No offense to the owners but other than a few individuals' "reviews" I'm still searching for a few more detailed and unbiased reviews of the Philharmonic Affordable Accuracy towers/center. Can anyone point to a few links?
In addition to ziegl01's extensive list, you can add my own brief observation. I haven't been shopping for speakers in some time, so I hadn't paid much attention to the Affordable Accuracy speakers.
Last week I paid a visit to Dennis Murphy just to say hi and see what's new. He is always designing something new and I hadn't seen him in over a year. That same day a local customer was there. He had already purchased a pair of Pioneer BS-22s and brought them to Dennis for his modifications. Dennis already had a pair that had been modified, so as a result, I could hear both the before and after versions.
The existing Pioneer small woofer and it's low end tuning in the cabinet are already good. The original design succeeds at getting reasonable bass from it without getting greedy. There is no exaggerated boom or muddy sounding overhang from a ringing woofer. It goes no lower than about 70 Hz, but that is perfectly reasonable for such a low price. Dennis does nothing to alter this. He does replace the tweeter and alters the crossover accordingly to create a smoother overall sound with a better dispersion of mid range and higher frequencies. It's an unusual bargain.
The SP-FS52 tower version, apparently gets a similar treatment, but I didn't get to hear one. Dennis says it isn't nearly as good a bargain as the smaller and lighter BE-22, because it costs him so much more to ship it.
If you want to keep costs as low as possible, the Affordable Accuracy BS-22 speakers avoid making audible sound quality compromises often seen in the low-priced range.
