CEDIA 2013

Cambridge Audio has been dinking around with Balanced Mode Radiator (BMR) drivers for a couple of years in its pint-sized Minx speakers, but now it's bringing BMR into the spotlight with a new line of full-size speakers built for conventional home theater and stereo applications. It's called the Aero series, and it comprises a tower, bookshelf, center and surround speakers plus a subwoofer.

That's the Aero 6 tower speaker you see above, with the woodgrain finish. It incorporates a 2.25-inch BMR and dual 6.5-inch woofers into a 38.6-inch-high enclosure.

So what's so special about the BMR? The specs tell you a lot. This one covers the range from 250 Hz to 20 kHz. A normal tweeter would cover maybe 2.5 kHz to 20 kHz. The idea is, with one driver covering most of the range of the human voice and most instruments -- and with no crossover right in the middle of the range to mess things up -- the sound will be more natural.

At lower frequencies, the BMR works like a normal driver, with the voice coil pushing the diaphragm back and forth in a pistonic fashion. At higher frequencies, the diaphragm itself flexes, so it has a smaller effective radiating area and works more like a normal tweeter.

The Minx stuff got great reviews, including from both Sound & Vision and Home Theater, so we're eager to see what the BMR can do in a conventional speaker.