Stand Loudspeaker Reviews

It wasn't too many years ago that no audio perfectionist would even consider owning speakers having woofers of less than a 12" diameter. Everyone knew that it took a BIG speaker to reproduce real bass, and pointed at the size of a double bass and an organ bass pipe as proof that there was no way of circumventing that particular law of physics.

Like many aging American music lovers, my earliest memories include watching the televised supernova that was The Beatles performing on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. Immersion in various British pop groups followed, including the melodically graceful Chad & Jeremy, the polished Peter and Gordon, and sentimental pop purveyors Gerry and the Pacemakers.

There's something inherently suspicious about most all-in-one solutions. The audiophile brain, trained over decades of mix-and-match rituals, recoils instinctively. Where's the fun in a speaker that arrives with amplification baked in? Where's the journey of pairing, the thrill of synergy discovered at 2am after your sixth cable swap?

Although I have very much appreciated how the best floorstanding loudspeakers have performed in my various listening rooms over the decades, I have always been most comfortable with relatively small two-way standmounts. Back in the early 1980s, I got musically moving sound from a pair of Rogers LS3/5a's, which I still own . . .

On the first page of the Radiant Acoustics Clarity 4.2 Welcome Guide, Radiant Acoustics founder Peter Lyngdorf states, "The first thing you'll notice when listening to these speakers is the absence of distortion."

The usual Specifications sidebar in this review is a nuts-and-bolts listing of the electrical and physical properties of the Technics SC-CX700 loudspeaker ($2999.99/pair), who made it and where, and a widely varying amount of information about its electrical and acoustical performance. The information comes from the included literature, available downloads, and whatever I could find on the manufacturer's website.

Note the complete absence of the usual technical information about the design or construction of the coaxial driver or about the crossover frequency and slope. Missing, too, are performance specifications for frequency response, sound-pressure level, and distortion. That disappoints me because I like numbers, but all the really interesting stuff about these speakers—though expressed without as many numbers as I'd wish—can be found on the Technics website. These include: what Technics calls "Acoustic Solitude Construction," which isolates the electronics from the loudspeakers structurally and spatially; "Model Based Diaphragm Control," which adjusts diaphragm movement in real time; and "Space Tune," which includes four acoustical presets and two levels of measurement-based room correction.

Let's get this out of the way: The BMR Monitor may be a monitor, but it isn't a bookshelf or desktop speaker any more than a yacht is a dinghy. Heave a slick-surfaced, 32lb BMR from its shipping carton, then wrap your arms around its svelte figure, with its fancy array of drivers and rich-colored piano-lacquer finish, and you'll understand this speaker deserves better than to be tucked away amid books or flanking a computer screen.

I was so enamored by the look of the BMR Monitor, I initially thought its name didn't do it justice. It sounded too nondescript. But with time and growing familiarity, I came to find the BMR moniker fitting—dare I say sleekly masculine sounding, like a phonetic cross between "Bimmer" and a wolf growl. The BMR Monitor—there's also a BMR Tower—is so named for its midrange driver—a Balanced Mode Radiator. We don't come across many of these in our hobby, but it's not new: The technology was invented in 1925.