Philharmonic BMR Tower Review

[D Murphy]

Ummm... Where is the 'Spin-O-Rama' for these speakers?

I think James would have needed a hot air balloon to get high enough to take a full set of verticals for the Spinorama protocol.

 

[ryanosaur]

Quick...
To @ErinH and the Klippelizer!

 

[shadyJ]

I think James would have needed a hot air balloon to get high enough to take a full set of verticals for the Spinorama protocol.

Spin data is nice, but the frequency response "waterfall" graphs are much better, in my opinion. They tell you a lot more about the speaker in one chart, and they better characterize how the speaker acts and how it will sound. The only thing that spin graphs give you that they don't is some information about the vertical response, but even then vertical data that you can glean from spin graphs is really buried and unclear. It may be that too much reliance is starting to be given to spin data. The spin graphs are just abstracts of a bunch of other data, and sometimes they miss important details about a loudspeaker's behavior.

 

[ErinH]

I disagree and agree. The SPIN data is a "quick look" and I find it valuable. Yes, the data can be misleading when viewing the DI where a perfectly performing horizontal DI may get corrupted by poor vertical DI. Still, this is up the reviewer/engineer to understand and since they have the data to generate the SPIN, they have the data to view the cause of any such anomalies. The other methods of presenting the data that you, I and others provide is also useful. But I wouldn't toss out the spin data in lieu of just one or other. That does a severe injustice to all the work Toole, et al provided, IMHO, and I'm surprised to see you be dismissive of it.

Aside from how you or I feel about the importance of SPIN data, I do wish you had the ability to provide the vertical data here (more than is provided). Namely because with the CTC spacing here of the mids I am curious how it compares to the intentionally-arrayed design of the Perlisten. The Perlisten has a vertical window of about +/-30 degrees above 1kHz and it is very, very well maintained. I'd be curious to see how this BMR (and other subsequent MTM designs) compare in this way. Even more so because you had such positive things to say about the Perlisten's vertical directivity.



And as an aside, I 1000% understand the issue with acquiring vertical response data for a speaker like this. I have the NFS now... but I was measuring the "hard way" before that and went through many, many rounds of testing methods to find one that allowed me to provide full vertical measurements of large/heavy speakers. So, if you wanted to do that, you might consider the method I landed on - which was pretty damn rigged but worked quite well - and had less "pucker factor" than my previous methods (my god, you should have seen the ladder/chair/cinder block rig I had before this). If you are interested, PM me and I'll give you my number and I can walk you through exactly what I did. $200 or less and you'll be able to provide a full set of data for these kind of speakers.

- Erin

 

[slipperybidness]

Nice review. They performed as expected. That finish is excellent, but I'm hoping this one will also be available as a kit from somewhere.

My guess is that a kit will be a lot of work, and may not be a huge $ savings anyway.

I can tell you, I did the BMR as a kit during the time that Dennis had stopped production and before the new production. And, if I had known the new production was coming, I would have happily paid the extra $ for less work on my part!

 

[Eppie]

My guess is that a kit will be a lot of work, and may not be a huge $ savings anyway.

I can tell you, I did the BMR as a kit during the time that Dennis had stopped production and before the new production. And, if I had known the new production was coming, I would have happily paid the extra $ for less work on my part!

Let Dennis make some money before requesting tower kits.

I've been pricing the BMR monitor kit but the killer is $235 shipping to Canada from Meniscus and the exchange rate. By the time you factor in the cost of the cabinets, wood veneers and finishing products, you realize just what a bargain his finished speakers are. A BMR kit is more a labour of love than a money saver.

 

[slipperybidness]

Let Dennis make some money before requesting tower kits.

I've been pricing the BMR monitor kit but the killer is $235 shipping to Canada from Meniscus and the exchange rate. By the time you factor in the cost of the cabinets, wood veneers and finishing products, you realize just what a bargain his finished speakers are. A BMR kit is more a labour of love than a money saver.

 

[Eppie]

View attachment 51257

Nice job! Did you make a build thread for those?

 

[slipperybidness]

Nice job! Did you make a build thread for those?

nah, I just posted about it some and some pics in this thread

The Philharmonic Audio BMR, Refreshed!

You're right about power handling, although the Scan is a really high bar. The trade-off for a little extra volume at 34 Hz is a very heavy cone that breaks up fairly early and requires a steep slope to the mid to suppress the breakup. The SB Ceramic is much smoother, to the point that on...

forums.audioholics.com

 

[shadyJ]

I disagree and agree. The SPIN data is a "quick look" and I find it valuable. Yes, the data can be misleading when viewing the DI where a perfectly performing horizontal DI may get corrupted by poor vertical DI. Still, this is up the reviewer/engineer to understand and since they have the data to generate the SPIN, they have the data to view the cause of any such anomalies. The other methods of presenting the data that you, I and others provide is also useful. But I wouldn't toss out the spin data in lieu of just one or other. That does a severe injustice to all the work Toole, et al provided, IMHO, and I'm surprised to see you be dismissive of it.

Aside from how you or I feel about the importance of SPIN data, I do wish you had the ability to provide the vertical data here (more than is provided). Namely because with the CTC spacing here of the mids I am curious how it compares to the intentionally-arrayed design of the Perlisten. The Perlisten has a vertical window of about +/-30 degrees above 1kHz and it is very, very well maintained. I'd be curious to see how this BMR (and other subsequent MTM designs) compare in this way. Even more so because you had such positive things to say about the Perlisten's vertical directivity.



And as an aside, I 1000% understand the issue with acquiring vertical response data for a speaker like this. I have the NFS now... but I was measuring the "hard way" before that and went through many, many rounds of testing methods to find one that allowed me to provide full vertical measurements of large/heavy speakers. So, if you wanted to do that, you might consider the method I landed on - which was pretty damn rigged but worked quite well - and had less "pucker factor" than my previous methods (my god, you should have seen the ladder/chair/cinder block rig I had before this). If you are interested, PM me and I'll give you my number and I can walk you through exactly what I did. $200 or less and you'll be able to provide a full set of data for these kind of speakers.

View attachment 51256


- Erin

Hey Erin, I can see what you did there, and that is a clever approach to measuring tower speakers vertically, but for a number of reasons, that approach is not practical for me. Sometimes I try to get the 'listening window' verticals for towers, which I would consider the most important verticals, as I have done for the BMR Tower review.

As for the spin data, I am not dismissing it, but of the data I do provide in my reviews, I don't think it is as useful as the polar maps or waterfall response graphs. However, for some recent tower reviews, I get people asking why it's not there, yet I have even better graphs available for the same loudspeaker. I guess that's a change for the better from when I started posting spin graphs when few people even understood what those curves meant.

 

[Swerd]

Yesterday morning I went to at Dennis Murphy's house to load up all the speakers (2 BMR Towers and 2 BMR Monitors) and other gear he wanted for the Capital Audiofest. We got nearly all of it in our two cars. The two large cartons, each with a BMR Tower speaker, were quite large and heavy. I believe these were the same two speakers that shadyJ used in his review. They were too large to get into my aging Volvo S70 sedan, but we slid them into Dennis's VW Golf hatchback – the hatch door just barely closed. All the rest of the stuff went in my car.

We then drove to the Twinbrook Hilton hotel in Rockville, MD, looking like we had just robbed a Best Buy store. Outside the hotel we saw lot's of trucks and trailers unloading their audio gear for the show. I was glad to see Jim Salk and his wife Mary among them.

At the hotel, room 306 is small, but we got everything in. At that point, I had to leave. Later in the afternoon Dennis's business partner, Ken showed up to help shove things around until they had reasonable set up. Ken took photos and posted them at AVS:

Of interest is the small and very light weight Hypex NC400 monoblock amps which will be used in the show. One of them is the small black box with the blue LED sitting above Dennis's old CD player. I don't know where the other one is. Some of the other gear allows Dennis to instantly switch between the BMR Towers and Monitors while playing at the same volume.

I'll go there tomorrow to see the whole show, and I'll bring my camera.

 

[ryanosaur]

I'll go there tomorrow to see the whole show, and I'll bring my camera.

It's not tomorrow, yet, huh?

 

[ryanosaur]

Early word is that the BMR Towers are the darlings of the show at Capital Audio Fest!

Can't wait for @Swerd to share his experience.

Again, @D Murphy , congratulations.

 

[Alex2507]

It's not tomorrow, yet, huh?

It's like the day after!

 

[ryanosaur]

It's like the day after!

Like that matters.

 

[Eppie]

Yesterday morning I went to at Dennis Murphy's house to load up all the speakers (2 BMR Towers and 2 BMR Monitors) and other gear he wanted for the Capital Audiofest. We got nearly all of it in our two cars. The two large cartons, each with a BMR Tower speaker, were quite large and heavy. I believe these were the same two speakers that shadyJ used in his review. They were too large to get into my aging Volvo S70 sedan, but we slid them into Dennis's VW Golf hatchback – the hatch door just barely closed. All the rest of the stuff went in my car.

We then drove to the Twinbrook Hilton hotel in Rockville, MD, looking like we had just robbed a Best Buy store. Outside the hotel we saw lot's of trucks and trailers unloading their audio gear for the show. I was glad to see Jim Salk and his wife Mary among them.

At the hotel, room 306 is small, but we got everything in. At that point, I had to leave. Later in the afternoon Dennis's business partner, Ken showed up to help shove things around until they had reasonable set up. Ken took photos and posted them at AVS:
View attachment 51276
View attachment 51277

Of interest is the small and very light weight Hypex NC400 monoblock amps which will be used in the show. One of them is the small black box with the blue LED sitting above Dennis's old CD player. I don't know where the other one is. Some of the other gear allows Dennis to instantly switch between the BMR Towers and Monitors while playing at the same volume.
View attachment 51278
I'll go there tomorrow to see the whole show, and I'll bring my camera.

I could have fit those two towers in my Jeep but I might have driven straight home with them.

 

[Kvn_Walker]

I had so many great misadventures with my 2004 Golf diesel. The things you could fit (and do ) in the back of that car with the seats folded down...

It was like a TARDIS, much much bigger on the inside. I miss that car.

 

[Alex2507]

Like that matters.

"I'd like to speak to the manager".

 

[Kvn_Walker]

"I'd like to speak to the manager".

 

[colofan]

Nice review though a bit disappointing about not being able to hear the bumps in the FR.

The vertical response is also a function how ribbons work. Baffle design on the top and changing the midrange driver spacing to an asymmetrical design would have resolved most if the lumps.

In room impulse curves would also been nice.