Monday morning after CAF … (while drinking some coffee)
I think CAF was a big success for Dennis Murphy and Philharmonic Audio. His room was very busy Saturday & Sunday afternoon. Apparently on Saturday there was some chatter on Facebook about Philharmonic Audio, room 306, and the two speakers, the BMR Monitor and BMR Tower. That brought in large numbers of people. Dennis said he was very busy, and that helped the time fly by.
I was there on Saturday and saw some of that crowd. People were there from up & down the east coast. I spoke to several in the hallway after they came out of the room, making sure they knew how to look up Philharmonic Audio's web page and how they could contact Dennis Murphy. Several people there mentioned reading James Larson's AH excellent review of the BMR Towers. (
@shadyJ , nice work!) And nearly all of them were surprised at their low price compared to other speakers they saw at the audio show.
At least one listener asked Dennis to comment about the lack of high-priced electronic audio gear and cables. He didn't press hard on that, but clearly did wonder how the BMR speakers could sound so good without all that other stuff. Dennis's responded politely, but I suspect, as he answered, that he was thinking "real men don't use boutique cables or overpriced tube amps".
A correction: In my earlier CAF post, post #31, I said Dennis used Hypex NC400 monobloc amps. The amp was a 2-channel Ncore Hypex NC400 amp (with two NC400 boards in one chassis), and the preamp was a
Topping Pre90 preamp. This was the first time I heard a class D amp in a hi-fi setting. In my opinion, it stood up well to the very expensive amps I saw used in other speaker rooms. It easily drove both the BMR Monitor and the Tower, without trouble. The amp is the small black box sitting on top of the much larger Onkyo CD player. To the right is the Topping preamp. On the lower shelf is a device that allows volume-matched instantaneous speaker switching. Notice the name MurphyBlaster Productions.
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The first thing on Sunday morning Dennis was visited by someone who was representing a certain well-known (I will leave it's name out for the present) audiophile review magazine. He was an orchestral trombonist, and brought along several CDs, all of classical music. Dennis, also a classical musician, was happy to talk both music and speakers with him. It was early on Sunday, roughly 10 AM, before the crowds showed up. As I helped Dennis pack up and move his stuff out of the hotel room Sunday evening, Dennis said he wouldn't be surprised if he was asked to provide a pair of BMR Towers for a formal review by the publication.
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