Philharmonic BMR HT Tower Review

[shadyJ]

For those in the know, Philharmonic Audio is one of the stand-out values in high-fidelity loudspeakers, but since Philharmonic doesn’t spend a penny on promotion and advertising, only those enthusiasts who are really tuned into the world of home audio loudspeakers would be familiar with the name. Their reputation stems purely from word of mouth and a few lucky reviewers who managed to spend some time with their products. Happily, Audioholics has spent some time with their speakers: see our reviews of the BMT Tower (Philharmonic BMR Tower Review) and the BMR Philharmonitor (Philharmonic BMR Philharmonitor Review). In both instances, we were astonished at just how superb the engineering was, even irrespective of the affordable pricing.

Today, we have the opportunity to go over Philharmonic’s latest release, the BMR HT Tower. This speaker is Philharmonic’s foray into wider dynamic range applications such as home theater, as denoted by the ‘HT.’ As such, the design does take some significant departures from what we are used to from Philharmonic, although it does retain some key elements from previous designs. The questions we will be asking in this review are can the BMR HT Towers bring the same sound quality that we have become accustomed to from Philharmonic, and how well does their formula serve home theater applications? Read our full review to find out…

READ: Philharmonic BMR HT Tower Review

 

[ryanosaur]

Ummmmm..... still waiting??????

I haven’t slept.
Still refreshing every 5 min.
FML

( )

 

[gene]

It's Alive, IT'S ALIVE!

Philharmonic BMR HT Tower Speaker Review

We reviewed the Philharmonic Audio’s BMR HT Tower to verify if it bring their extreme high-fidelity sound to a wider dynamic range that is more appropriate for heavy-duty home theater applications.

www.audioholics.com

 

[Danzilla31]

It's Alive, IT'S ALIVE!

Philharmonic BMR HT Tower Speaker Review

We reviewed the Philharmonic Audio’s BMR HT Tower to verify if it bring their extreme high-fidelity sound to a wider dynamic range that is more appropriate for heavy-duty home theater applications.

www.audioholics.com

You realize Gene you just saved @ryanosaur's sanity. The poor guy hasn't slept for days!

 

[Epsonfan]

I just made 3D copy of the speakers & they sound good.

 

[ryanosaur]

Yay!
Thank you @shadyJ … another great write up.
And congratulations to @D Murphy and team! Already being a Philharmonic Audio fan, I knew these wouldn’t disappoint. Clearly, for those interested, the BMR HTs won’t.

 

[Danzilla31]

Yay!
Thank you @shadyJ … another great write up.
And congratulations to @D Murphy and team! Already being a Philharmonic Audio fan, I knew these wouldn’t disappoint. Clearly, for those interested, the BMR HTs won’t.

So when you buying some?

 

[ryanosaur]

So when you buying some?

Believe me when I say I'm tempted!
I know they will not be an "upgrade" with the exception of greater dynamics and perhaps the Purifi Drivers being designed to minimize distortion. (Not that I can hear any distortion from the 8" Revelator though one designer mentioned seeing some compression artifacts in one set of measurements he looked at utilizing that Driver, but very difficult to say if that is design or Driver related. *shrugs)

I would need 3 for the front...

And then there is the Processor upgrade I want, and the Amplification upgrade to help me with that Processor... And 2-3 Harbottle Raw Drivers... And that doesn't even take into account upgrading this 10 year old Computer.

Anybody mind spotting me around 15-Large, no interest?

 

[Eppie]

Nice article and congrats, Dennis, on another great product. If my room was larger I would love to have these as mains and the monitors for surrounds. Would make an excellent HT setup but more compact than the Phil3.

 

[TLS Guy]

That looks like superbly engineered speaker. There are two mids, which is a good plan, and those drivers are covering the majority of the speech discrimination band, so speech intelligibility should be excellent. I would bet a center speakers is far from essential, when using these speakers.
Well done Dennis. It just shows what can be done when there are no ghastly corporate and marketing types breathing down your neck.

 

[D Murphy]

Thanks TLS. It's a lot easier to pull something like this off when you're working with such high quality drivers, and I got a lot of help from Paul Kittinger in the bass tuning department. As I'm sure you realize, and as I'm sure Paul would want me to mention, this is not a pure transmission line design like the ones you've implemented. That wouldn't be possible in a cabinet this size. There is some contribution from the quarter wave, but it's fairly high in frequency. The main advantage of Paul's software and his skills is that they allow optimal placement of the drivers and the port. Most other bass tuning software just lets you determine the optimal box volume and port size.

 

[Swerd]

The Philharmonic BMR HT speakers are exceptional speakers. All credit for that goes to Dennis and his design & manufacturing team.

James Larson's review is in keeping with these speakers, that is, exceptional. Well done James – again!

 

[Boerd]

Thumbs up! MUSA, good dispersion, smooth FR, nice looking cabinet and very good drivers for a decent price. Congrats Dennis!

 

[TLS Guy]

Thanks TLS. It's a lot easier to pull something like this off when you're working with such high quality drivers, and I got a lot of help from Paul Kittinger in the bass tuning department. As I'm sure you realize, and as I'm sure Paul would want me to mention, this is not a pure transmission line design like the ones you've implemented. That wouldn't be possible in a cabinet this size. There is some contribution from the quarter wave, but it's fairly high in frequency. The main advantage of Paul's software and his skills is that they allow optimal placement of the drivers and the port. Most other bass tuning software just lets you determine the optimal box volume and port size.

Exactly, that is what I have posted many times. Speaker design starts with good driver selection with drivers that can work together. Both of use would never tolerate an environment where an ignorant bean counter was telling us we had to shave a few bucks off the drivers, otherwise it would not hit the target market. We are both lucky we don't have to shop for speakers or order them on line sight unseen.

I find it interesting that the bass roll off is largely second order, despite there being two impedance peaks at tuning. As you know my lines have only one.
I agree, I don't think the size of my enclosures would have strong market potential! Mind you I think they look better then these.

By the way, is Paul's software available for purchase?

 

[ryanosaur]

By the way, is Paul's software available for purchase?

Paul uses the King MathCad program, iirc.

 

[Bobby Bass]

James thanks for another detailed and measured review. Helpful to read your listening experiences combined with your open-space measurements. Appreciate your reviews for direct to consumer manufacturers‘ components that don’t often show up on other online reviews. They can be great deals for consumers. Wish I had the budget and space to buy all of the great products that have come out recently. Looks like Philharmonic have made another excellent speaker with their first tower designed specifically for HT.

 

[Eppie]

While these may have HT in the name, I think it's a great speaker, period. While the BMR Tower has deeper bass extension, it's 44"h x 12"w x 15.5"d while the HT Tower is 42.3"h x 8.5"w x 11"d. For those that already own a capable subwoofer and find the Tower a little lacking in maximum SPL, the HT Tower offers a great solution in a more compact form factor. I couldn't fit the Towers in my current setup but I could fit the more narrow HT Tower. Having heard the Monitor and Tower at Dennis' I would have no hesitation ordering a pair of these. I still have a Monitor kit to finish but I'm really tempted to try and find the same style veneer so that I can add a matching HT Tower later.

 

[D Murphy]

For the technically minded, Paul Kittinger elaborated a bit on the nature of the HT's box tuning in comparison to a pure TL:
"All TLs are inherently 4th-order systems, like ported boxes, and most will have two impedance peaks, and their bass response will eventually roll off with a 4th-order slope. However, the resulting roll-off usually is slower, typically 3rd-order and sometimes even 2nd-order, at least initially. It all depends on the design's specifics, like the line's 1/4-wavelengt resonance, the port's characteristics, if there is a port, line stuffing density and location, and driver and port location (a tapered TL will not literally have a port, just an exit hole or slot near the end of the line). One can certainly design a TL that has only one impedance peak, but to do so requires stuffing the line to the point where the lower-frequency peak is entirely suppressed, which negatively affects the bass reach to a large degree. That doesn't mean the sonic result is not good, only that a much larger box is required where the extra volume improves the bass reach."

 

[TLS Guy]

For the technically minded, Paul Kittinger elaborated a bit on the nature of the HT's box tuning in comparison to a pure TL:
"All TLs are inherently 4th-order systems, like ported boxes, and most will have two impedance peaks, and their bass response will eventually roll off with a 4th-order slope. However, the resulting roll-off usually is slower, typically 3rd-order and sometimes even 2nd-order, at least initially. It all depends on the design's specifics, like the line's 1/4-wavelengt resonance, the port's characteristics, if there is a port, line stuffing density and location, and driver and port location (a tapered TL will not literally have a port, just an exit hole or slot near the end of the line). One can certainly design a TL that has only one impedance peak, but to do so requires stuffing the line to the point where the lower-frequency peak is entirely suppressed, which negatively affects the bass reach to a large degree. That doesn't mean the sonic result is not good, only that a much larger box is required where the extra volume improves the bass reach."

What you say is true. However a damped line is the only way to have a really low Q design. The only other comment that I have is that line stuffing is actually best uniform, as long as you keep it a little bit away from the port. George Augspurger's model and program calculates the weight of the damping material very well. That is a big time saver. The weight is critical, too much and the line is dead, and too little the line is too "live."

Damping of the long bass line. Picture shows the top which is the output end of the bass line.

This shows the damping of the in wall line.

I find the biggest problem is finding drivers that are really suitable for this loading. The good old standby is the old KEF B 139. Raymond Cooke was closely associated with the Radford group researching TL's and of course he was one of those who was part of the legendary design team that designed the active TL monitors for the BBC Maida Vale studios. So I suspect empirically they found those TL parameters were optimal. In any event the KEF B139 hits all the spots for a good TL driver. Fortunately the 10" SEAS Excel driver also hits the sweet spot. That bass line really connects with the room. There is absolutely no need for bass shakers in the seats in this room, even at low volumes.

Incidentally four of the amp boards designed by Peter Walker came up for sale on eBay a couple of years ago. I just could not resist buying them for historical and nostalgic reasons. They are a modified version of the Quad 405-2 boards.

Probably we would never see this now, but the owners of competitive companies all worked together on the project. The other big contributor was Jim Rogers. At that time, they all shared and published their designs and data. I am certain that none of them lost a sale or lost any business, in fact I am certain quite the reverse. That policy builds enthusiasm and above all trust. I bet this is not taught in business school today. I know it is not as it is pulling teeth to get even a circuit these days. In those days, having the circuit as part of the user manual was expected. Peter Walker always said the was the way you could often get your design improved for free!

 

[D Murphy]

What you say is true. However a damped line is the only way to have a really low Q design. The only other comment that I have is that line stuffing is actually best uniform, as long as you keep it a little bit away from the port. George Augspurger's model and program calculates the weight of the damping material very well. That is a big time saver. The weight is critical, too much and the line is dead, and too little the line is too "live."

Damping of the long bass line. Picture shows the top which is the output end of the bass line.

This shows the damping of the in wall line.

I find the biggest problem is finding drivers that are really suitable for this loading. The good old standby is the old KEF B 139. Raymond Cooke was closely associated with the Radford group researching TL's and of course he was one of those who was part of the legendary design team that designed the active TL monitors for the BBC Maida Vale studios. So I suspect empirically they found those TL parameters were optimal. In any event the KEF B139 hits all the spots for a good TL driver. Fortunately the 10" SEAS Excel driver also hits the sweet spot. That bass line really connects with the room. There is absolutely no need for bass shakers in the seats in this room, even at low volumes.

Incidentally four of the amp boards designed by Peter Walker came up for sale on eBay a couple of years ago. I just could not resist buying them for historical and nostalgic reasons. They are a modified version of the Quad 405-2 boards.

Probably we would never see this now, but the owners of competitive companies all worked together on the project. The other big contributor was Jim Rogers. At that time, they all shared and published their designs and data. I am certain that none of them lost a sale or lost any business, in fact I am certain quite the reverse. That policy builds enthusiasm and above all trust. I bet this is not taught in business school today. I know it is not as it is pulling teeth to get even a circuit these days. In those days, having the circuit as part of the user manual was expected. Peter Walker always said the was the way you could often get your design improved for free!

That's impressive. The King software does specify the stuffing weight, and the factory follows that when finishing up our MLTL cabinets.