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

[Dennis Murphy]

About 21x15ft with 9ft ceilings. I’m about 13ft away. The LXs are very good too, and I could see some people preferring them, but to me the BMRs have an even wider soundstage and the bass is more natural. On certain tracks the bass on the LX is overwhelming, and at times there is audible port noise which can be distracting. The BMR is also far more efficient and easier to drive to louder volumes (though I assume the LX can play louder if you have enough power).

I’ll also add that I think the BMR is prettier to look at, if that matters, though one speaker did have a small hairline scratch out of the box…not really worth complaining about though.

Thanks for the report. Any thoughts on the LX vs the EX?

 

[Smitty2k1]

About 21x15ft with 9ft ceilings. I’m about 13ft away. The LXs are very good too, and I could see some people preferring them, but to me the BMRs have an even wider soundstage and the bass is more natural. On certain tracks the bass on the LX is overwhelming, and at times there is audible port noise which can be distracting. The BMR is also far more efficient and easier to drive to louder volumes (though I assume the LX can play louder if you have enough power).

I’ll also add that I think the BMR is prettier to look at, if that matters, though one speaker did have a small hairline scratch out of the box…not really worth complaining about though.

From what I've seen the finished on the BMR are second to none!

 

[muad]

About 21x15ft with 9ft ceilings. I’m about 13ft away. The LXs are very good too, and I could see some people preferring them, but to me the BMRs have an even wider soundstage and the bass is more natural. On certain tracks the bass on the LX is overwhelming, and at times there is audible port noise which can be distracting. The BMR is also far more efficient and easier to drive to louder volumes (though I assume the LX can play louder if you have enough power).

I’ll also add that I think the BMR is prettier to look at, if that matters, though one speaker did have a small hairline scratch out of the box…not really worth complaining about though.

Damnit man, why did you have to post this. I just bought a pair of LXs because I miss the wide dispersion of the BMRs. I had the old black BMR, with the scanspeak, that had slighly higher tweeter level, and found them too bright and unforgiving with old rock and bad recordings. Plus i found the vertical directivity too narrow. Now I'm questioning if I should cancel my order and try the new BMR :'(

 

[RMW_NJ]

Thanks for the report. Any thoughts on the LX vs the EX?

I actually haven’t directly compared the LX and EX in the same room, though I can say unequivocally that the LX produces significantly more bass. There’s quite a few folks at the Ascend forum that have compared the two, and most prefer the LX.

 

[RMW_NJ]

From what I've seen the finished on the BMR are second to none!

Yes, the Rosewood is really nice. I had thought about buying a pair a year or so ago, but the reddish finish available at the time didn’t really match any other furniture in my house.

Damnit man, why did you have to post this. I just bought a pair of LXs because I miss the wide dispersion of the BMRs. I had the old black BMR, with the scanspeak, that had slighly higher tweeter level, and found them too bright and unforgiving with old rock and bad recordings. Plus i found the vertical directivity too narrow. Now I'm questioning if I should cancel my order and try the new BMR :'(

Ha, it’s just one man’s opinion (and I don’t exactly have golden ears). The pros on the LX is that it does have more bass (quantity and extension), it’s much smaller, and it’s about $500 cheaper than the curved BMRs I purchased. The LX is a bit more laid back, but the new BMR is definitely not bright to my ears…and I have a lot of reflective stuff in my living room that can cause ear piercing harshness, like cast iron radiators.

For me, the BMR is just a slightly more cohesive package. But I won’t be selling the LX.

 

[muad]

BMR is definitely not bright to my ears

Yeah, I thought it would have been improved from my version. Dennis mentioned that the tweeter level was decreased a couple dB compared to the old ones.

I wish we could get the new version to Amir or Erin.

 

[RMW_NJ]

Got new shorter stands yesterday to bring the BMR to the correct height. They are Kanto SX22 22” and sell for about $370 on Amazon. I have several pairs of custom stands from Skylan and had planned on going that route again, but the instant gratification side of me wanted something immediately.

Anyway, the Kanto stands are extremely well built, have wire management, a compartment (and fillable bag) for your choice of fill, nice floor spikes, and a foam pad to protect the bottom of the speaker. They also have a cool feature that allows you to adjust the height of the spikes from the top of the bottom plate, rather than the underneath. Overall very nice, and a good option for the BMRs.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B097S8HBZB?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title

 

[Keened]

So far I have to say I'm quite pleased with the horizontal dispersion of the BMR Monitors, I can still hear 'music' off to the side quite a ways away.

I'm not thrilled with the black speaker covers though, I would buy grey ones if they were OEM but I think I might have to DIY a pair.

 

[Dennis Murphy]

So far I have to say I'm quite pleased with the horizontal dispersion of the BMR Monitors, I can still hear 'music' off to the side quite a ways away.

I'm not thrilled with the black speaker covers though, I would buy grey ones if they were OEM but I think I might have to DIY a pair.

Do you know how much grief I took when I photographed the BMR's with the grills on, and they came out looking grey? So many emails assuring people they were really black. I kind of like the contrast of grey as well, but I think we're a minority opinion.

 

[sweetmusic]

Curiosity got the better of me so I did the comparison of RAAL vs OW1 as described in post #290. So the OW1 was about 6 inches above the RAAL, and WOW1 speaker tilted down slightly so that I was listening to the OW1 axis about 10' away. Playing pink noise high-passed at 4KHz and gain compensated so they both played at the same level.

I was very surprised; they sounded very different. The OW1 sounded like it had much more very high freq content, and also gave me the sensation that two frequency bands were playing, as if there were a dip between (could just be how my brain processed having more high-end energy?). The RAAL sounded like a single continuous band of noise with less high end compared to the OW1.

This is opposite of the previous impression I have had of the speakers. The BMR with the RAAL I have felt has more sparkle. But this plays in a larger room than the OW1, so that probably has something to do with it.

On dispersion, horizontally they both seem to go all the way to about 90 degrees, just moving around and listening with my ears. But vertically the RAAL falls off fast off axis, of course.

Here are moving microphone measurements, about a one foot box at the listening position. This is with the compensation for pink noise slope, so flat horizontal would be the ideal anechoic.

As for RAAL magic, I have no idea. I think I must just be hearing spectral difference more than I would expect to notice.

View attachment 206258

A question for the community:

To my ears, no speakers I've ever heard are able to reproduce the sound of percussion -- drum sticks hitting cymbals, or clapping hands, or snapping fingers -- with enough realism that you could close your eyes and really imagine you were hearing the live musician in your room. For vocals, guitar, strings, or horns, yes, speakers can transport me there. But hit two drum sticks against each other, and the illusion is gone.

I wonder: is it lost in the recording, or in the speakers, or somewhere else?

Does anyone own speakers that reproduce those sounds like a live performance, real enough that it really sounds like it's in your room? What recording, what speakers?

Why I ask: I wonder if the ribbon tweeters I've heard sound more realistic than domes for those percussive sounds, maybe because of the overtones. But I've never ABX tested, and I don't trust my listening memory.

 

[Chromatischism]

Maybe something is lost at the microphone? Maybe speakers don't produce enough instantaneous SPL (need more than you think)?

 

[Keened]

Maybe something is lost at the microphone? Maybe speakers don't produce enough instantaneous SPL (need more than you think)?

If he's talking about the 'tha-ck tha-ck' sound of wood,I would hazard it's probably because the sound generation continues in the wood past the initial peak and the gain required to capture all of that would require a very large dynamic range to encompass and a noticeably high noise floor from the intense gain. So unless you're dedicating a mic to that sound and then spending time trying to clean it up out of the rest of the mix by doing signal differential stuff from the other mics, you'd end up with an unusable recording (at least in the raw form).

I don't think the sound difference with snaps or claps is caused by the same acoustic phenomena, but the recording process would be similarly hampered I think since capturing extreme data points tends to always capture more noise and is usually more technically difficult across board.

 

[amper42]

A question for the community:

To my ears, no speakers I've ever heard are able to reproduce the sound of percussion -- drum sticks hitting cymbals, or clapping hands, or snapping fingers -- with enough realism that you could close your eyes and really imagine you were hearing the live musician in your room. For vocals, guitar, strings, or horns, yes, speakers can transport me there. But hit two drum sticks against each other, and the illusion is gone.

I wonder: is it lost in the recording, or in the speakers, or somewhere else?

Does anyone own speakers that reproduce those sounds like a live performance, real enough that it really sounds like it's in your room? What recording, what speakers?

Why I ask: I wonder if the ribbon tweeters I've heard sound more realistic than domes for those percussive sounds, maybe because of the overtones. But I've never ABX tested, and I don't trust my listening memory.

My guess is you're a percussionist. In your head you hear a certain sound when playing and you're not experiencing the same exact sound on speakers. If you were a vocalist or a horn player you would feel the same way about these sounds on a speaker. Musicians are the hardest group to please with a speaker system until they understand that a great sounding speaker is good enough and it's not going to sound exactly like being on the drum set.

Most music is delivered via speaker amplification. The audience (non-musicians) think it sounds great but the musician playing will rarely think it sounds identical to them playing acoustically.

Personally, I think "Track 5 - Drum Solo" from "The Link Alive - Gojira" sounds amazing on the Revel F328Be.

 

[mightycicadalord]

A question for the community:

To my ears, no speakers I've ever heard are able to reproduce the sound of percussion -- drum sticks hitting cymbals, or clapping hands, or snapping fingers -- with enough realism that you could close your eyes and really imagine you were hearing the live musician in your room. For vocals, guitar, strings, or horns, yes, speakers can transport me there. But hit two drum sticks against each other, and the illusion is gone.

I wonder: is it lost in the recording, or in the speakers, or somewhere else?

Does anyone own speakers that reproduce those sounds like a live performance, real enough that it really sounds like it's in your room? What recording, what speakers?

Why I ask: I wonder if the ribbon tweeters I've heard sound more realistic than domes for those percussive sounds, maybe because of the overtones. But I've never ABX tested, and I don't trust my listening memory.

It's a combo of how the sounds are mixed and our expectations of what real is and how we think things are supposed to sound. I think the idea of wanting to achieve "musician in the room" is a little backwards. Most acoustic instruments sound pretty bad in the room and what we often think of being the "real pure sound" is usually processed. For drums, you don't want the sound of being there because it sucks usually, it's really unbalanced, cymbals are loud as hell, kick and snare sounds nothing like what it does through the mics or mixed. Convolution verb is a good way to make a recording have convincing space that sounds "in the room".

My two way floor standers with a soft dome tweeter offer some very convincing realism so I don't know if a different tweeter or material is going to give you that. I think a lot of this is mental, some days my speakers sound just ok, other days I'm shocked at their "realism".

 

[sweetmusic]

If he's talking about the 'tha-ck tha-ck' sound of wood,I would hazard it's probably because the sound generation continues in the wood past the initial peak and the gain required to capture all of that would require a very large dynamic range to encompass and a noticeably high noise floor from the intense gain. So unless you're dedicating a mic to that sound and then spending time trying to clean it up out of the rest of the mix by doing signal differential stuff from the other mics, you'd end up with an unusable recording (at least in the raw form).

I don't think the sound difference with snaps or claps is caused by the same acoustic phenomena, but the recording process would be similarly hampered I think since capturing extreme data points tends to always capture more noise and is usually more technically difficult across board.

Thanks! This is really interesting and makes sense. At least part of it is in the recording and mix.

 

[sweetmusic]

My guess is you're a percussionist. In your head you hear a certain sound when playing and you're not experiencing the same exact sound on speakers. If you were a vocalist or a horn player you would feel the same way about these sounds on a speaker. Musicians are the hardest group to please with a speaker system until they understand that a great sounding speaker is good enough and it's not going to sound exactly like being on the drum set.

Most music is delivered via speaker amplification. The audience (non-musicians) think it sounds great but the musician playing will rarely think it sounds identical to them playing acoustically.

Personally, I think "Track 5 - Drum Solo" from "The Link Alive - Gojira" sounds amazing on the Revel F328Be.

It's true, most music is delivered through inexpensive speaker amplification. A good home amp and speakers can easily do better than the typical music venue.

When I go for live shows, it's the percussion that always sounds so different to my ears.

Thanks for the drum solo recommendation! I'll play that track.

 

[mightycicadalord]

I'd be interested in recording a few things, processing the takes differently, and asking people here which sounds the best and or the most natural to them. Would be interesting to see the results.

 

[Chromatischism]

When I go for live shows, it's the percussion that always sounds so different to my ears.

And the space is completely different as well.

But on percussion, I'm convinced they juice the kick drum a bit with EQ because it's always exaggerated to give that chest kick.

 

[RMW_NJ]

Here we go, premiers 11am CST.

 

[sweetmusic]

It's true, most music is delivered through inexpensive speaker amplification. A good home amp and speakers can easily do better than the typical music venue.

When I go for live shows, it's the percussion that always sounds so different to my ears.

Thanks for the drum solo recommendation! I'll play that track.

That drum solo sounds great! It makes me think domes aren't so bad on drums that are recorded well.