Philharmonic Audio BMR Philharmonitor Bookshelf Speaker Review

BMR Philharmonitor Bookshelf Speaker Introduction

Not many people outside of audio enthusiasts who pay attention to audio in social media will know about Philharmonic Audio. This is because Philharmonic Audio doesn’t spend a penny on advertising and their only means of promotion is by word of mouth. However, those audio enthusiasts who do pay attention to social media generally hold Philharmonic Audio in high regard, and Philharmonic looks to be thriving despite having a near zero dollar marketing budget. Dennis Murphy, the proprietor of Philharmonic Audio, lets his creations do all the talking for him. When your only means of promotion is end-users telling others how good their experience was with your product, and you gain success with that strategy, that definitely augurs well for the quality of the product. We at Audioholics have noticed all the buzz surrounding Philharmonic Audio in social media circles, and so we arranged for a review of a pair of their speakers to see if they lived up to all the hype. It should be said that we have known Dennis Murphy for some time and knew him to be a more than competent speaker engineer, so we weren’t surprised that his designs would be rock solid. Nonetheless, we were curious to experience a sample of something he has cooked up, so for today’s review, we look at Philharmonic’s top bookshelf speaker, the BMR Philharmonitors.

Unpacking and Appearance

  

The BMP Philharmonitors arrived in two jumbo boxes that were unusually big for bookshelf speakers. This isn’t all that surprising, since I knew these speakers were on the larger side for bookshelf speakers, but they were still unexpectedly large. Each speaker was packed using double boxing and also two large stiff foam blocks that completely surrounded it. The speakers were covered in a soft foam bag to protect them from scuffing and moisture. It is apparent that Mr. Murphy did not want to waste his time with damage claims because these are some of the best-packed bookshelf speakers I have ever seen. Most speaker packing uses top and bottom foam blocks to fit the speaker in the box, but this set uses a very thick piece that guards against anything that could pierce the boxing anywhere around the speaker. It would take particularly abusive transit to cause any damage to these speakers.

  

Once unpacked, the BMR Philharmonitors are revealed to be attractive and handsome speakers. ‘Handsome’ is a more operative word here than ‘pretty,’ since the BMR Philharmonitors are a bit too serious to be called pretty in the conventional sense. I received the standard version of the BMR Philharmonitors, which have a tall, oblong enclosure in a gloss black finish and rounded edges. As bookshelf speakers go, these were almost stately-looking; they were simultaneously elegant yet business-like in their demeanor. The differently-sized circular frames of each of the drivers against the black backdrop of the finish give the BMR Philharmonitors a slightly cosmic aesthetic, as though the drivers were an alignment of planets against the monolithic cabinet (cue ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’). With the grille on, the speakers turn much more stylistically minimal, of course, as gloss black boxes with a muted black fabric front. They are shipped with some small ‘Philharmonic’ stickers that the user can choose to apply to the front grille. I like a cleaner appearance so I declined to do that. As usual, I prefer the appearance of the speakers with the grille off. Due to their simple, clean appearance, the BMR Philharmonitors could fit in almost any style of interior decoration, from modern to traditional. 

Design Analysis

To sum them up very simply, the BMR Philharmonitor is a three-way, ported bookshelf speaker, but these are not simple speakers. Bookshelf speakers do not normally come in three-way designs, although that kind of design isn’t all that rare. However, the three-way design chosen for the BMR Philharmonitor is quite unique. One of its unique traits is the driver selection, so let’s begin our discussion of the BMR Philharmonitor by talking about the drivers used in its design, and we will start at the top: the tweeter.

   

The BMR Philharmonitor uses a ribbon tweeter by the highly-regarded Serbian manufacturer RAAL. Ribbon tweeters are normally found on expensive speakers and are highly sought-after for their linearity, detail, and high-frequency extension. What makes a ribbon tweeter so special? The answer is the low mass of the diaphragm. Ribbon tweeters work by placing very thin, conductive ribbon that is usually either conductive tracings on a material like Kapton or simply a very thin aluminum strip in a tightly-controlled magnetic field between two permanent magnets. When alternating current is run through the ribbon, it vibrates as its magnetic charge rapidly oscillates between positive and negative. Proponents of ribbons claim they are better as high-frequency reproducers than domes because their moving mass is much lower than domes and therefore can accelerate and decelerate much more quickly, and this quicker movement makes for a more realistic sound. However, ribbons have historically had a few disadvantages. Among those disadvantages is they are more expensive to manufacture, and they were fragile, so they were not as capable in midrange frequencies as in treble. They also need a transformer to raise their electrical impedance to a usable level, which naturally raises their manufacturing cost and makes them a larger component. The BMR Philharmonitor addresses the low-frequency fragility by just using the ribbon where it is strongest, at mid-treble frequencies and above and not tasking it to play outside of its comfort region.

     

It is said that music lives in the mids, so the midrange driver in a three-way speaker is crucial in getting a good sound. Philharmonic has chosen a peculiar and perhaps revolutionary midrange driver to serve this range. It is the Tectonic BMR (more specifically the TEBM46C20N-4B) which, of course, is referred to in the name of the speaker. The ‘BMR’ stands for ‘Balanced Mode Radiator.’ It’s not an expensive component but it is a sophisticated piece of engineering nonetheless. It is an extremely wide-band, flat-diaphragm, 3” driver that uses weighted rings on the diaphragm to dramatically reduce cone break-up. Cone break-up occurs when the excursion of the driver happens so quickly that the cone can’t keep a uniform shape and begins to bend in various ways. This happens to all drivers at high enough frequencies, and the results are that the response starts to get heavily distorted past a certain frequency. The larger the cone, the lower in frequency that break-up will start to affect the response, and this is one of the reasons why midrange drivers are smaller than bass drivers, and dome tweeters are smaller than midrange drivers. Filtering out break-up artifacts has always been a challenge for loudspeaker designers, so any driver that doesn’t have as much of a problem in this respect makes designing a good speaker much easier. The exact method that Tectonic uses to reduce break-up with their weighted rings is rather complex but is explained in this white paper.

      

The woofer used in the BMR Philharmonitor is the 18W/8545-01 which is the latest iteration of the acclaimed 8545 series from the highly-regarded Danish manufacturer Scan-Speak. This 7” diameter woofer uses a paper/carbon fiber cone in a cast aluminum frame with a beefy 4 ¾” diameter magnet and 1.5” voice coil. It uses Scan-speak’s ‘Symmetric Drive’ motor design which is a patented way to arrange shorting rings and a copper cap in order to reduce the deleterious effects of induction by providing a symmetric induction around the gap center point.

 

The BMR Philharmonitor is a hefty bookshelf speaker, at 34 lbs., and most of that weight is composed of the cabinet. The cabinet uses MDF construction and has a 1” thick front baffle with ¾” thick side panels and bracing. The midrange driver is housed in its own isolated compartment so that backwave radiation from the woofer won’t affect its operation and also to give it a better enclosure space with more optimal backwave pressure for its own operation. There are two pieces of bracing that jut out from the top of the midrange compartment to strengthen the side panels. The BMR Philharmonitor uses three types of acoustic treatment on the inside of the cabinet: polyfill filling the inside of the cabinet, Sonic Barrier acoustic damping lining the walls, and Acoustimac’s Ecocore acoustic insulation lining the top of the cabinet and inside of the midrange compartment. I am told by the BMR Philharmonitor designer Dennis Murphy that Ecocore is essential as stuffing for the midrange chamber since nothing else will load the BMR driver properly. 

The BMR Philharmonitor is rear-ported with a 7” long, 2” diameter port that is heavily flared on both ends. That is a very long port for a bookshelf speaker that ought to make for a very low port resonant frequency. Port tuning was done by award-winning speaker designer Paul Kittinger who is known for his work on more complex transmission line cabinets. One aspect to note here is that these speakers dig ambitiously low in bass for bookshelf speakers- even large bookshelf speakers- with a listed spec of 34 Hz to 20 kHz in a +/- 2 dB window. That will inevitably have a cost in sensitivity, so while these speakers may be able to hit those very low notes, it will not do so as efficiently as a larger tower speaker could for the same wattage. Indeed, its sensitivity is listed as 85 dB for 2.83v at 1 meter, which would be below what one might expect for a bookshelf speaker of this size, although not so much when its low-frequency extension is factored. 

The BMR Philharmonitors do not come with feet installed. For those who want to use feet, Dennis Murphy recommends Sorbothane isolation feet. There is no terminal cup in the back but simply some five-way binding posts that stick out of the back of the speaker. The advantage of the omission of a terminal cup is that the ¾” MDF is a lot more rigid and will better contain the acoustic energy inside the enclosure. The disadvantage is that the binding posts just kind of stick out there and are more vulnerable to catching something or hitting something, thereby incurring damage. The grille uses magnetic attachment so the front baffle keeps a clean look. The grille uses an acoustic fabric stretched over a thick MDF frame. That frame is bound to increase diffraction, so for the best sound, use the speakers with the grille off.

The crossover circuit looks like a very substantial design, with a handful of beefy polypropylene capacitors, air core inductors, two steel laminate inductors, and four resistors, all neatly organized to fit in a small space. The woofer crossover to the midrange driver is at 600 Hz, and the midrange driver crosses over to the tweeter at 3.5 kHz, using 4rth order Linkwitz-Riley filters in both sections. That explains why the crossover circuit is so heavy-duty; it must be to handle that degree of complexity. 

The overall design of the BMR Philharmonitors suggests a speaker that will have very wide dispersion, relatively deep bass, and somewhat lower sensitivity. Narrow tweeters such as the ribbon tweeter used on the BMR Philharmonitor tend to emit sound at a wide horizontal angle but a narrow vertical angle. The small size of the midrange driver would be expected to have a wide dispersion out to treble frequencies in all directions, since sound of frequency wavelengths larger than the diameter of the driver cone normally project out at a wide angle. With a 3” diameter, the BMR midrange drivers should be capable of wide dispersion out to well past its 3.5 kHz low-pass frequency, and the 7” woofer of the Scan-speak bass driver will certainly have a very wide dispersion out to its 600 Hz low-pass frequency. The long length of the port indicates that the BMR Philharmonitor will have a fairly low tuning frequency, so the low-frequency spec of 34 Hz is plausible. And, as was discussed before, that will inevitably have an impact on efficiency. We will see how these design decisions play out in the “Measurements and Analysis” section, but for now, let’s do some listening!

Listening Sessions

In my 24’ by 13’ (approximately) listening room, I set up the speakers with stand-off distances between the back wall and sidewall, and equal distance between speakers and listening position, with speakers toed-in toward the listening position. Dennis Murphy recommends listening at a 15-degree off-axis angle for the best sound since that angle lessens diffraction effects more than the direct axis response. Listening distance from the speakers was about 9 feet. Amplification and processing were handled by a Pioneer Elite SC-55. No room correction equalization was used. At times, subwoofers were used to supplement the bass with an 80 Hz crossover frequency.

Music Listening 

Like always, I began listening to the BMR Philharmonitors with something that places emphasis on a solitary vocal, because that is where tonal errors would be the most perceptible. For this purpose, I used Patricia Barber’s ‘Cafe Blue.’ This might be a lazy choice since this classic album has long been an audiophile staple, but it is one of the few audiophile ‘go-to’ albums that I actually enjoy, so I thought, why not?! Even though this recording is somewhat old, released nearly 25 years ago, it isn’t as if recordings since then have substantially topped the sound quality of this impeccably produced album (the version I listened to was the Mobile Fidelity release). For those who don’t know, this is an eclectic jazz album that covers a wide range in styles and moods. It is so eclectic that it dips into the experimental at times. Barber’s voice mostly ranges from a low whisper (often described as ‘smokey’) to a creamy, low key singing, but at times she hits more ethereal and emotional heights. Instrumental accompaniment is performed and recorded beautifully as well, with keyboards, piano, guitar, bass, and percussion getting their moments to shine.

As for the BMR Philharmonitor’s rendering of ‘Cafe Blue,’ I have zero complaints. Barber’s voice and instrumental positions in the soundstage were very distinct, and again I find myself marveling at how a broad three-dimensional musical performance can come from just two points of sound emission in room. There was nothing tonally off either, with no undue weight given to any particular frequency range. I listened to this album using the speaker’s full range, without any subwoofers, and the bass reproduction was superb. There are moments of seemingly deep bass, and the speakers were more than sufficient in capturing the entire frequency range of this album. The BMR Philharmonitors were also not shy in catching the peaks of the more boisterous moments of ‘Cafe Blue,’ and while I listened to the album at a lively level, I didn’t crank it hard (that would have to wait until later), nonetheless these speakers had some ‘pop’ in the attacks of the piano and guitar that demonstrated that they could throw a sharp jab when the recording demanded. In the end, I am not sure how ‘Cafe Blue’ could sound better than how the BMR Philharmonitors rendered it. A high-fidelity recording deserves high-fidelity speakers, so this album and speaker pair were a great match for each other.

For something with a focus on the sound of a single instrument, I listened to a recording of Bach’s ‘English Suites’ played on piano by Murray Perahia from the Sony Classical label. This particular recording was made in 1998 and covers suites Nos. 1, 3, and 6. The name that these compositions are given, ‘English Suites,’ seems to have been a historical mistake since they have nothing to do with England and do not relate to England in any way, but this mistake has stuck, and the first six suites that Bach wrote are known as the ‘English Suites.’ The acclaimed pianist Perahia gives a spirited interpretation of these pieces and plays with a dazzling force and dexterity very much living up to his reputation as a world-class pianist. The BMR Philharmonitors reproduced Murray’s performance with aplomb. Through the superb imaging of the speakers, I could tell that this album did not use a near-field recording technique as so many piano recordings do nowadays. While near-field recordings can give fuller expression to each note, on a properly set up speaker system or headphones, it does sound as if the listener’s head is inside the piano itself. On this recording with these speakers, it sounded as if the mics were placed perhaps a couple meters away so some notes were heard to have directional proximity to the left or right without being so far back that all notes fell to the center. In other words, this put the listener in the best seat in the house: close enough for an intimate performance but not so close that the listener’s face is buried inside the instrument. My listening experience with ‘English Suites’ on the BMR Philharmonitors was the next best thing to hiring Mr. Perahia and having him play a grand piano in my family room. It was if the performance occurred in front of me but from an invisible grand piano and player. What more can one ask of a loudspeaker?

For something with a larger ensemble, I listened to a collection of choral pieces with Latin lyrics entitled ‘Catholic Latin Classics,’ which is performed by the Cathedral Singers conducted and led by Richard Proulx. The singers are accompanied by an organ and a string ensemble. The music and production on this recording are both exquisite and gorgeous, and music lovers would do well to seek out this album regardless of their comprehension of Latin. If the BMR Philharmonitors didn’t already do so well with the other types of music I had listened to, I would say it was made for this album. I could hardly imagine a more beautiful reproduction than what these speakers presented. The BMR Philharmonitors imaged the performers very well, and the soundstage was particularly notable for the lifelike rendering of the acoustics of the performance location, the National Shrine of St. Francis Xavier Cabrini, which is a dazzlingly beautiful church in Chicago. The BMR Philharmonitors was a teleportation device that placed the listener in the middle of the pews at this venerable location. I don’t think the latest in surround sound technology could have made the experience more immersive. Again, we see that two well-placed, well-designed speakers can capture so much of the dimensionality of soundscape that many times I question whether all the extra channels and excess processing of surround sound are a major addition to what can be done in a simple, good stereo system. Those who disagree ought to listen to the BMR Philharmonitors play ‘Catholic Latin Classics’ before cementing their opinion.  

Taking a radically different direction, I decided to listen to something on the extreme end of pop music with the album ‘Crystalaimai’ by SAYOHIMEBOU, a Japanese artist who is making electronic pop music that, outside of that broad genre label, is nearly undefinable. This music is a frenetic, kaleidoscopic, shattered reflection of pop culture. It is a journey into Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder for adults that uses all the colors of the rainbow. Its use of aggressive stereo panning, very low and also very high-frequency sounds, sampled vocals that have been outrageously pitch-shifted, breakneck percussion rhythms, and bizarre atonal melodies make it really something else to hear on a high-fidelity sound system. This music certainly wouldn’t fit everyone’s tastes, but for my ears, it is sheer candy. I thought it would be a good album to use for evaluating the BMR Philharmonitors because it is such a purely artificial creation that uses every studio trick in the book to create audio strangeness; how would these speakers handle such a bizarre concoction? Right out of the gate I understood that playing this lunatic album on the BMR Philharmonitors was the right thing to do. Music doesn’t normally make me laugh, but when a sound this bonkers is given the kind of attention to detail that the BMR Philharmonitors are capable of, I had to laugh, because only then can its full crazed glory be revealed. With the BMR Philharmonitor’s wide and expensive soundstage, listening to ‘Cystalaimai’ was like being sucked into a psychedelic tornado of bubblegum and strobing neon lights. And before the reader asks, no, I wasn’t using lysergic acid, but with this album on these speakers, the effect was similar.

Movie Listening

One movie that I watched using the BMR Philharmonitors was the 2017 cold war spy thriller ‘Atomic Blonde.’ This ultra-stylish (and ultra-violent) action movie is drenched in 80’s hits such as Nena’s ‘99 Luftballoons’ and ‘Cities in Dust’ by Siouxsie and the Banshees, as well as more modern remixes of 80’s hits along with an original electronic score by Tyler Bates. The action scenes mostly take the form of brutal hand-to-hand combat but throw in some gunplay and car chases as well. The interplay of music, action, and dialogue is layered and sometimes complex, which might be a challenge for lesser speakers, but I thought it would make a great test for the BMR Philharmonitors. I used subwoofers for this movie since I didn’t want to risk the speakers in case there was some high-level, deep bass that might overdrive the woofers at the volume levels that I wanted to listen at. With the woofers protected, I cranked the volume, because ‘Atomic Blonde’ is a great movie to play loud. The BMR Philharmonitors performed marvelously and blazed the sound of these 1980’s pop hits along with the gunshots, crashes, and punches without any audible complaints or limitations that I could detect. I set the AVR to use a ‘phantom center’ where the left and right front speakers carry the center channel content to give the BMR Philharmonitors the dialogue as well as music and effects sounds, and there were no problems with dialogue intelligibility, even amidst all the action and music. Watching ‘Atomic Blonde’ with the BMR Philharmonitors proved that they were just as capable at bombast and action as they were with musical subtlety. 

Another movie that I viewed using the BMR Philharmonitors is Terrence Malick’s 1998 WW2 epic ‘The Thin Red Line.’ The Criterion Edition of this movie states in the menu screen before the movie can be started: “Director Terrence Malick recommends that The Thin Red Line be played loud.” A similar admonition appears before Malick’s ‘The Tree of Life’ and this is because Malick is one of the few directors whose movies’ sound mixes have a truly wide dynamic range. This isn’t done so that the movie will simply be louder; it is done so that when loudness is required, it will be delivered with more punch than a normal sound mix. This is contrary to many movie scores, especially movies with lots of action, where the entire movie is mixed loud all the way through so that moments that should have a sonic impact just get lost in the clamor. This makes ‘The Thin Red Line’ a terrific film for evaluating a sound system’s dynamic range. Outside of the extraordinary dynamic range, the sound mix contains a most convincing aural experience of war from an infantryman’s perspective, along with Hans Zimmer’s celebrated music score. It remains a divisive film on account of its contemplative and unconventional approach to war as a film subject matter, but there can be no argument that its sound mix was, and still is, ahead of its time.

I took Mr. Malick’s advice and watched ‘The Thin Red Line’ at a relatively high volume level, with the gain set significantly higher than I normally listen at, also with subwoofers employed. The BMR Philharmonitors had no discernable trouble keeping up with the elevated peaks in sound, so bullet ricochets, mortar strikes, and artillery bombardment resounded with an especially potent impact. Zimmer’s sweeping score also benefited from the sound mixes’ wide dynamics, and the speakers gave the music the grandiose presentation that it deserved. Dialogue was clear and distinct, even amidst the cacophony of war. While the BMR Philharmonitors would not be my first choice for a dedicated theater room aiming for THX Reference level loudness, I think they would satisfy the vast majority of users for loud movie watching in a medium or small sized room. The BMR Philharmonitors might not be high-sensitivity SPL monsters but they can still get loud when called to do so.

Philharmonic Audio BMR Philharmonitor Measurements & Conclusion

 

The Philharmonic BMR Philharmonitors were measured in free-air at a height of 7.5 feet at a 2-meter distance from the microphone, and the measurements were gated at a 8.5-millisecond delay. In this time window, some resolution is lost below 250 Hz and accuracy is completely lost below 110 Hz. Measurements have been smoothed at a 1/12 octave resolution.

The above graph shows the direct-axis frequency response and other curves that describe the speaker’s amplitude response in a number of ways. For more information about the meaning of these curves, please refer to our article Objective Loudspeaker Measurements to Predict Subjective Preferences.

This is a number of notable attributes within these curves, and they are all good. The direct axis, listening window, and early reflection curves exhibit a superbly neutral response. That means that this is a very accurate loudspeaker both on and off axis. The uniformity that the sound power and early reflections curves show that this is a very wide dispersion speaker, as its design would indeed suggest. Both directivity indexes are very flat and show no sudden changes or irregularities. That means the BMR Philharmonitors should have a very consistent beamwidth over frequency, where the off-axis response holds a tight correlation to the direct axis response. This all adds up to a wide dispersion and flat response over off-axis angles as we shall see below.

The above graphs depict the BMR Philharmonitor’s lateral responses out to 100 degrees in five-degree increments. As was suggested by the above directivity index curves and ‘First Reflections’ curves, we can more explicitly see how the wide the dispersion is and how well it correlates to the direct axis response. These are outstanding measurements that show an extraordinarily neutral response. These speakers are more than sufficient in accuracy to be used as mid-field studio monitors for recording engineers. They tell the truth about whatever signal is sent to them without adding or subtracting much of anything. There is an ever-so-slight rise above 9 kHz, but this is going to do very little to color the sound reproduction. This is the most neutral loudspeaker I have yet measured. Normally I comment on how a speaker might do a particular frequency band well such as the midrange or the high frequencies, but this does everything well. Nothing stands out; it is all superb. The integration between the drivers from the crossover is very well done, especially since the drivers used are all dramatically different in design.

Philharmonic BMR Philharmonitor Horizontal Response +/- 100 degrees: Polar Map 

The above graph shows the same information that the preceding graphs do but depict it in a way that can offer new insight regarding these speakers’ behavior. Instead of using individual raised lines to illustrate amplitude, these polar maps use color to portray amplitude and this allows the use of a purely angle/frequency axis perspective. The advantage of these graphs is they can let us see broader trends of the speaker’s behavior more easily. The first thing to note about this measurement is the extraordinarily even dispersion out to an astounding 80 degrees. There is some mild waist-banding a bit above 1 kHz, but that only squeezes the response down to 60 degrees or so. That isn’t likely to be deleterious on the sound at all. The dispersion in the tweeter’s frequency band is a sight to behold: very smooth, very linear, very even within its entire range. This RAAL tweeter lives up to its reputation here as a first-rate tweeter. The dispersion is so wide here that a polar map showing 100 degrees off axis doesn’t quite give enough context for how extraordinary this dispersion pattern is, so let’s expand this angle to a full 180 degrees:

Philharmonic BMR Philharmonitor Horizontal Response +/- 180 degrees: Polar Map 

Keep in mind that the above graph is showing the complete horizontal dispersion of the BMR Philharmonitor, so the very top and very bottom of the graph is showing the response directly behind the speaker. The reason why I am posting this graph is to more clearly show how well-controlled the dispersion is here. What this graph is telling us that that the sound is being projected in a wide but controlled angle, so almost anywhere in front of this speaker will provide a well-balanced tonality. The sound of this speaker does not change its character over a very broad angle in front of it. The reason why this is important is that much of what we hear from a speaker in room is due to the acoustic reflections from room surfaces and large objects rather than direct sound from the speaker itself, and these reflections come from off-axis angles from the speaker. If the off-axis response of the speaker is erratic, that will be heard, so even if a speaker has a nearly perfect direct axis response, it can have a poor tonality if the off-axis response is markedly irregular. That is especially true for a speaker with dispersion as wide as we see with the BMR Philharmonitor. The wider a speaker’s dispersion is, the greater the ratio of reflected sound to direct sound, so it is critical that a speaker of this design type holds an even, uniform dispersion, and the BMR Philharmonitor does this magnificently well. Their tonal character does not change much with respect to angle. 

Philharmonic BMR Philharmonitor Vertical Response +/- 100 degrees

The above graph shows the BMR Philharmonitor’s response behavior along its vertical axis where zero degrees is directly in front of the tweeter, negative degree values are below the tweeter, and positive degree values are above the tweeter. It should be said here that the vertical response isn’t nearly as critical as the horizontal response, so an imperfect vertical dispersion is much less of a problem. There are a few interesting features in the graph of the BMR Philharmonitor’s vertical response. One thing we can see is that while the BMR midrange driver has a wide vertical response, the RAAL tweeter has a narrow vertical response. This is no surprise, given their designs, but it is interesting to see their behavior on this axis. We can see two notches that occur around 30 degrees above and below the tweeter; these are cancellation nulls from the midrange driver and tweeter at a distance difference that puts their overlapping output out of phase around their crossover frequency. We also see some waist-banding at far off angles from cancellation between the woofer and midrange driver. Again, nothing here should alarm readers, since performance on this axis isn’t nearly as important as the horizontal axis. The lesson here is that these speakers are best heard within a 20-degree vertical angle of their tweeter; that will very likely be the case in any normal speaker system.

Philharmonic BMR Philharmonitor groundplane bass response

The above graphs show the BMR Philharmonitor’s low-frequency responses that I captured using groundplane measurements (where the speaker and microphone are on the ground in a wide open area). We can see a nicely flat response with a shallow rolloff starting at around 70 Hz. At a bit under 40 Hz, the rolloff becomes considerably steeper since it is below port tuning. This shallow rolloff is normally a good idea in order to take advantage of low-frequency room gain. Tuning the speaker flat down to the port tuning frequency would likely result in a boosted bass response in typical room use. In my own room, the bass sounded very natural, so a dead flat response down to the port tuning of 34 Hz would likely have sounded like somewhat exaggerated bass.

Philharmonic BMR Philharmonitor Impedance and Phase 

The above graphs show the electrical behavior of the BMR Philharmonitors. The impedance and phase stay within safe limits of almost any amplifier. The most taxing region here would be at about 1.5 kHz where the minima occurs at 5.4 ohms with a -5.3-degree phase angle. That would only be a hard load for the cheapest of amplifiers if the speaker was played loud with content in that range. Overall, this speaker should be an easy load with the vast majority of amps. Philharmonic’s spec of this speaker being a 6-ohm load is conservative. We can see from the saddle dip in the low-frequency region that the port tuning point is just above 30 Hz which makes this a very deeply-tuned bookshelf speaker. The equal heights of the impedance peaks in the low frequencies indicate that, despite this speaker’s unusually low port tuning frequency, its port length looks correct for the enclosure size. There are no wrinkles or ripples so the enclosure seems to be well damped and braced with no evidence of worrisome cabinet resonances.

I measured the sensitivity of the BMR Philharmonitor to be 84.1 dB at 1 meter for 2.83v. This is only a tad under the 85 dB that Philharmonic specified, but it is still close. To be honest, I am surprised a bookshelf speaker that is tuned this deeply can muster an 84 dB sensitivity. That isn’t much lower than average. As was said before, these aren’t the most efficient speakers that can be had, but they aren’t badly inefficient either. An 50-watt amplifier would suffice for most people, but they can handle more amplification than that. Dennis Murphy reports that he uses a 200-watt amplifier with his pair without issue, although there are many factors that affect how much wattage a speaker can safely handle. Using such high wattage for brief moments of a peak in wideband music such as orchestral recordings might be fine but dumping the same amount of energy into a very narrow frequency range continuously could destroy a driver.

Conclusion

At the beginning of this review, it was stated that one of the purposes was to see if the BMR Philharmonitors lived up to the hype surrounding it in social media. Sometimes some products develop an online excitement with users who swear by them simply from being convinced by all the hoopla and buzzwords, but when a more sober analysis is done, the said product’s advantages typically weren’t all they were cracked up to be. After carefully spending some time listening to the BMR Philharmonitors and carefully measuring them, I can say that they deserve their reputation as top-notch loudspeakers and an outstanding bargain, even at their not inexpensive pricing.  

Before bringing this review to a close, I will briefly go over their advantages and disadvantages, as I normally do for all products that I review, and I will start with their disadvantages but there are very few with the BMR Philharmonitors. At $1,350 per pair (not including shipping) they are not inexpensive, but considering their performance, they are a bargain. I don’t know of a more accurate or neutral loudspeaker that costs less. And they deliver all of this superlative performance while still looking very nice. I could say that they are rather large and heavy for bookshelf speakers, but these are bookshelf speakers with the performance goal of having low-frequency extension on par with tower speakers, and with bass extension digging down into the 30 Hz range, they actually exceed many tower speakers in terms of extension, so that criticism would be hollow. You cannot get a reasonable level of deep bass output in a small package, and these speakers do an excellent job of providing deep bass output in a reasonable size and shape. I don’t know how that could be done better. I could nitpick by saying their sensitivity is a tad below average, but given their bass extension versus size, as I said before, I am surprised that the sensitivity was as good as it is, and it’s not likely to be a problem for any sensible users. So basically, I can’t level any serious criticism against the BMR Philharmonitors. What it sets out to do, it does extremely well, and it does it for a very reasonable cost. I might only say that those looking for speakers for loud parties or head-banging or something for a dedicated theater in a large room will want to look at higher-output designs.

Now let’s go over the advantages of the BMR Philharmonitors, many of which were already mentioned as counters to any serious criticism that one could have against them. As was said before, their sound quality is outstanding. There are many speakers that cost many times the price of these without equaling their sonic accuracy. Their dispersion is wide yet very well controlled. Their bass extension is the best I have seen from a bookshelf speaker, and the bass quality itself is superb much like the rest of the frequency range. As I said before, I can’t really pick out a standout aspect of its sound quality because it does everything so well. They are one of, if not the most linear speakers I have yet measured. In fact, they have such a linear response both on and off axis that they nearly attain a certain ideal for those who are interested in wide-dispersion loudspeakers. Wide dispersion loudspeakers have the advantages of broad coverage of an area with a consistent tonality so listeners could be seated anywhere in front of them and hear a similar response. They also have a greater ratio of reflected sound to direct sound, and this can give them a more open and spacious character. 

Also, as was mentioned, they look pretty sharp. Gloss black in a cabinet with rounded corners is a fairly standard approach to get a nice-looking loudspeaker, but hey, what can I say, it works. Of course, finer finishes are available at higher prices, but the standard gloss black looks pretty swank to me. One detail that I can appreciate is the grille uses magnetic fasteners, so the front baffle has that much of a cleaner appearance without the grille since there are no grille guides. The overall build quality of the BMR Philharmonitors is very good and easily meets, if not surpasses, what one would expect at this price point. Another point in their favor is that their electrical behavior makes them an easy load to run on most amplifiers.

As a loudspeaker reviewer, I receive a lot of loudspeakers, and sometimes I run across a product so delightful that I am tempted to purchase it for myself. The BMR Philharmonitors is one such product. The only problem is that I have to spend so much time using other speakers under review that I seldom get a chance to use my own equipment anymore, and speakers as good as the BMR Philharmonitors ought to be used frequently instead of put away in a box somewhere for use only during certain occasions. So, it is with a heavy heart that I am returning these. However, those looking for a high-quality and very high-fidelity loudspeaker that they will end up listening to often should give the BMR Philharmonitors a very close look because for most people I am sure they will absolutely be keepers. Philharmonic Audio offers a two week trial with any of their speakers where the buyer only has to pay shipping costs, so potential owners can demo these without much risk or expense. To bring this review to a close, I can only say that I am hoping that I get another opportunity to spend someday with the BMR Philharmonitors; to paraphrase Vera Lynn, don’t know where, don’t know when, but I am hoping we will meet again!

The Score Card

The scoring below is based on each piece of equipment doing the duty it is designed for. The numbers are weighed heavily with respect to the individual cost of each unit, thus giving a rating roughly equal to:

Performance × Price Factor/Value = Rating

Audioholics.com note: The ratings indicated below are based on subjective listening and objective testing of the product in question. The rating scale is based on performance/value ratio. If you notice better performing products in future reviews that have lower numbers in certain areas, be aware that the value factor is most likely the culprit. Other Audioholics reviewers may rate products solely based on performance, and each reviewer has his/her own system for ratings.

Audioholics Rating Scale

• — Excellent
• — Very Good
• — Good
• — Fair
• — Poor

Metric	Rating
Build Quality
Appearance
Treble Extension
Treble Smoothness
Midrange Accuracy
Bass Extension
Bass Accuracy
Imaging
Dynamic Range
Fit and Finish
Performance
Value