Finished the BMR is $1700. to $1900. Finished the Criton is $1949. to $2395. Free shipping. So pretty close.
I still haven't heard the Criton 1TD-X, so all my comments can be considered as conjecture, at best, educated conjecture.
I read what CSS has to say about the kit components, especially the two drivers. The 1TD-X is a typical 2-way design using a
18 cm (7") diameter mid-woofer and a
25 mm (1") silk dome tweeter, with a crossover frequency of 1600 Hz. CSS shows data pages with T/S parameters and frequency response (FR) curves for the individual drivers. They look very good, but these drivers are only available from CSS, so I have to take those very good looking FR curves as possibly too good to be true.
I also read an
online review by noaudiophile.com. In my opinion, the reviewer does a bit less than the usual gushing about a review product. But I'm being charitable, because I ignored his foolish sounding comments on "upgraded" crossover components. His review includes a FR curve that shows a flat looking response (±3 dB) from about 55 Hz to nearly 20 kHz. The reviewer's text claims bass sound below 50 Hz, but his FR curve doesn't show that.
The FR curve shows only one curve, so I assume it was measured on-axis. A caption below this figure says the FR curve was "Unsmoothed, windowed to avoid reflection, outdoor on-axis measurement with ground plane measurement for bass response stitched in at 300Hz."
Next, he shows off-axis curves from on-axis (0°) to 75° off-axis. The colored curves are not labeled.
Note the large divergences among off-axis responses between 1 and 2 kHz. They get further apart as frequencies increase, until the crossover frequency of 1.6 kHz. That's due to the mid-woofer beaming. And above 1.6 kHz, the traces merge together again, as the tweeter takes over. This is what you'd expect to see for a 2-way speaker with a crossover frequency of 1.6 kHz. Above 5 kHz shows more losses of off-axis responses, as expected for a 1" dome tweeter.
No evidence is seen in the crossover region of mid-woofer breakup, and the reviewer claims he heard no audible break up noise. In my experience, mid-woofer breakup noise is the most common and the worst sounding problem in commercial 2-way speakers.
The woofer's spec sheet indicates that measurable break up begins at roughly 4 kHz and higher. A crossover frequency of 1.6 kHz looks like a wise choice. But it comes with a hidden cost – asking a tweeter to perform that low without distortion requires a more robust and expensive tweeter.
CSS never specified crossover slopes. I could only guess whether the crossover has 2nd or 4th order roll-off slopes. Looking at the photos of the crossover components, and the above off-axis FR curves, I'd guess 2nd order. But that's only a guess. To avoid mid-woofer breakup noise in a 2-way design, a steeper roll-off slope, such as in a 4th order crossover, works better than a 2nd order crossover.
For the sake of argument, let's assume this speaker is every bit as good as CSS and the reviewer claim. It's still a 2-way speaker. It has that unavoidable off-axis response loss within an octave or two of the crossover frequency. It can't compare in performance to a well designed 3-way speaker such as the BMR Monitor. You may have already seen these links, but compare the
Philharmonic Audio's measured FR curves for the BMR Monitor, as well as those measured in
James Larsen's review on AudioHolics.
If they sell at similar prices, I think the BMR Monitor is an unusually good bargain at $1,900 (plus shipping), and the CSS Criton 1TD-X is overpriced at $1,900 to $2400. I would expect it to sell for roughly $1,000 per pair. But with today's inflation, who knows?
