Articles: System Profile – Paradigm Shift – 60

Paradigm’s export sales manager John Soden was in New Zealand recently as part of a whirlwind trip through Australasia. The only whirlwind trip I got was down State Highway 1 through Huntly to Hamilton, where I managed to tie Soden down for long enough to chat about the company, its design philosophy and range of products. Of course, being hi-fi enthusiasts, we had to go on about hi-fi gear in general.

BG. John, what’s the reason for this trip?

JS. Paradigm is very successful in its home turf, which is common for a lot of brands. We’ve been operating for 25 years and North America probably makes up 95 per cent of our business. Although we’ve been selling internationally for many years now, we haven’t given our international dealers the dedicated support that North America receives and I’m here to change all that. I needed to visit our dealers and distributors to better understand each individual market, and in many cases we can learn from what they’re doing to strengthen the brand.

BG. Tell me more about Paradigm.

JS. Paradigm was founded in 1982, based in Toronto, Canada. We consider ourselves to be the leader in high-end speaker design and notably the most award-winning brand of speaker in North America over the last two decades. We do more or less everything in-house, from R&D and design to manufacturing. We make our own components to the highest tolerances, including the electronics, drivers, coils and cabinets. We’re heavily R&D-focused and have a state-of-the-art research facility with our own blind listening rooms, a one million-litre anechoic chamber and a proprietary measurement system for in-depth analysis of every possible speaker characteristic.

BG. Paradigm seems to be able to make speakers that sound fantastic at every price point from entry-level to the high end. What’s the secret?

JS. More and more people today are going back to basics, but Paradigm have had that philosophy from day one. You just have to design and build a fundamentally accurate speaker. You want to be able to close your eyes and imagine yourself as being there; everything should be neutral, clear, detailed and accurate. We’re a solutions brand and we just want to be able to give good sound at every level. If your budget is only $1500, why shouldn’t you have a great sounding speaker that’s easy to drive but has superior power handling capabilities so it doesn’t mind being turned up? At each level through our range we refine the sound and detail and imaging until we get to the Signatures, which is when you simply want the very best, where there’s a no-cost, no-compromise objective. One of the major advantages of having such a wide product range is that as the higher end products evolve, the technology filters down to the speakers below. For example, the Signature range has just moved to an all-new tweeter, but the G-Pal dome tweeter we previously used in the Signature was fantastic in its own right, so the Studio range has adopted that tweeter, which pushed them up a notch. We don’t want to re-invent the wheel every year, where you see major shifts and brand new products. We’re much more focused on longevity and evolution with a timeless look that won’t date.

BG. Something I’m very aware of is that speakers basically haven’t changed much over the years. Except for some esoteric kit, we’re still dealing with passive drivers in wooden boxes. But we’re seeing some movement in new materials, active speakers, speakers with built-in DSP or strange new designs. What is your take on where the trends are going?

JS. Well, there are always trends. In my recent travels through every country in the Asian rim, I’ve seen plenty of them. In Taiwan, for example, the trend seems to be towards custom-painted, ultra-modern curvy designs, which look extremely stylish now but will probably date badly. Those bright blue metallic speakers might be stunning in your lounge today, but in a couple of years you could be having serious second thoughts. The same is true for technological trends; they may be hot now but will they last? We had an active design in the past with the Monitor 90P, and in some markets it was hugely popular and in others not popular at all. We’re bringing out the very large Signature S12, which will have a 3000-watt powered driver in the base, so there’s room in our thinking for active speakers, but it has to be in the right application and done the right way.

“More and more people today are going back to basics, but Paradigm have had that philosophy from day one. You just have to design and build a fundamentally accurate speaker”

BG. We’re hearing a lot about Class D amplifiers at the moment. I assume that 3000-watt driver is Class D-powered. What are your thoughts? Is Class D the next big thing?

JS. That’s really an engineering question. Our R&D department stays on the side of what is going to be the standard and that type of design is very, very current. It’s ultra-lightweight, with thousands of watts being easy to attain, so that trend is definitely going to stick around.

BG. So what speakers are in your own hi-fi set-up?

JS. I use Millenia series speakers in my home theatre system with a Seismic 10 subwoofer. In my two-channel setup I’ve got Studio 100s, but I’m waiting for the new addition to our Signature range, the S6, which I’ll be auditioning.

BG. What’s your advice to someone who’s shopping for speakers?

JS. Listen! Just go and listen. You can be influenced by salespeople as to what the hottest deal is or what they think is best, but what it boils down to is [that] it’s for you. Go in and do some qualitative listening to a wide range of speakers and remember, this is something that you may own for a very long time, so you shouldn’t sacrifice. After all, this isn’t a beach home that you visit two or three times a year. This is something that you’re going to have to live with and enjoy every day, so listen for yourself. What attracts you, what do you fall in love with?

BG. Do you consider speakers to be the most important part of the equation?

JS. Well, I’ll go backwards and say if you start with a bad set of speakers, you’ll never get good sounds no matter what you put on the other end of them. If you’ve got a moderately powered amp and a decent source, you’ll get very good sound out of a pair of Paradigms. But if you’ve got a bad speaker design, it’s almost impossible to get good sound. Remember that you don’t have to spend $10,000 to have good speakers.

The new monitor series

Thanks to the good blokes at PQ Imports, I had a chance to listen to the brand new Paradigm monitor series speakers with the Mini Monitors ($899) and Monitor 7 floorstanders ($1499) hooked up to a Cambridge Audio 740 amplifier and 740 CD player. To say that I was impressed would be an understatement. I’ve listened to Nils Lofgren’s ‘Keith Don’t Go’ (from his live album) on systems that cost well over a hundred big ones, but this performance was quite astonishing considering the modest price of this kit. The presentation of the acoustic guitar and his reedy voice had everyone in the room looking a bit stunned. Then we popped on an old favourite of mine, ‘Hey Nineteen’ by Steely Dan, which just rolled out of the speakers like smooth, smoky single malt whisky. At one point I literally got up to look behind the speakers to convince myself that the bookshelves were actually plugged in. The small floorstanders were even better, with the bass being fuller and deeper as expected, while still staying very tight with a real sense of space around the music and a nice wide soundstage. Tone will be testing both of these speakers, as well as the amp/CDP combination soon – stay tuned.

The NRC speakers study

The Canadian National Research Council Speaker Study is among the most comprehensive ongoing research projects ever conducted on speakers. The study is intended to find a correlation between the listening experience and speaker measurements. Research starts with people listening to speakers in a double blind, equal volume level environment across multiple sessions with all types of music. It’s worth noting that the sampling sizes are large enough to be statistically valid. Listeners were consistently able to grade speakers from poor through to excellent and, when measured, all the speakers in the excellent category had the same three characteristics: flat midrange response, smooth off-axis response and low distortion.

A flat midrange is vital for audio reproduction to sound natural because this is the area where human hearing is most sensitive to inaccuracies. Our hearing is also very sensitive to inaccuracies of off-axis sound compared with on-axis sound, so this is particularly important as well. Once the frequency responses are accurate, then low distortion becomes critical because it is much more noticeable in that environment.

The NRC research led to some very interesting conclusions. Overall, the majority of listeners preferred similar speakers regardless of the type of music that was played. So the old belief that some speakers are good for rock, while others are good for classical may well be a myth. They also found that while many manufacturers use specific design techniques (horns, bi-polar, omni-directional, etc) ignoring the three characteristics mentioned above always resulted in poor-sounding speakers that the listeners didn’t like.