Internet myth. There was a fella over at BeerGutz who seemed Hell-bent on cutting these things down, and IMHO, that fed scepticism, which in turn resulted in repeated claims from folks who knew nothing of them that they'd been discontinued.
In fact, the tweeters are now constructed of a slightly-different alloy as a result of a break in supply from a factory in Japan due to the tsunami. Manufacturing was temporarily-suspended, but only until an appropriate alternative surfaced. If you inspect pre-tsunami photographs of the monitors and compare the tweeters' colour with post-tsunami units, you'll see that one set is more-silver-looking, and the other a slightly-bronzish colour. Also, the woofer's surround is now a slightly-different shape. Functionally and sound-spec-wise, there has been no change in performance since day dot.
I could ring my guy at Rode and ask him directly what the stock / manufacturing situation is right now if you like (on Monday), but unless I'm mistaken, my guess is that you've stumbled across a ripple that resulted from the confusion that arose out of the tsunami incident.
Mine are exactly 3 feet from my head, my ears lining up with the top of the woofer, which is approximately half-way up (the mid-point) of the monitors. Absolutely-perfect for me. The thing is, if you're running them on, say, the #1 setting I spoke of, you'll still get that superb full-range experience, even when only using a tiny bit of that already-narrowed volume range. Their sound doesn't change, even when pushed to ridiculous levels, 'cause of that over-engineered paradigm for each component that I spoke of. This over-speccing also results in ridiculously-clean transients 'cause of the way the drivers are matched with the amps. Headroom for miles and miles.
I did have my sights set on a set of BM5 and later BM6As for many years; they are very-good monitors, no doubt. The Opals, however, are in a different league.
