The big Paradigm's sensitivity weighed in at 89.5dB(B)/2.83V/m, 1dB more sensitive than the earlier version we reviewed three years ago. This is within the margin of error of the older speaker but is still almost 3dB higher than average. The impedance, however, drops below 4 ohms between 55Hz and 210Hz, with a minimum value of 3 ohms at 90Hz (fig.1). A good 4 ohm-rated amplifier should be used with the speaker. The glitch at 26kHz in this graph's traces indicates the frequency of the metal-dome tweeter's ultrasonic resonance, but the graph is otherwise free from…
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The woofers cross over to the midrange unit at about 200Hz, with symmetrical third-order acoustic slopes. Their general output is a little higher than the reference level—this will be due partly to the nearfield measurement technique, which assumes a 2pi environment for the radiating surfaces—but the drivers are well-behaved above their passband. The midrange and low-treble regions are smooth on-axis, but the tweeter is a little "hot" in its top octave.
Fig.4 shows the response of the 1997 sample of the Studio/100, averaged across a 30 degrees window on the tweeter axis and spliced to…
In the time domain, the tweeter and midrange outputs are in negative polarity, as can be seen from the step response (fig.8). The lazy positive-going part of the trace at 4.5ms is due to the positive-polarity woofers. Note that the crossover and the time delay ensure that each drive-unit hands over smoothly to the next lower in frequency in this graph, which correlates with a smooth, flat frequency response. The cumulative spectral-decay plot (fig.9) is very clean, other than some low-level delayed energy at the top of the midrange unit's passband.
Fig.8 Paradigm Studio/100 v.2,…
"BRIDGE WILL BE RAISED AT 1:45 PM," said the road sign. I looked at my watch. 1:35. I sighed and let my right foot become even more leaden.
I was driving back to New York from North Carolina, chasing a winter storm northward. I wanted to get to Peter Breuninger's place in Philadelphia before the roads froze over, to drop off a pair of vintage AR3a speakers for him to review, as well as pick up an antique EICO HF81 integrated amp for measurement. The last thing I needed was to be stuck in stalled traffic on the Washington Beltway.
North Carolina? Raleigh, to be specific, where I'd…
Canadian speakers from such companies as Mirage, PSB, and Paradigm have acquired international reputations for offering good sound at more-than-competitive prices. The latest Canadian speaker manufacturer to hit the big time might well be Energy, which has actually been around for about 15 years, but has only recently introduced a flagship speaker. Energy's $6000/pair Veritas v2.8 earned Tom Norton's commendation for having produced one of the best sounds at the 1993 Las Vegas WCES. [TJN's review appears in this issue.—Ed.]
Energy and Mirage have quite a bit in common: both are divisions…
Tchilinguirian: Yes, because it's like a loop: Once you find out or get closer to finding out, it helps you the next time around.
Deutsch: Give me an example of something that happened, perhaps during the development of the Veritas, where you found out something in the listening test and went back to analyze it technically.
Tchilinguirian: One was the diffraction effects from cabinets, and how they degraded the dispersion characteristics. A long time ago—way back with the Energy 22 Connoisseur—one of the things that made that speaker special was its spaciousness, transparency,…
Deutsch: Tell me more about the listening tests.
Tchilinguirian: We do a number of different kinds of listening tests. We do mono listening, where we get a number of other speakers for comparison. We use about three speakers and then different listeners would go in, switch between them, and try to get a feel for the speakers' spectral balances. Is the high end cleaner? Is it faster? More detailed?
Deutsch: Is this a blind test?
Tchilinguirian: Yes. The person listening doesn't know what's behind the screen. They write down their comments and evaluate the speaker on…
Deutsch: Do you use your own measuring systems exclusively? Or do you also use some of the commercially available systems?
Tchilinguirian: We've got MLSSA, Brüel & Kjaer, and LMS, so we've got virtually every commercial system.
Deutsch: Which do you find most useful?
Tchilinguirian: Ours! I'm not saying this because I'm biased, but it's very quick. When you can look at all that information simultaneously, it saves time in having to go and turn the speaker and measure, turn and measure, etc. Our measurement system has eight channels, so you can look at eight curves…
Tchilinguirian: Yes. Our aim was not to develop a refrigerator that dominated the room and was very difficult to place. We wanted it as a lifestyle product that could go into a lot of homes and integrate well with a lot of different rooms. That's one of the tradeoffs, I guess.
Deutsch: Were you aiming for a particular price range when the design started out?
Tchilinguirian: It was a price range between $5000 and $6500.
Deutsch: But you knew you weren't building a $10,000 speaker.
Tchilinguirian: Right. Nevertheless, we wanted the [speaker's] performance to compete…
Tchilinguirian: It's not a DSP, but there will be a later DSP version of it. It's an analog device, and it allows the user to integrate the subwoofer and satellite, no matter what the satellite is. There are a number of adjustable controls: the crossover point, phase of the satellite, and the most important that I found in listening to and playing with it—the ability of adjusting the knee of both the low- and high-pass sections. The rate of rolloff is always 24dB/octave, but the Q of the knee just before the rolloff is adjustable, so you can tune the knee to get maximally flat rolloffs at…