BMR Roadshow Review - My subjective listening comments and observations on the Original BMR compared to new BMR v2. (Crosspost from AVSforum)
I had the good luck to still have on loan an original pair of BMRs, in fact the specific pair that Erin of Erin’s Audio Corner reviewed a few months ago, to be able to compare with the new Roadshow BMRs. I don’t have a lot of test equipment or detailed knowledge, so this will primarily be a subjective review. That being said, I do have an Omnimic rig, so I did do a FR test of both, and the comparison graph and more info on it is further down below.
First my listening impressions: As you can imagine, they sound very similar, sharing the same BMR mid and tweeter. The biggest difference is in the bass of the new SB woofer. It sounds fuller, richer, with more low and mid bass bloom than the original Scan Speak (SS) unit. I really like this new driver, as I felt there was a bit of warmth missing in the original system. However both of these systems have exceptional clarity, imaging, and soundstage definition for well recorded material. Tremendous air, delicacy, [Insert your favorite audiophile adjectives as desired]. Simply amazing!
More of a concern to me comes with listening to less well mixed recordings, like most all pop/classic rock music from the 60s up till maybe 10 or 20 years ago. I grew up in this era, and enjoy listening to this music, unfortunately the essentially ruler flat frequency response of these high resolution monitors makes these often poor mixes hard to listen to. I wouldn’t go as far to say ear bleeding like some speakers I’ve heard, because the phenomenally low distortion drive units and xover integration keep the sound as clean as possible, it is purely the recordings themselves to blame. If you don’t listen to this type stuff, but focus on more modern pop, or pretty much any well recorded jazz or classical, this will not likely be an issue for you. This is why my personal preference is for a bit of the controversial BBC dip in system response, a couple db dip in response generally in the 1-4 kHz area.
On a side note, I was very fortunate to purchase a pair of Avalon Ascent MKIIs recently from a local audio club member who was downsizing, and my first comparison was between one of the new BMRs and one of them. (my preamp has an old school balance control to switch between speakers) The difference was striking, the Avalons almost sound like they have a towel draped over them! However, I can listen to them all day on any type of music, both modern well recorded, and classic rock poorly mixed without fatigue. To be fair, you have to add another 0 to the price of these compared to the BMRs! I’ve read Avalon doesn’t like reviewers to test FR, and I suspect I now know why, probably some of that BBC dip dialed in which would look bad on a graph. In fact, looking at a FR I ran on them and indeed there is a broad dip in the 1.5 to 4k Hz region. They also roll off a bit faster past 15k. Yet somehow they have similar amazing imaging, with a deeper soundstage and even somehow seems to image past the speakers.
Back on topic. Dennis said the new units are somewhat more efficient, I heard this mainly in the bass as mentioned. To my ears it almost sounds like the higher efficiency SB, crossed over a bit higher than the SS is the main difference in the slight additional volume of this unit when A/B ing them. I don’t think it is enough to substantially change the amp requirements for adequately powering either BMR version.
Below is my Omnimic graph comparing the 2 speakers. For this test, I had my mike about 1m from the center of the drivers, and put each speaker on the same 21” stand with the front baffle at exactly the same position. The mike was about 33” from the floor. The test was run in my family/media room, roughly 22’ square with cathedral ceiling, with 3x large door cutouts and a stairway down, all walls are tongue and groove pine. Large rug on the floor, and normal furniture. Equipment used for the test and listening is an Oppo 103, fed into an Adcom GFP-565 preamp (run thru bypass outputs, skipping tone controls, etc.) into a Classe DR-25 amp. Used sine sweep track 2.
The blue line is the original BMR, the red line is the new version. You can ignore the absolute curves, due to room interactions, the main takeaway is the difference in the curves. You can see the couple dB increase for the new BMR in the FR up to 100 Hz, this is audibly noticeable when listening to music. They track pretty closely 100-200 Hz, then the new BMR pulls up again and stays a bit smoother till about 1.5 kHz. Pretty much ruler flat above that for both. Not a huge difference in their curves, but the slightly higher bass output the new BMRs makes them more pleasant to my ears.
As mentioned my ears prefer a gentle slope down or a BBC dip (I believe this is due to the Fletcher-Munson curves, google for more info), but perhaps then some of the laser like clarity would be sacrificed. In the old days, some manufacturers had “presence” controls or switches that would allow users to pad down this region, but these days perhaps DSP is the tool to play with to tailor the sound to users preference in their listening room.
Perhaps another concern of some is the loudness capability of these systems with relatively modest 6-7” woofers. Diameter of the woofers from the center of the surrounds are 125mm for the SB vs 140mm for the SS. So I suspect the SS may be able to get louder eventually than the SB given enough power, but my ears would be bleeding from the presence region by then. I could listen comfortably at a pretty loud 85-90 db (per the Omnimic meter), with virtually no compression or other deleterious effects. At higher levels, there is a bit of chestiness with the SB woofer I didn’t hear with the SS unit, but I was getting seriously loud. (wife was out of the house) There also was some port chuffing, not unexpected at these high levels, really only noticed on the last track of Dennis’ test CD - a 34 Hz tone.
Some notes on the cabinets: the new BMR is gorgeous! Super smooth gloss finish over a wine colored veneer. The finish is so thick (looking at the corners it looks like almost 1/16” thick) it has a milky color, I wish it was more clear. Due to the mirror finish, you can hardly see the veneer beneath, a previous reviewer’s spouse said it looked like the speaker could have been made out of plastic, I concur. The older BMR had the curved cabinet, it seemed a bit more solid with the knuckle rap test. I prefer its cherry veneer over the newer wine colored veneer, but that’s personal preference. For me a brown stained walnut veneer, with the beautiful new BMR finish (but clear, unmilky color) would be killer!
Summarizing, in my opinion the new BMR is slightly more efficient, with better, warmer bass, giving a more balanced sound, but still has the laser sharp imaging of the original BMR. It’s still a bit bright to me on poorly mixed recordings like classic rock, but overall a simply amazing design, with updates making it even better.