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

[Steve Dallas]

Introduction
@Dennis Murphy is generously sending a pair of his Philharmonic BMR Monitor speakers on a road show to various listeners east of that big river over yonder. Somehow, they found their way across it to rural-ish Texas and landed in my home first, before heading back east to continue the tour.

This thread will contain two reviews of these speakers in my home. The first review pits them against the Dynaudio X18s in my home office. I thought this would be a fair fight. It was not, as you will see. The second review has them mano-a-mano with the F206s in my media room / home theater. I thought that would be an unfair fight. It was not, or not exactly.

I took numerous in-room measurements along the way and will obviously include them as appropriate.

I have read about these speakers on various forums over the years and have intended to build a DIY pair for years, but never got around to it.

In preparation for testing them, I sequestered myself and refreshed my memory not at all. I read no reviews and perused no measurements, as I did not want to enter the testing experience with any expectations beyond vague remembrances of supposed awesomeness.

The specifications are available here: http://philharmonicaudio.com/

The Name
The model name is “BMR Monitor,” and as Dennis Murphy seems to be a serious and deliberate man, I think this deserves deconstructing. BMR refers to Tectonic Balanced Mode Radiator, which identifies the midrange driver he chose for this design, and the fact that he included it in the model name leads me to believe it may be front and center. While grossly overused in present times, “Monitor” indicates studio level accuracy. I am interested to see whether “Monitor” is a marketing term or an accurate descriptor in this case.

Appearance, Fit and Finish
In a word, these speakers are GORGEOUS. The quality of the mirror finish on the cabinets surprised me, as I removed the protective covers—it is nearly flawless on both units. The drivers are utilitarian in appearance, excepting the white ceramic SB Acoustics woofer, which I cannot help but associate with Revel.

Mounting hardware is all visible, which is a “problem” being attacked by many manufacturers at all price points, however the Revel Performa3 series also has visible hardware. The port is an unexpected work of polished, flared tubular art.

As I examined the pair, I found no notable flaws of any kind, nor any annoyances like leftover polishing compound.

As evidenced by the linked specs, these speakers are very large standmounters at 20” H x 8.5” W x 12.5” D. I thought the Polk LSi703s were huge when I had them in for review. These are right up there.

More to come...

 

[Steve Dallas]

Review 1 - Home Office vs. Dynaudio Excite X18
Words. Prepare yourself for many words.

Setup

ROOM

The room I use as a home office is a tremendously challenging environment for audio, being nearly a cube at 12.33’ W x 12.25’ D x 10.5’ H. Room modes abound, with particularly strong examples at 46Hz, 54Hz, 92Hz, and 107Hz. The Schroeder frequency calculates to 231Hz. (For more information, see the amroc analysis here: https://amcoustics.com/tools/amroc?l=12.25&w=12.33&h=10.5&ft=true&re=DIN 18041 - Music)

Flutter echo is a significant problem, and I have installed several broadband sound panels to eliminate it and smooth the RT60 response, which is currently around 350ms.

POSITION

After shooting some in-room measurements of my X18s for comparison, I perched the BMRs atop their stands, which are custom height units from Sound Anchors. The stands are 32” tall, which places my ears slightly above the tweeters with most non-gargantuan bookshelf speakers when seated in my office chair. Sound Anchors fills the stands with something “proprietary” and supplies Sorbothane discs for the top plate, which I used during this review.

I spent 1 hour moving the BMRs around the front of the room, listening to Johnny Cash, drinking good dunkel, and shooting measurements. The measurements you see in this review represent the best placement I could find, without moving the speakers too far into the room. The final resting place was with ½” of toe-in at 8” to 8.5” from the front wall and 36.5” from the side walls.

The speakers were 74” apart and ~84” from the listening position, which is ~48” from the back wall and ~100” from the front wall.

(That is a 55" screen for relative scale.)

Should I follow the advice of my most recent physical therapist and sit with proper posture, my ears lined up with the center of the tweeter at 48” from the ground. Since I rarely do what is good for me and I gradually increase slouch factor over time, my ears tended to line up with the BMR midrange, which caused the speakers to communicate too much midrange presence. As a result, most of my listening was done sitting on 1 or more pillows to simulate a more normal listening elevation.

Equipment

All equipment used in this review is rather pedestrian stuff, which is deliberate:

Windows 10 PC - homebrew
Amazon Music HD for streaming
foobar2000 for FLAC playback from NAS
Equalizer APO for PEQ adjustment

Cambridge CXNv2 Network streamer as USB DAC
Cambridge CXA60 for amplification

It is worth noting that the 90W at 4 Ohms produced by the CXA60 was more than adequate to drive the BMRs to satisfying levels with plenty or reserve power. With the volume control at 9:00, an average SPLc of 76dB was reached. An average SPLc of 83dB was reached with the volume control at 10:30. Indeed, my calculated power needed to reach 83dB is 4W. Increasing the SPLc by 10dB to 93dB requires 39W of power.

Directivity

HORIZONTAL

I did not take any directivity measurements, but my subjective take is the BMRs qualify as wide directivity speakers. They are not fussy about toe and form a solid phantom center without much tweaking. I had Johnny Cash’s voice in One dancing on the bridge of my nose in no time. Personal space, Johnny. Personal space. They remind me of Revels in this regard.

VERTICAL

I can only describe vertical directivity as normal. I preferred being slightly above or below the tweeter, as I do with most WMT speakers. No problems identified here.

Measurements

I shot several in-room measurements with REW and my UMIK-1 using the moving microphone method around the major listening position with at least 60 samples each, before doing any critical listening. Then, I listened without correction, while I surveyed the results and created some PEQ filters.

Everything under 500Hz is dominated by the room. Under 1000Hz is heavily influenced by the room, so keep that in mind as you peruse these in-room measurements.

Left speaker uncorrected:

Right speaker uncorrected:

Right vs. left overlay uncorrected:

Stereo BMRs uncorrected:

Low frequency extension is impressive! Upper mids and treble are relatively smooth and exhibit correct slope without correction.

For context, let's have a look at the response vs. my target, which is something like a -10dB Harman curve.


Stereo BMRs uncorrected vs target curve:

Thirty Hertz at 76dB! Room junk can easily be pulled down. The nulls are unfortunate, but all the fault of the room. We have a broad dip centered around 1KHz and a bit of a peak centered around 2.2Khz. Nice response above that. I can work with this!

As per usual in this room, I use Equalizer APO to help tame the room as much as possible. The left and right response curves are close enough to each other that I decided to save time (I was supposed to be working) and manually make a stereo filter set to apply to both speakers. This is what I came up with.

Manual stereo PEQ filters:

Manual stereo PEQ filters as shown in EQ APO:

Manual stereo PEQ filters predicted result:

Sadly, I forgot to re-measure with PEQ applied, but the room mode peaks were tamed, and the 2K range sounded better to me. Time to settle in for hours and hours of listening over the next several days.

To be continued...

 

[BillH]

Introduction
@Dennis Murphy is generously sending a pair of his Philharmonic BMR Monitor speakers on a road show to various listeners east of that big river over yonder. Somehow, they found their way across it to rural-ish Texas and landed in my home first, before heading back east to continue the tour.

This thread will contain two reviews of these speakers in my home. The first review pits them against the Dynaudio X18s in my home office. I thought this would be a fair fight. It was not, as you will see. The second review has them mano-a-mano with the F206s in my media room / home theater. I thought that would be an unfair fight. It was not, or not exactly.

I took numerous in-room measurements along the way and will obviously include them as appropriate.

I have read about these speakers on various forums over the years and have intended to build a DIY pair for years, but never got around to it. In preparation for testing them, I sequestered myself and refreshed my memory not at all. I read no reviews and perused no measurements, as I did not want to enter the testing experience with any expectations beyond vague remembrances of supposed awesomeness.

The specifications are available here: http://philharmonicaudio.com/

The Name
The model name is “BMR Monitor,” and as Dennis Murphy seems to be a serious and deliberate man, I think this deserves deconstructing. BMR refers to Tectonic Balanced Mode Radiator, which identifies the midrange driver he chose for this design, and the fact that he included it in the model name leads me to believe it may be front and center. While grossly overused in present times, “Monitor” indicates studio level accuracy. I am interested to see whether “Monitor” is a marketing term or an accurate descriptor in this case.

Appearance, Fit and Finish
In a word, these speakers are GORGEOUS. The quality of the mirror finish on the cabinets surprised me, as I removed the protective covers—it is nearly flawless on both units. The drivers are utilitarian in appearance, excepting the white ceramic SB Acoustics woofer, which I cannot help but associate with Revel.

Mounting hardware is all visible, which is a “problem” being attacked by many manufacturers at all price points, however the Revel Performa3 series also has visible hardware. The port is an unexpected work of polished, flared tubular art.

As I examined the pair, I found no notable flaws of any kind, nor any annoyances like leftover polishing compound.

As evidenced by the linked specs, these speakers are very large standmounters at 20” H x 8.5” W x 12.5” D. I thought the Polk LSi703s were huge when I had them in for review. These are right up there.

More to come...

I’m so excited!
is there a secret list to get on the BMR roadshow?

 

[Steve Dallas]

I’m so excited!
is there a secret list to get on the BMR roadshow?

One simply needed to respond to this thread very quickly:

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/bmr-road-show.18207/

 

[leeroy 85032]

I assume you may be posting at avs as well?

 

[muad]

Haha, this is why you were recommending the BMRs in the other thread. The new version is really pretty and the in room measurements are excellent, very different from Erin's predicted measurements and different from what my ears told me. I really wish I measured them when I had them!

Either way, good work and thanks for the write up!

 

[Steve Dallas]

Philharmonic BMR Monitor vs. Dynaudio Excite X18

As mentioned, I took some stereo measurements for comparison. I spoiled this by posting these graphs in other threads, but here we go.

BMR vs X18 response:

Interesting observations:

1. The BMR extends 8Hz lower at 76dB. This is audible. And impressive sounding.
2. The two speakers track very closely together below 500Hz thanks to room modes. This is not surprising, because the BMRs ended up in the same position as the X18s.
3. The room heavily influences both speakers up to 1KHz.
4. The BMRs have more presence centered at 2KHz. I had to "break them in" for several hours and change cables 7 times, before my ears adjusted to this.
5. The X18s are generally brighter beginning at 3KHz.

Here is an @amirm style markup version of the same:

X18 stereo uncorrected vs target:

I thought this would be a fair fight, since both speakers are "bookshelves" in the same list price range. It was not a fair fight at all--especially after minimal EQ was applied. The BMRs easily bested the X18s. The BMRs effortlessly extend lower and naturally have the right amount of presence in the critical vocal range with no BBC dip type nonsense.

When I switched from BMR to X18, I thought I must have entered a honeymoon period, and my impressions of improvement must be overblown. I did acclimate to the BMRs and lost the initial WOW! factor, but I never lost the sense of overall improvement. Swtiching back to the X18s was a greater letdown than I imagined. Days later, I miss the BMRs every time I turn on music. The scale is greater. The bass is deeper. Perceived clarity (more appropriate presence and lower distortion?) is greater with the BMRs. They quite simply are better speakers.

To ignore some differences and summarize: The BMR performs like a midsize 3 way floorstander with flat on-axis response, wheras the X18 performs like a midsize bookshelf with a BBC dip.

Subjective listening results coming soon...

 

[Steve Dallas]

I assume you may be posting at avs as well?

I lurk over there but am not a member.

 

[Steve Dallas]

Subjective Listening – Home Office
The words get wordier.

All critical listening as performed with the stereo PEQ filter shown above.

By the time I finished listening in my office (several days of working at home), I auditioned more than 300 songs, spanning nearly every genre.

Scale
The dimensions of these speakers place them in the same league with midsize floorstanders. This is visually true under sighted listening, but also true according to the spec sheet. Indeed, they claim lower bass extension than my Revel F206s, which I will explore in the next round of tests. They easily outperform the X18s in bass output as seen in the in-room measurements. In short, they are large, they sound large, and their scale is captivating--even if I sometimes raise an eyebrow to what I perceive as a lot of help from the port, but that is most likely due to their proximity to the front wall in my room. (I will test this hypothesis in the media room review as appropriate.)

The CD
Dennis includes a CD with the speakers, which features excerpts from a variety of genres. Each track seems to be chosen to show off some aspect of the BMRs. I listened to all 28 tracks and thought I was able to identify each of those aspects. It was enlightening and the gesture is appreciated. The last track is a 34Hz sine wave, and the BMRs were able to reproduce it at normal listening levels without breaking a sweat!

The Test Tracks

My speaker testing playlists include much of the standard audiophile pablum and much, much more. I won't bore you with the pablum.

This is a subset of my standard speaker testing playlist. Each track includes at least one built-in test. Here are my thoughts:

No Frontiers by the Corrs from Corrs Unplugged - Showcases the female voice with two sisters singing a duet. Their voices are similar, yet distinctly different. They approach the microphone differently, which is apparent in the recording, as are the differences in their mouth and breath sounds. PASSED

Tiger by Paula Cole on This Fire - Female vocal and bass extension test. This track has enough bass to cause Paula's incredible voice to warble, if a system is not up to reproducing it cleanly. It also has enough bass to punch you in the gut. No warble. Gut punched. PASSED

Never Go Back by Evanescence on Synthesis - Piano, female vocal, midrange test. This track can sound shrill in the vocals and electronic drums during the chorus in speakers with too much emphasis in those bands. PASSED

S.R.V. by Eric Johnson on Ah Via Musicom - My acid test for tweeters. If a tweeter can accurately depict the various attacks and appropriate decays from the 7,631,253 cymbal strikes in this song, it is a quality unit and implementation. PASSED

Baby Plays Around by Anne Sophie von Otter on For the Stars - Female vocal detail. In addition to conveying the delicate emotion in her voice, a speaker should reveal the anatomical details in her breathiness, toothiness, and spittle-liness. [wipes face] PASSED

One by Johnny Cash on American III: Solitary Man - Male vocal test and image test. It's the Man in Black. No explanation necessary. PASSED

Pacing the Cage by Bruce Cockburn on The Charity of Night - Male vocal and chesty-ness test. You know what you are listening for in this one. PASSED

Yellow Light by Of Monsters and Men on My Head is an Animal - I include this song, because one of the more ridiculous subjective speaker reviews I have read declares that the otherwise excellent speakers under review cause the vocalists to lose their "Icelandic lilt," he cannot tell if the bells are real or synthesized, and the song fails to build. They sound plenty Icelandic to me, and the bells sound quite real through the BMRs. Half the song is a long crescendo. It builds. PASSED

Overtime by Trace Bundy on Elephant King - Midrange clarity test. Trace's percussive attack on the strings and guitar body is widely varied and relentless. Each strike and decay should have its own distinct character. PASSED

Mombasa by Hans Zimmer on Inception - Dynamics and clarity of attack test. The original soundtrack recording with its motion picture sound target. The track should build to sound huge, bold, and dynamic. It should be obvious this was produced as part of a film score. The relatively deep bass should not impact the clarity of the attack nor obscure the decay. PASSED

Mombasa by Hans Zimmer (2Cellos) on The Classics - Bass impact and attack test. Re-arranged and re-recorded by the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and 2Cellos with their unique take and intended for musical reproduction. Many speakers cannot handle the loudest bass tones or the busiest passages and muddle the attack as a result. Decay should be clean and clear. PASSED

[Album] The Best of Tommysongs by Tommy Emmanuel - Acoustic guitar test in a great room with natural reverb. I cannot stop listening to this album when played on good speakers and sit through song after song. Listened to all of it. Again. PASSED

Romance by Jason McGuire on Blue Coast Collection: The ESE Sessions - Acoustic guitar test. A different take on the minimalist acoustic guitar test as played by another gifted guitarist in an excellent room. I listen to this on repeat. PASSED

Saint-Saens: Danse Macabre by Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra on Chiller - Dynamic range and width of soundstage test. Turn this up to where the opening passage is about 65dB and hold on to your hat. The speakers should also cast a soundstage greater than 180 degrees wide, and you should be able to locate most instruments in 3D space. It should also be clear where each string instrument begins and ends. Finally, It should acquaint you with the feel of your internal organs. PASSED

Black Mambo by Glass Animals on Glass Animals - Bass extension test. I don't really know. I just like the song, and “Mr. Beard,” the speaker salesman, refused to tell me what it was, when he was trying to sell me a pair of Wilson Sabrinas. I spent a few hours hunting it down just to spite him. It jiggles my jiggly bits. Jiggled. PASSED

Josie by Sultans of String on Move - Layered midrange details test. This is a dense, yet cleanly recorded track, in which every one of the instruments has its own space. Many speakers fail to represent the djembe correctly, as part of its timbre is lost in crossover directivity nulls or BBC dips. Many speakers also tend to lose midrange focus with so much going on in the band. PASSED

Temple Caves by Mickey Hart on Planet Drum - Bass extension, impact, and compression test. There is a drum used on this track that is something like 10' long. You will hear only the overtones on many systems. Turn it up. Listen to the whole album. Enjoy. Be careful. PASSED

Letter by Yosi Horikawa on Wandering - Width of soundstage test. You should hear sounds emanating from a soundstage more than 180 degrees wide. A variety of frequencies are represented, and all should sound even. PASSED

What God Wants by Roger Waters on Amused to Death - Soundstage test with QSound. Roger and others should be whispering in your ear in some passages. In reality, speakers with truly wide dispersion, will present all of the spectrum as something like believable surround sound. PASSED

Fast Car by Tracy Chapman on Tracy Chapman - Cohesion of space test. Tracy's voice is wet with reverb and delay, but her guitar is much drier, and this should be apparent. Each musician is in a different room in the studio, and if you listen closely on a good system, you can tell the track lacks cohesion of space. PASSED

Say Something by Justin Timberlake on Man of the Woods - Compressed pop test. It's a fun track with a good groove, good bass, Chris Stapleton, and my wife likes it when I play it as part of speaker testing. It is also on an album filled with unintentional comedy. Rappers in plaid. PASSED

Morning: Good by Anat Fort on A Long Story - Piano realism test. Percussion, ring, decay. You know what this is about. PASSED

Over the Rainbow by Jane Monheit on Live at the Rainbow Room - Female vocal, depth of soundstage, compression test. The listener should be able to locate Jane just to the right of center and about 6 to 8' in front of the piano. If it sounds like she is in the piano, the speakers are doing it wrong. Interestingly, there is sub-bass scattered throughout this track which keeps the woofers moving, and there is a series of sub-bass pulses beginning at 3:57 that cause many speakers to lose control and bottom out, tanking the rest of the spectrum with compression. PASSED

FBI by The Shadows on Instrumental Guitar - Midrange harshness test. The lead guitars in this track should sound sharp, but not harsh. PASSED

Conclusion to appear shortly...

 

[Steve Dallas]

Conclusion - Home Office
Many more words incoming.

Beginning with the parts, and progressing toward the sum of them…

TWEETER
Fun fact: I have a 100% success rate at identifying ribbon tweeters in blind speaker preference tests, and I generally do not like them for some reason I cannot explain. (I will try: ribbons are too fast for midwoofers in 2 way arrangements, and I can hear the time alignment problem. Maybe its response speed matches the tiny BMR midrange in this configuration?) In listening to the BMRs, I never once had the thought, “Meh. Ribbon tweeter.” The ribbon used in the BMR is completely transparent and simply does what it should be doing.

MIDRANGE
I cannot objectively point to anything special about the BMR midrange with the limited testing I performed. Yet, it sounds excellent. I will not try to explain it with subjective audiophile nonsense adjectives. OK. I will. It sounds fast, accurate, clean, clear, and articulate. For whatever that is worth. It is true that I employed pillows to find the best height, so there is possibly some directivity error between the tweeter and midrange. I will investigate this in the media room to determine whether that is true, or whether the problem is environmental (floor or desk bounce?).

WOOFER
The woofer utilized in the BMR accurately goes low and does so without audible distortion. I wish it were black, but I’m searching for “negative” things to say here.

CROSSOVER
The best passive crossover is one you never think about. Dennis’ work here qualifies.

CABINET
The cabinet is competently designed and constructed. Placing the back of my hand against a sidewall during playback at reference level (83dB) reveals nearly nothing in terms of vibration compared with most other speakers. There are no audible resonances and no noticeable port noise. This is a KEF R-Series or Revel Performa3 series level of cabinet construction.

FINAL THOUGHTS
The term “monitor” is absolutely accurate in the passive sense. I find the Philharmonic BMR Monitor to be as accurate as any passive (and many active) studio monitors I have heard at its list price (and somewhat higher within reason). Dennis Murphy is completely justified in using the term in my opinion. As a home audio speaker, it deservedly cuts in line ahead of much of the field, and establishes itself as a contender with the likes of KEF’s R and Reference series, as well as Revel’s Performa3 series. And it manages this without fancypants waveguides or concentric drivers.

(Disclaimer: I own and am a fan of KEF and Revel speakers, including their fancypants waveguides and concenctric drivers.)

As for the BMR midrange driver, it is a featured component, but only insomuch as it contributes to the complementary excellence of the whole.

RECOMMENDATION
I doubt my recommendation is worth much, but I “award” my highest worthless recommendation to the Philharmonic BMR Monitor. This is an excellent speaker, which does nearly everything right and nothing wrong of any significance. Highly recommended.

At the relative bargain list price of only $1700 per pair, BMRs should be on everyone's short list IMHO.

 

[YSC]

yet another sexy looking speaker which measures good! nice job for another company not bringing out overpriced junk

 

[Dennis Murphy]

One simply needed to respond to this thread very quickly:

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/bmr-road-show.18207/

I'm afraid the BMR's dance card is full. Once they leave Steve's and cross the Mississippi, they have at least 15 more stops.

 

[Beave]

WOOFER
Revel uses this woofer (or a variation on it) in their higher line Be speakers for good reason.

Nitpicking, but this keeps coming up on this forum for some reason. No, Revel does NOT use this woofer (or even a variation of it) on their Be speakers.

 

[Steve Dallas]

Nitpicking, but this keeps coming up on this forum for some reason. No, Revel does NOT use this woofer (or even a variation of it) on their Be speakers.

Point taken. I will remove that sentence from the review. Thanks.

 

[Dennis Murphy]

Nitpicking, but this keeps coming up on this forum for some reason. No, Revel does NOT use this woofer (or even a variation of it) on their Be speakers.

That's correct. But I don't believe we know for sure just how different the 6" woofer is. I think all we know is that SB Acoustics doesn't make it, and that the 5" woofer has a different surround from the SB Ceramic 5".

 

[ernestcarl]

VERTICAL

I can only describe vertical directivity as normal. I preferred being slightly above or below the tweeter, as I do with most WMT speakers. No problems identified here.

Getting good verticals is a real challenge and I wouldn't really expect most ASR members to be able to produce these without running into problems. One really needs to measure a good distance away esp. for three-ways or with multiple displaced drivers.

 

[Steve Dallas]

Getting good verticals is a real challenge and I wouldn't really expect most ASR members to be able to produce these without running into problems. One really needs to measure a good distance away esp. for three-ways or with multiple displaced drivers.

Right. I am not up to that challenge. That is what we have @hardisj and @amirm for. My thoughts on directivity are purely subjective. Horizontal is obvious with these speakers, as they do "that Revel thing." Vertical has been a bit more challenging, but after many hours of listening in my media room / home theater on standard height stands with standard seating, I'm ready to call it environmental. I am not looking at them cross-eyed nor sitting on pillows in here.

 

[Ericglo]

Philharmonic BMR Monitor vs. Dynaudio Excite X18

As mentioned, I took some stereo measurements for comparison. I spoiled this by posting these graphs in other threads, but here we go.

BMR vs X18 response:



When I switched from BMR to X18, I thought I must have entered a honeymoon period, and my impressions of improvement must be overblown. I did acclimate to the BMRs and lost the initial WOW! factor, but I never lost the sense of overall improvement. Swtiching back to the X18s was a greater letdown than I imagined. Days later, I miss the BMRs every time I turn on music. The scale is greater. The bass is deeper. Perceived clarity (more appropriate presence and lower distortion?) is greater with the BMRs. They quite simply are better speakers.

To ignore some differences and summarize: The BMR performs like a midsize 3 way floorstander with flat on-axis response, wheras the X18 performs like a midsize bookshelf with a BBC dip.

Subjective listening results coming soon...

So, are you going to replace the X18s with the BMRs?

I know it has been said that the SB's aluminum version of the ceramic woofers measure almost identical. It might be an option if you prefer a non-white driver.

 

[Dennis Murphy]

So, are you going to replace the X18s with the BMRs?

I know it has been said that the SB's aluminum version of the ceramic woofers measure almost identical. It might be an option if you prefer a non-white driver.

I've sold several pairs of BMR's with the black version of the woofer. Both woofers are aluminum. The coating is slightly different, but they perform identically.

 

[sfdoddsy]

Nitpicking, but this keeps coming up on this forum for some reason. No, Revel does NOT use this woofer (or even a variation of it) on their Be speakers.

I believe the F208 originally used the SB Acoustics driver, then they changed to one very much like it but without the crinkles.

You can easily see it in pix of early production F208s.