Philharmonic BMR Tower Review

[D Murphy]

@D Murphy any photos of the towers in black? Also, any customers in the San Francisco area who might be willing to host a brief audition? Dying to hear these!

I don't have a good pic, but there's not much to see. Just shiny black (12 layers of clear coat).

 

[tktran303]

Thanks for the great review. I like the combination of subjective and objective. One of the graphs you provided that I like is this one.

https://www.audioholics.com/tower-speaker-reviews/philharmonic-bmr/conclusion/BMRTower2DfreqResponse.jpg/image

To me, that indicates great sound no matter where you walk around the room, as long as you ear is level with the tweeter.

However, I think to not include the CTA2034A or spinorama is a missed opportunity.

One of the fastest growing forums and reviewers on the web is Amirm / Audiosciencereview, with his forum and YouTube videos. Thousands of people flock to that website to look at the spinoramas.
Yes, I agree that it's doesn't completely characterize a speaker, but it is a what all technically minded readers at looking for, when they are looking at reviews.

ASR are one of the few publications that publish good measurements, and have overtaken SoundStage Hifi, which overtook Stereophile, IMHO.

I look forward to seeing more reviews from Audioholics in future.

 

[D Murphy]

Thanks for the great review. I like the combination of subjective and objective. One of the graphs you provided that I like is this one.

https://www.audioholics.com/tower-speaker-reviews/philharmonic-bmr/conclusion/BMRTower2DfreqResponse.jpg/image

To me, that indicates great sound no matter where you walk around the room, as long as you ear is level with the tweeter.

However, I think to not to include the CTA2034A or spinorama is a missed opportunity.

One of the fastest growing forums and reviewers on the web is Amirm / Audiosciencereview, with his forum and YouTube videos. Thousands of people flock to that website to look at the spinorama. Yes, agree that it's doesn't not completely characterise a speaker, but it is a what all technically minded readers at looking for, when they are looking at reviews.

ASR are one of the few publications that publish good measurements, and have overtaken SoundStage Hifi, which overtook Stereophile. I look foward to seeing more reviews in future.

I look forward to seeing more reviews from Audioholics in future.

James provides full spin results when it's feasible. See his review of the smaller BMR monitor. However, I agree with James that the waterfall plots give you a better feel for the response of the speaker than some of the spin graphs. He can comment further on this if he wishes.

 

[Danzilla31]

My last comment about the Capital Audiofest is about vinyl record sales on the lobby floor. I passed through once before leaving that day.

An old Beatles album caught my eye – Yesterday and Today. I bought that album sometime in 1966. For those who don't know this bit of trivia, that album was first released in the US with this controversial cover photo:
View attachment 51336
It was soon withdrawn and replaced with this:
View attachment 51337

My album has the second photo. The used album for sale at the CAF had the same photo, but the price tag said $550!! Apparently the second innocuous steamer trunk photo was pasted over the controversial butcher photo. The guy selling the records showed me several features that made identifying the paste-over job easy. As soon as I got home, I found my album, and sure enough it was clearly a paste-over version as well. Hmm … $550 could buy me some medium grade boutique speaker cables.

Even better, my album is mono, not stereo. In the upside down world of oddball collectors, that should make them even more valuable.

Thank you for all the writeups I bet that was so much fun.

 

[tktran303]

Ya think? Looking at the 2012 price list, you could grab a pair of the Mini's for only $56,000/pair, or go a little upscale with the Classique Signature for a mere $125,000/pair. Need speaker wire? You can line up a pair of 2 meter runs of Kharma Enigma Extreme Signature cable for only $32,500. Act fast while the last.

I wise fellow once said to me

"The price race is another problem. If I look at, say, loudspeakers, companies like Kharma put out speakers that are 10 times as expensive as a [produce removed] about 1/10th as well designed. The relativism that rules in a market as utterly democratic as the high end allows situations like this to exist without anyone inside that market asking questions. How are we to establish supremacy in a market that's so saturated and where everything goes? Tough, eh?"

 

[Swerd]

Here's follow-up from the recent Capital Audio Fest. The Absolute Sound sent at least two people to the show. One of them, Andrew Quint, had some nice things to say about two different speakers. Both are Dennis Murphy designs.

First, the Philharmonic Audio BMR Towers

"Philharmonic Audio is a DC-area company but definitely not one of the “tinkerers” that Alan referred to above. The brand doesn’t have a dealer network but has a worldwide constituency for its speakers. The new BMR Tower ($3700) is a transmission-line design employing a Revelator woofer to produce a reported in-room response down to 25Hz. In a system including a Topping DAC and preamp and a Hypex SMPS1200A400 power amplifier, the speakers fared extremely well on both large-scale orchestral and chamber music. On the basis of sonics alone, the speakers are a bargain; add in the exquisite carpentry and finish and they become an incredible bargain."

Next was the Salk BePure 2. The photo, unfortunately, was not of the the speaker, but of a 40 wpc tube amp used to drive the BePure 2. The amp cost more than the speakers!

"Time spent in a Salk Sound room rarely disappoints. Jim and Mary Salk were playing a two-and-a-half way floorstander, priced at $6000, that’s so new that it doesn’t actually have an official model designation. (Salk was leaning towards BePure 2—because the speaker has a beryllium tweeter and utilizes two 6″ woofers sourced from Purifi in Denmark.) Amplification was provided by a McGary Audio SA2 ($7985), a Class AB Ultralinear output-stage stereo tube amplifier that puts out an honest 40Wpc into an 8-ohm load, when KT88 tubes are used. The DAC was an Exogal Comet ($2500). As always, the caliber of the woodworking and finish was second to none. Natalie Merchant’s rendition of “The Peppery Man” with a gospel quartet was completely absorbing."

Capital Audio Fest 2021 | Andrew Quint - The Absolute Sound

Capital Audio Fest 2021 | Andrew Quint -

www.theabsolutesound.com

Andrew Quint’s Best Of Show
Best Sound of CAF 2021

The Voice that Is: Ideon/TIDAL/Siltech​

Best New Product

Salk Audio BePure 2 loudspeaker ​

Best Value

“Actually Fairly Inexpensive” division:​

Philharmonic Audio BMR Tower loudspeaker ($3700/pair). ​

“It’s All Relative” division:​

Alta Audio Alec loudspeaker ($10,000/pair)​

Not bad for 3 day's of work!

Another TAS writer had more to report, including mention of the $85,000 Kharma Midi Equisite speakers. I only mention that because @Mikado463 had asked about them.

Capital Audio Fest 2021 | Alan Taffel - The Absolute Sound

Capital Audio Fest 2021 | Alan Taffel - Let me get this out of the way first: Trade shows are back, baby! The long famine is over! Woohoo!

www.theabsolutesound.com

 

[Mikado463]

Thanks for the follow up Richard !

The tube amp does look a little funky IMO with the IC's out front ?

 

[ryanosaur]

Thanks for the follow up Richard !

The tube amp does look a little funky IMO with the IC's out front ?

How else better to show off your $1000 cables! All the more so since you'll need an extra 3' per to run them around the front!!!

 

[paulgyro]

Hi all, here is a subjective and loaded question. How much do you have to spend to get a better speaker then the BMR Towers?

 

[ryanosaur]

Hi all, here is a subjective and loaded question. How much do you have to spend to get a better speaker then the BMR Towers?

Better in what way?

Some people like controlled directivity rather than wide dispersion. Some people want LOUD as in high sensitivity and high power handling (think what Perlisten delivers, or JTR).

If you want a Speaker that is Neutral and Accurate, they are out there. You will likely pay for it though, and possibly more than the BMR Towers.

In other words... How you use it, your room, your listening distance, your SQ preferences... it all comes in to play.

I have no plans to trade in my Phil 3s or BMR Monitors for something else...

Until I can build better on my own. Otherwise, the ticket gets pretty high!

 

[Swerd]

Hi all, here is a subjective and loaded question. How much do you have to spend to get a better speaker then the BMR Towers?

As an answer, I'll pose another subjective and loaded question.

How much more than $3,700 do you want to spend ? If the present price isn't high enough, wait until trans-Pacific shipping costs increase again.

 

[Pogre]

I think that 3 or 4k is right there where diminishing returns kick in. I really don't know if you can improve much on a BMR design that would translate audibly. You could easily spend twice as much and end up with a worse sounding speaker.

 

[highfigh]

Thanks for the follow up Richard !

The tube amp does look a little funky IMO with the IC's out front ?

Shorter path from the input jacks to the first stage would be my guess as to why they did that.

 

[D Murphy]

Better in what way?

Some people like controlled directivity rather than wide dispersion......

I certainly agree with all of your other points. However, this statement could be misconstrued. The towers have very carefully controlled directivity. There are no peaks or holes in the off axis response. So the distinction is between speakers with controlled directivity but narrower dispersion, and speakers with controlled directivity and very wide dispersion. The results aren't in on which is "correct." But some people will probably prefer one over the other.

 

[ryanosaur]

I certainly agree with all of your other points. However, this statement could be misconstrued. The towers have very carefully controlled directivity. There are no peaks or holes in the off axis response. So the distinction is between speakers with controlled directivity but narrower dispersion, and speakers with controlled directivity and very wide dispersion. The results aren't in on which is "correct." But some people will probably prefer one over the other.

Fair point.
Usually when Controlled Directivity gets tossed around it is in the sense of Waveguides.
Needless to say, I know your work well, and the description, "wide dispersion," is not to imply any splatter-paint effect. Any horizontal directivity plot shows very well how the sound emanates from your designs and it shows clear intention and thoughtfulness to deliver on that as a design goal.

The correct answer is that both are correct when used appropriately.

 

[paulgyro]

Better in what way?

Some people like controlled directivity rather than wide dispersion. Some people want LOUD as in high sensitivity and high power handling (think what Perlisten delivers, or JTR).

If you want a Speaker that is Neutral and Accurate, they are out there. You will likely pay for it though, and possibly more than the BMR Towers.

In other words... How you use it, your room, your listening distance, your SQ preferences... it all comes in to play.

I have no plans to trade in my Phil 3s or BMR Monitors for something else...

Until I can build better on my own. Otherwise, the ticket gets pretty high!

The answer to you question is hard to quantify, as is the answer to my question. I will say that Jame's in the YouTube video discussing the written review compared it to the Revel F226Be which are around $7.7k a pair, said he wouldn't purchase those Revels over the BMR Towers. Crazy talk or is there merit to the discussion? This is the genesis of my question. See with the discussion starting at the 33 min mark.

 

[ryanosaur]

The answer to you question is hard to quantify, as is the answer to my question. I will say that Jame's in the YouTube video discussing the written review compared it to the Revel F226Be which are around $7.7k a pair, said he wouldn't purchase those Revels over the BMR Towers. Crazy talk or is there merit to the discussion? This is the genesis of my question. See with the discussion starting at the 33 min mark.

I agree completely that Dennis’ designs punch well above their ticket. The BMR monitors I have were compared to 3-way towers ranging in price from $1000 to $2000 each prior to purchase.
The Phil 3, the BMR Towers older cousin sounded every bit as strong going up against Speakers at $10k per pair. And the BMR monitors still stood their own ground against those same Speakers.
Even though I haven’t heard those Revels, I have heard other well respected Be Tweeters used in well designed gear.
The closest thing I have heard to the quality of the Philharmonic gear was a design Dennis worked on for Jim Salk.
That’s me. I get it. YMMV.
There are a growing number of us out there, however, who all find something special about what Dennis does in his driver selection and especially in his XO work. Perhaps it’s because he is also a musician that helps when he tunes his designs.
To my ears, also a trained musician, everything I hear sounds right. Maybe a Tower like the Revel can play louder, but I have never been in need of greater dynamics than what I have. I can already induce bleeding-ear syndrome in my room!

Anyway, this is all a long way of getting to the point:
There is merit.
Frankly, a great deal of merit.

 

[KnightOwl]

Anyone think martin Logan's motion series would pair well with this? Have a current ML motion system (30 center, 15 surrounds) and want to upgrade from the old Motion 12 towers.

 

[ryanosaur]

Anyone think martin Logan's motion series would pair well with this? Have a current ML motion system (30 center, 15 surrounds) and want to upgrade from the old Motion 12 towers.

The center is something you want to be matched as closely as possible as a matter of best practices. It isn't necessary, but it is commonly recommended...
In my mind, the center would be a mismatch. Not saying it wouldn't work in the short term, but I would expect you will hear differences if you get into some critical listening. To my ears, the Phils are much more neutral and accurate that the ML Motions I listened to a few years back. The MLs sounded good, but Dennis' work is on a different level.
Whether you hear any difference and if it may bother you is a whole other matter. Only you can decide that for yourself and if you can live with it.

 

[KING DRANZER]

@D Murphy can we expect a Matching Center to the Towers or the Monitors in future. Because these may be lacking in dynamics but not by much is what I heard. And when paired with good subs they gonna be perfect for HT use as they are clear accurate and have Wide dispersion with more than decent imaging. So this checks almost all the boxes needed for HT. Wold be good if we can get a Center channel speaker to go along.