Many of the new speaker designs I’ve seen recently look more like a wing, an orb, or an obelisk than a speaker, so it was reassuring to unpack this latest system from Paradigm Reference, the high-end division of Paradigm. The Studio 40 v.3 front left/right speakers are solidly conventional, quadrilateral boxes. But they’re not rectangular — slightly arched tops give them a sort of raised-eyebrow expression. They are solid, though, in more ways than one, and heavy for their size as well as meticulously finished and expertly put together. The same applies to the similarly conventional-looking CC-570 v.3 center speaker. Completing the set, the ADP-470 v.3 surrounds are small, trapezoidal quasi-dipoles with four drivers apiece.
Our mix-and-match system came with the front trio finished in a light-toned woodgrain Paradigm calls sycamore that’s very nice indeed. You’d have to examine them closely to decide if it was wood or vinyl — and you might just guess wrong.
Setup required no more than the usual wire connecting and level balancing. However, the Studio 40s are an in-between size that I found too short for floor-standing placement but too tall for my usual speaker stands. (Paradigm, of course, sells optional stands that are the perfect height.) I used a pair of semi-homemade adjustable stands that put the Studios 40s just an inch or so higher than ideal. As usual, the center speaker went atop my 30-inch widescreen TV. The CC-570 is big and heavy, so I’d hesitate before putting it on a shaky stand or on any TV with a very shallow or nonflat top. I put the surrounds on high shelves to the sides and toward the rear of the listening area in my studio.
I began my listening session in subwoofer-less stereo with Natalie Merchant Live in Concert on CD to see what the front left/right Paradigm Studio 40s could do on their own. In a word, they were outstanding. For example, on “San Andreas Fault,” Merchant’s clarion alto voice was superbly clear, demonstrating the Paradigms’ utterly uncolored midrange, while their slightly relaxed but extended treble kept the tune’s subtle drum work sounding natural and present. The Studio 40s had plenty of tight, ample bass down to well below 50 Hz, all with great dynamic ease and clarity of attack. Even in simple, two-speaker stereo the Paradigm duo’s wide soundstage, fullness, and transparency really drew me into a first-rows perspective on the live event.
Nonetheless, surround is really what this is about. A close tonal match between the center speaker and the front left/right pair is critical to the success of any surround system, and here the Paradigms scored very high. I heard only the slightest of differences between the CC-570 and its flanking mates in A/B comparisons using mono TV and radio announcers. With baritone and lower male voices, the center speaker was a tad weaker in the deeper chest tones, but from the tenor range on up, it matched the stereo pair very closely.
A good center speaker should also sound the same whether you’re sitting right in front of it or off to the side. The CC-570 was exceptionally good in this respect. It will deliver the same natural sound to a whole sofa-load of movie viewers — even those sprawled right over the far ends of the widest sofa.
I prefer to use dipolar speakers for the surround channels because a good pair tends to spread sound more evenly and subtly through the rear half of the listening space. The ADP-470s turned in a flawless performance in this regard. My tried-and-true ambience tests — including the distant, circling helicopters in Clear and Present Danger — all produced extremely natural-sounding ambience and effects. The effects were so realistic that I found myself flinching at gunshots in scenes I’ve heard a hundred times before. Put all these elements together, and you have a top-flight surround speaker system.
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| The Paradigm array excelled with challenging movie soundtracks like that of Enemy at the Gates as well as multichannel SACD and DVD-Audio music discs. |
The Studio 40 v.3 array excelled with challenging movie soundtracks like that of Enemy at the Gates, a pristine DVD transfer with a beautifully crisp 5.1-channel soundtrack. As Chapter 6 opens, a train pulls in noisily straight toward you, exiting and then stopping diagonally to your left. The train sound covers lots of octaves, so a smooth, well-integrated pan from center to left to rear requires really good channel matching from top to bottom of the spectrum. (It may sound trivial, but to reproduce this sort of effect convincingly is a stiff challenge for any surround sound setup.) As the train rumbles to a stop, its squeaks and groans echo into the surround channels, blending in with low, ambient music. I listened to this passage again and again, straining to hear any imperfections, but the presentation was impressively smooth. Nice — very nice.
Paradigm’s Seismic 12 subwoofer is an ultra-compact design sporting two 10-inch passive radiators, a down-firing 12-inch driver, and a high-efficiency switching amp that carries a seismic 1,200-watt power rating. All this firepower delivers the big bass you expect from action/adventure movies. The modest explosions in Enemy thumped my chest with real effect, but sound-spectacular nuggets like the big bike-chase explosion in Mission Impossible 2 genuinely rocked the floor with true deep bass.
No matter what disc I threw at it, the Seismic 12 pounded out the goods, delivering smooth, clean, sheetrock-flexing bass to below 25 Hz. I was surprised that a subwoofer of this sophistication lacked a crossover-bypass input for those who want to use the crossovers in their receivers or preamps. (Just the same, I heard no problems from the nondefeatable filter with the sub’s frequency control wide open.)
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PLUS MINUS |
Movies aside, I pulled out my favorite 5.1-channel DVD-Audio discs and Super Audio CDs. The Paradigms sounded superb with multichannel music like Alison Krause + Union Station Live (SACD) and Steely Dan’s Everything Must Go (DVD-Audio). And natural-acoustic music, such as James Horner’s entertainingly Tchaikovsky Meets Prokofiev orchestral score for Enemy,sounded uniformly gorgeous: rich, seamless, warm, but with distinct string bowings and crisp horn attacks along with a well-delineated, lifelike ambience.
The Paradigm Reference Studio 40 v.3 system is a flat-out first-class suite of speakers that can produce the kind of you-are-there realism that many other systems only wish they could achieve. Sure, at $4,500 it’s no cheapie — not even close. If you’re dropping that kind of coin, you expect superb results, top to bottom, which is exactly what you get.