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One Small Step...

Screeeeeeech, thump, thump, vroooooom...

That's the sound of another music-lover and potential audiophile taking a sharp turn and jumping the curb just where the consumer-electronics audio highway goes straight ahead. These renegades are four-wheeling into the audio wilderness for a musical joyride through territory not found on most CE industry maps.

This departure from the predictable is part of an ongoing revolution that touches most of this magazine's readers, as well as hordes of yet-to-be-audiophiles all over the world. It's not the audio revolution about quality promised…

Recording of August 1996: <I>Earth Stories</I>

CYRUS CHESTNUT: Earth Stories
Cyrus Chestnut, piano; Steve Kirby, bass; Alvester Garnett, drums (on "Cooldaddy's Perspective," add: Eddie Allen, trumpet; Steven Carrington, tenor sax; Antonio Hart, alto sax)
Atlantic Jazz 82876-2 (CD only). Yves Beauvais, Cyrus Chestnut, prods.; Joe Ferla, eng. AAD. TT: 48:54

If you're a jazz-piano junkie like me, but for whatever reason have not yet heard Cyrus Chestnut, I have instructions: Buy this album, take it home, cue it up, and hang on. You'll find out in a hurry what the buzz is about.

The first cut is "Decisions, Decisions."…

Fine Tunes #26

I had a fascinating conversation the other day with George Cardas about slap-echo. (See Fine Tunes #1 and #2 for other Cardasian room treatment and speaker placement tips.) I know, it is amazing what audiophiles get excited about.

"Yeah, duuuude," George crooned, as he is wont to do. "I'm very excited, I'm actually building auditoriums and sound systems these days. And you know what I've found to be the biggest and most annoying problem with some traditional halls? Slap-echo from parallel non-absorbing walls."

Of course, he's right. Parallel flat reflective walls make for a nasty…

Paradigm Reference Active/20 loudspeaker

There are many benefits accruing to a loudspeaker when its designer goes the active or powered route. The usual losses and distortions associated with passive crossovers can be circumvented, while the fact that the amplifiers and drive-units can be designed as a package enables the designer to squeeze more performance from each than would otherwise be the case. And the savings gained from the absence of a separate amplifier chassis can be passed on to the consumer.

Yet with the exception of some domestic models from Meridian, Genelec, and Mackie, and powered subwoofers from many home-…

Paradigm Reference Active/20 loudspeaker Page 2

So where's the catch? You don't get something for nothing, and we're talking about a pair of tiny woofers. The catch is that the speakers won't give the listener high levels of low frequencies for long. Other writers have mentioned the Active/20's seemingly endless dynamics. Sad to say, I didn't find that to be the case. Even with the Low Frequency Contour set to "0," I found that inching the volume control to party-approved levels was a sure-fire way to end up with silence emanating from the Paradigms.

Tom Norton's recent acquisition of the Purple Rain DVD reminded me that the movie's…

Paradigm Reference Active/20 loudspeaker Specifications

Sidebar 1: Specifications

Description: Two-way, reflex-loaded, stand-mounted, powered loudspeaker. Inputs: one unbalanced line-level (RCA), one balanced line-level (XLR). Controls: Speaker Level, High-Frequency Contour, Low-Frequency Contour, switchable High-Pass Filter for use with a subwoofer. Supplied accessories: two 12' AC cables, two 23' RCA-terminated, unbalanced interconnects. Drive-units: 1" (25mm) aluminum-dome tweeter; 6" (150mm) mica polypropylene-cone woofer. Crossover frequency: 1.5kHz. Crossover slopes: third-order, 18dB/octave. Frequency response: 35Hz-22kHz, ±3dB (±1dB…

Paradigm Reference Active/20 loudspeaker System & Setup

Sidebar 2: System & Setup

After some experimentation, I placed the active Paradigms about 45" from my listening room's rear wall (which is faced with books and LPs) and approximately 60" from the side walls (which also have bookshelves covering some of their surfaces). The three cylindrical pillars of each of the matching 25" AudioStream stands were filled to the brim with a mixture of lead shot and dry sand. Digital source was a Mark Levinson No.30.5 HDCD D/A processor driven by a Mark Levinson No.31.5 transport via an Illuminati AES/EBU cable, or by a Panasonic SV-3700 DAT recorder…

Paradigm Reference Active/20 loudspeaker Measurements

Sidebar 3: Measurements

Even with its level control set to the central detented position, the Paradigm Active/20 didn't require much drive to go quite loud. With a 1kHz, 1/3-octave warble tone, 200mV (balanced) was enough to raise an estimated 95dB at 1m. It's hard to conceive of a combination of source components that wouldn't accommodate this speaker. The protection seems quite complex: while 470mV (unbalanced) of the white-spectrum MLS noise was enough to turn on the red warning LED, the indicator remained green when the speaker was driven with more than 1V of 1kHz sinewave.

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Paradigm Reference Active/20 loudspeaker Measurements part 2

The spatially averaged response, taken in my listening room (fig.7), was the flattest I have measured. Once above the room-interaction region, and with the exception of a minor peak at 4kHz, the output between 400Hz and 6.3kHz met astonishing ±0.9dB limits. No wonder the speaker sounded so neutral! And the useful bass response can be seen to extend down to the 32Hz band. I measure both speakers to derive this graph, by the way; the pair matching at the listening position was impressive.

Fig.7 Paradigm Active/20, 1/3-octave, spatially averaged response in JA's listening room.…

Building the Hi-Fi House

Anyone who's ever looked for it knows how rare audio-friendly living space is. Perhaps someday an enterprising developer will build Audiophile Acres---a whole subdivision of audio houses or soundproofed condos that'll meet these needs---then stand by while hordes of long-suffering audiophiles stampede the sales office, frantically waving down-payments in their sweaty hands.

I can see the salivating now over those extra-large, soundproofed dens or, spouses permitting, optimally dimensioned living rooms with separate, sonically isolated family rooms where the kids can watch Looney Tunes to…