Stand Loudspeaker Reviews

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.

The BMR driver is not typically used in the way it's used in the BMR Monitor: as a midrange unit. As Philharmonic Audio Chief of Operations Ken Lin explained during a Zoom chat, "The BMR driver is normally used full range in small desktop and surround applications, and occasionally in larger two-way designs, where it crosses to a conventional woofer. To the best of our knowledge, Philharmonic Audio is the only company using the BMR driver as a dedicated midrange in a three-way."

The BMR Monitor has gone through a couple of changes since its inception. "This is version 2.5, I think," said Ken. When I saw an online image of a BMR Monitor as I awaited its arrival, its face looked vaguely familiar, although I was sure I'd never seen it in person. My best guess, even today, was that I came across it on defunct speaker company Salk Sound's website, where it was being sold on behalf of Philharmonic Audio, then later as part of the Salk Sound product line. What's the connection? Philharmonic Audio's founder and chief designer, Dennis Murphy, built the crossovers used in Salk Sound speakers. Dennis named his company after the Washington Metropolitan Philharmonic Orchestra, for which he plays the viola.

While Ken only recently became part of Philharmonic Audio, he and Dennis enjoyed a prior business relationship. Ken's company, Alexis Sonus, supplied Philharmonic Audio with the cabinets and crossover for the BMR Monitor and sold the BMR Monitor to the Taiwanese market, where sales of the speaker greatly outnumbered those in the US.

In 2020, after a stint in hospital, Dennis announced he intended to close Philharmonic Audio. Ken intervened. "I told Dennis, there might be an opportunity to continue serving BMR fans," Ken said. "I proposed that I would take over the operations, including cabinet design, and he would do the crossover design and handle customer inquiries." Ken became co-founder of what he refers to as Philharmonic Audio 2.0. "This is when we started to offer high-end finish options on the BMRs," Ken told me. "We also grew the company product line from one product to six speakers and two accessories."

In 2024, under Ken's direction, another important change happened at the new Philharmonic Audio: The company website was configured to handle ecommerce. Said Ken, "Before, customers couldn't directly purchase through our website. They had to send an email, and Dennis gave them an invoice to pay. But since the product-line expansion, we can no longer keep up with customer demand by manually generating invoices."

A key aim for Ken has been "to bring stability and sustainability into the business." One way of doing that was to promote the BMR Monitor to the North American market, which is the reason these speakers have, as I write these words, taken pride of place in my listening room. I don't say "pride of place" off-handedly. They've assumed their position on my stands with visual distinction, projecting a more dignified posture than that of your average monitor. The speaker comes in four finishes and two shapes—rectangular or curved—the latter adding $200 to the speaker's base price of $1800/pair. The model I received was the Curved Piano Ebony version, constructed of 12 layers of thin MDF bent and laminated, then finished with a "premium" ebony wood veneer. My pair looked "premium." Ken: "It's very hard to find that kind of quality of finish in the consumer market without paying many thousands of dollars."

The BMR's polished back panel looked sparse, just three things on it, spaced wide apart: a silver name/specifications badge, a flared port, and a single pair of binding posts. Or is that four things?

In a confusing bit of branding, a plaque at the bottom of the speakers' baffle was inscribed only with the name Alexis Sonus, while a badge on the back panel listed Philharmonic Audio and Alexis (no Sonus). Ken explained that both names appear due to the BMR Monitor being a joint venture between his and Dennis's companies, but that officially the speaker is sold in North America under Philharmonic Audio.

When I asked Ken what prompted the choice of such an unusual combination of charismatic-looking driver technologies—a RAAL ribbon tweeter, a BMR midrange, a ceramic-cone woofer—he said the decision came down to finding the most synergetic drivers for a wide-dispersion design.

"Being a true ribbon tweeter, the RAAL's dispersion pattern is 180°," Ken said. "When you move, say, 30° or 60° degrees off-axis, the tweeter's response won't drop that much. But using a wide dispersion tweeter creates the challenge of finding a midrange or lower-frequency driver that can provide a seamless transition with the tweeter.

"A tweeter is responsible for frequencies above about 3.5kHz," he continued. "If the transition is not smooth—if your midrange or woofer cannot mesh with the tweeter's wide dispersion—you might have perfect on-axis frequency response but when you move 30°, there's a hole in the crossover region."

When I asked if it might not have been easier to try to mesh two drivers together rather than three, Ken replied, "In a two-way, it's very difficult to find a tweeter that crosses at 1.2kHz and is still wide dispersion and able to handle all that power. It's also difficult for a woofer in a two-way to have that level of dispersion. When a woofer goes up the frequency range, it starts to beam.

"It's why we preferred a three-way," Ken said. "And we thought that if we could find a midrange that could mesh with this wonderful ribbon tweeter, we could have a speaker with perfect wide-dispersion capability across a wide part of the frequency range, and that doesn't really exist in the market right now."

When I told Ken I didn't think I'd ever heard a BMR driver before, he said, "If you've been in an airport, you probably have. When you hear passengers being called over the intercom, it's usually over a BMR driver, because it's wide dispersion, and its diaphragm is flat against the wall."

With technical assistance from Dennis, Ken explained that the BMR is a "flat-cone driver with rear weights that control breakup modes and shift the cone movement from pistonic to a bending motion in the lower treble, a combination that matches the broad horizontal directivity of the RAAL ribbon tweeter without the need for a tweeter waveguide." The BMR's diaphragm transmits music through its vibrating motion, which changes depending on frequencies. The BMR is equivalent to a "bending-mode" driver at high frequencies while remaining pistonic at low frequencies. The BMR driver has its own dedicated chamber. It's "filled with materials to absorb the back waves," Ken said.

At the bottom of the line, literally, is the BMR's SB Acoustics 6" woofer with its ceramic-covered cone, said to deliver bass extension to 34Hz, which Ken emphasized was "a real 34Hz."

That's impressive for a passive standmount. How do they do it? "The bass response is the handiwork of Paul Kittinger, who is an expert in bass tuning. He works with software that allows him not only to optimize the cabinet volume and port dimensions but also to optimize the position of the woofer and port on the cabinet. Paul does all of our box tuning, including the transmission line designs for our larger speaker."

When the subject of where the speaker is made came up, Ken replied, "From across the world. It's hand-assembled in the US, but we source components from China, Serbia, Indonesia, and Taiwan. When you buy our speaker, you're supporting the GDP of five countries."

The BMR's sensitivity is rated at 86.5dB/2.83V/m, a figure Ken said was conservative; he puts it closer to 88, 89dB; we'll see what JA's measurements show. As for the speaker's lowish 4 ohm impedance, Ken said it's very linear and smooth and shouldn't present a difficult load to the amplifier. He suggested a minimum power requirement of between 40 to 60Wpc, adding, "we know people who use 300B amps with it and are happy, so it really depends on how far your listening distance is and how loud you play your music."

Regarding speaker placement, Ken recommends a minimum of 7" from a wall, but "the farther you can put it from the wall, the farther the soundstage will be. We don't recommend toe-in, although some people prefer it. Because of the wide dispersion, ... we don't think you need it."

Setup and listening
Turns out I did need toe-in. Setting up the BMRs wasn't as "set and forget" as I anticipated based on its wide-dispersion design.

Using a couple of familiar recordings—of music—to guide me through setup, I listened to the BMRs first on 24.5" stands and then on 28" stands. I preferred the latter for their higher soundstage. This brought the height of the BMRs' tweeters close to those on my Focal standmounts and the Dynaudio Contour 30i's I recently reviewed, as a result of which not the tweeters but the woofers were positioned at ear level. Abiding by the general rule for a wide-dispersion design, I positioned them facing straight ahead, royal guard–like. My listening position formed a near-equilateral triangle. After a bit of fiddling with speaker distance here and there, I declared myself done. I had a tall soundstage, solid center fill, and focused, palpable images.