I was one of the lucky ones who managed to be a part of the BMR road show. Over the past week, I had the pleasure of auditoning and comparing the Philharmonic BMR against my KEF R3. Both were driven by MiniDSP SHD -> March Audio P502 amps with Spotify as source. Just in case any one has any doubts, obviously I am not paid in any form for this review and I did not 'pre-clear' this with
@Dennis Murphy in anyway.
@Steve Dallas has done quite an extensive review of this speaker already which you can read here ->
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...semi-objective-review-road-show-stop-1.18828/ . I will just do a brief post with my measurements and review. Word of warning - I am not an expert tester, listener or reviewer, so please take this in any way you want to.
I tried to match levels using REW SPL meter. By luck, both speakers seem to have very similar output for a given volume. Measurements shown below were done when the REW SPL meter was around 70db using Pink Noise. I can't go much louder because I live in an apartment. The room modes are generally similar, but because I had the speakers beside each other, there will be some differences due to that. Something that stands out is that the BMR has about 10db more bass below 40Hz, this can be felt in music with lots of sub-bass, though it won't be the same impact as a subwoofer.
The main difference comes around the 800-1k range. The KEF R3 is about 5db louder in this region, though I didn't feel like this impacted anything in songs. The BMR seems to stay flat and even rise a bit between 1k-2k and then drops off similar to the R3. In songs, this came through to me as some of the female voices being a bit clearer, though it was never jarring.
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I carried out listening tests in mono first, with left/right channel connected to the BMR/R3. I used the minidsp to route the same signal to both speakers. I also switched them around to make sure room positioning wasn't affecting my impression. Initially, when I had the BMR on my left and the R3 on the right, the R3 seemed harsher and more piercing while the BMR was bassier and more enjoyeable on tracks like Depeche Mode - Enjoy the Silence, Daft Punk - Get Lucky. The R3 seemed to do slightly better on live music. However, this difference completely went away when I switched their positions, which to me is an indication that the speakers are actually quite similar to my untrained ears and the differences I was hearing were due to room position.
In stereo, I can't do quick A/B test, but did my best by switching speakers and listening to the same track on both right after one another. Overall, my impression was on many songs I couldn't really make out any material difference between them. However, on songs with deep bass (Cirez D - Glow, Daft Punk - Get lucky), the extra bass from the BMR definitely made the songs more enjoyeable. The foot tap-ability co-efficient was higher on the BMRs. Other than that though, I couldn't put a big difference between them. In my small apartment with lot of hard surfaces, I couldn't really make a out a big difference between the comparatively narrower directivity of the R3 vs wider directivity of the BMR (or maybe I just don't know how to listen
).
Conclusion
If I was buying speakers today with a budget of <2k, and after hearing them side by side in my room, I would probably choose the BMR on pure music enjoyeability. Given that I have already invested money in my R3s though, I am not sure there is enough of a difference to justify selling the R3s at second hand price and paying full price for the BMR. It is a very tempting thought though.