!

Now hold it. I paid you $1 per word the last time. I'm out of cash.

 

[Kachda]

Now hold it. I paid you $1 per word the last time. I'm out of cash.

I’ll write as many words as you want for a “loaner”

 

[amper42]

Yeah, I would not last a single minute with that crooked tweeter. Allthethings must be plumb and level around here!

Speaking of things around here, things are happening around here...

View attachment 104742

You want measurements? And words? You will get many of both!

Personally, I like the looks of my high gloss BMR walnut cabinets with white woofer better. It looks classy to me. But if you close your eyes they both sound the same!