Paradigm Loudspeakers Factory Tour: Introduction
by Doug Schneider

If there is one word that sums up the philosophy at Paradigm it is value. Paradigm's goal is to build the best speakers they can at varying price points and then charge less for them. "We hope that if the customer comes in with an $800 budget for speakers, he can hear ours and then find out that they cost only $500." In order to do this, the company must achieve certain economies of scale and have strong control of their production. 

Paradigm makes speakers priced (in pairs) from $149 for the Micro (shown right) all the way up to their Reference series products that includes the new Active/40 loudspeaker priced at $2000. Their most expensive speaker combination is actually a pair of Active/40 speakers with a Servo 15 subwoofer -- $3500 in total. This is hardly an expensive setup in high-end terms, but perhaps appropriate since the company's owners feel that that 98% of the buying public purchases speakers priced at less than $2000.

When it comes to putting together systems, the combinations Paradigm offers are extensive. At the top end of the spectrum, you'd be hard-pressed to crack $7,000 for a whole five-channel system including the company's sub, center-channel and dipole surrounds. On the low-end, $800 will get you complete multichannel surround setup with numerous options in between. Consumers are given a wide range of choices.

You have choices as to the type of system you get into too. You can either have passive speakers, ones for which you'll have to supply amplification, or fully active, meaning that the speakers have their own built-in amplifiers so no more are needed. In the case of an active system, you can simply run the entire system straight out of a surround-sound processor. Through the company's newly acquired Sonic Frontiers' Anthem line of electronics, their first surround-sound processor, called the AVM 1, will be available this fall. If you choose the passive route, Paradigm has just introduced the Anthem MCA 5 power amplifier priced at $1400. Whatever the case may be, high-quality multichannel sound is very affordable from Paradigm.

There is a surprising sense of sanity with the people at Paradigm, and that is a likely reason for their success. Started in 1982, the company has grown to have roughly 350 employees and produces most of the components it needs -- right down to its voice coils, driver cones and ports -- in-house. The products, in turn, sell in some 43 countries around the world. Paradigm Loudspeakers is part of a larger conglomerate of companies, also located in Canada, that includes AudioStream, the marketing and distribution arm; Premiere, maker of loudspeaker and component stands; and Sonic Frontiers, the recently acquired electronics manufacturer of the Anthem and Sonic Frontiers brands of audio components.

Paradigm Loudspeakers is owned by Scott Bagby (left) and Jerry VanderMarel (middle). Jerry and Scott are also partners in AudioStream with Bill VanderMarel (right). Jerry and Bill manage different aspects of the sales and marketing, while Scott oversees the Paradigm R&D team for all the products. Of course, all work closely together guiding the overall direction of the companies.

The group of companies span five main locations. AudioStream's offices are located in Burlington (near Toronto), while Paradigm's two manufacturing plants are spaced about 20 minutes apart by car in areas surrounding Toronto -- Woodbridge and Mississauga. Sonic Frontiers is located in Oakville, once again near Toronto. An additional research facility is located some four hours away in my home city of Ottawa. The focus of this tour were the two manufacturing plants that also encompass the company's speaker-design facilities and listening area.

The high-value theme is one that resurfaced many times as we (Ian White and I) talked with the company's owners. While they estimate that 98% of the public buys pairs of speakers priced at less than $2000, they estimate that 80% buy speakers that are priced less than $500 per pair. In terms of multichannel (i.e., home theater), this translates to about $1500 for a system. Paradigm also finds that $1500 for a home-theater system is their most popular price point. 

When pressed to confess a preference in their own lineup for a system that offers the most bang-for-the-buck, the answer was that there was not one system that stood head and shoulders above the rest -- all of their systems, at their various price points, are intended to offer the same type of value. If you were looking for the very most for your money, you would likely look lower to, say, the Atom ($179/pair) or the Mini Monitor ($349/pair) loudspeakers.

When discussing their highest priced designs, the Studio/100 and the new Active/40, it is obvious that the owners and the design engineers are quite proud of their accomplishments. Depending on the finish selected, both of these speakers are priced at about $2000/pair. According to Paradigm, diminishing returns set in very strongly at around the point of the Studio/100, and you would have to pay a whole lot more to better its performance in any significant way (right, the Studio/100 is seen coming off the assembly line). In terms of technology, the Studio/100 needs an amplifier -- like most speakers. On the other hand, the Active 40 has its amplifiers built in, an approach that Paradigm believes in wholeheartedly. Of course, for their active speakers, Paradigm builds the amplifiers themselves. 

While Paradigm is not the first company to do active speakers (Meridian has been championing this cause for years), they do believe that active is the best way to design a loudspeaker. According to Scott Bagby, going active can improve performance in terms of lower distortion, improved component tolerance, and usage of electronic crossovers. As well, it makes setting up a home-theater system easier since you need only to run interconnects from a surround sound processor directly to the speakers. Placement of amplifiers and associated cabling is gone as a concern. And when the Dolbys and DTSs decide to add extra channels, you just have to add an extra speaker. Although the Active series accounts for only about 25% of Paradigm's Reference-series sales, the company sees it as a good long-term strategy.

Will Paradigm ever offer a more expensive set of loudspeakers, or perhaps a cost-no-object model? The idea has not been ruled out, and in fact, many dealers would like to see them do it. But it does not seem a priority right now. If they were to do it, according to the owners, they would first build the very best speaker they can without considering price at all, and then, once finished, they would determine the price at which it would sell.

With all Paradigm loudspeakers designs, there are absolutely no trade-offs between home-theater and music speakers -- in fact, all speakers can be used for either application. Furthermore, all designs must go through the blind-tested listening evaluation as part of their R&D approval stage. According to Scott Bagby, "if a speaker is neutral, it is neutral."  This runs contrary to the thinking of many audiophiles who sometimes separate their home-theater and music systems.

With the acquisition of Sonic Frontiers, Paradigm is now interested more than ever in the growing electronics industry because they offer their own line of products -- the well-known Sonic Frontiers and Anthem lines. Anthem is their focus right now for new products, with three new solid-state amplifiers just hitting the market. The MCA 5 (shown without cover, left), MCA 3 and MCA 2 are five-, three-and two-channel amps priced at $1400, $850 and $700 respectively. The long-awaited AVM 1 processor will come to market later this year with a price of about $2500.  The AVM 1 will have every bell and whistle, will support all standard surround-sound modes, and will even have an FM tuner. Bagby pointed out that a considerable amount of work can be done to significantly improve the performance of high-end surround-sound processors over lower-priced mass-market goods, particularly in the area of digital processing and video-signal handling, and that's what they are working on perfecting.

And what about the question of what digital format we'll be seeing in the future? Paradigm, like consumers, has adopted a wait-and-see position. There is much going on in the digital arena right now, and where it will all end up is anyone's guess. What's for sure is that regardless of how many channels of multichannel sound that we see, Paradigm will be more than happy to supply as many speakers as necessary.

In the 1980s, Dr. Floyd Toole conducted groundbreaking research at Canada's National Research Council (NRC) in the area of subjective evaluation of loudspeakers. His work was published and adopted by many of Canada's top loudspeaker manufacturers, including Paradigm.  Through the use of blind listening tests, O'Toole was able to correlate significant loudspeaker measurements with listeners' impressions of how a loudspeaker sounds.

Today Paradigm no longer uses the NRC's facilities. Instead they have built their own anechoic chamber for the most effective loudspeaker measurement, along with a blind-listening-test room. The anechoic chamber (33,000 cubic feet, reportedly the largest in North America) is built using many compressed long fiberglass wedges placed along all walls, including the floor and ceiling. The wedges eliminate any reflections and result in an area of seemingly unlimited space. The size of the room allows Paradigm to conduct their measurements from points of up to three meters. 

Walking into the anechoic chamber is an awesome yet awkward experience. Once the door is closed, all outside sound vanishes and any noises inside are localized at their source. Echoes are non-existent. To a human, the absence of reflected sound causes some disorientation because our ears rely on reflected cues to help orient our bodies. With some folks, this causes a feeling of   nausea. For speakers, it is ideal for measuring performance.

The testing procedure for loudspeakers is very automated and sophisticated. There are two platforms in the anechoic chamber placed at one- and three-meter positions away from calibrated B&K microphones. The platforms can rotate and are computer controlled. Paradigm can perform a whole barrage of tests on and off axis in a matter of seconds, all of them with their own proprietary software. Measurements can be taken and crossover modeling can be done right on the computer! We saw a number of tests performed, with one of the most interesting being the summation of frequency-response measurements taken on the horizontal and vertical axes to a full 360 degrees. Paradigm calls the graphed result the Total Energy Response of the loudspeaker.

Once all this testing is done, the work is not over. The information gleaned is used to predict the loudspeaker result, but it is not the final word. Despite the level of sophistication in Paradigm's testing, the ear is still their most important tool. Should a speaker not pass this test, according to the Paradigm engineers, it's back to the drawing board. Of course, the listening test itself is done blind and this goes right back to the days of the NRC.

While blind testing is practiced in many other industries, like medicine, it has been a source of controversy in the audio field. Why? That depends on whom you ask. Some say most blind test are conducted improperly, while others cite fear as a reason many audiophiles won't subject themselves to the process. Others say blind tests just don't work, and still others, like Paradigm, say they do. I must admit that we were unsure of the procedure before our visit to Paradigm. Like many, we had been subjected to blind listening tests, with the usual results -- stress, confusion, headaches and hair-pulling, not to mention the inability to distinguish the sound of a loudspeaker from a dishwasher on scrub cycle. However, doesn't it seem perfectly logical to think that if you can really tell the difference between the way a component sounds you should be able to do it with your eyes closed? 

Many who conduct blind tests don't set them up properly. Awkward component changes and  too long of intervals between listenings, among other things, all add up to massive confusion. Some SoundStagers have done blind tests that induced more sweat due to stress than a ten-mile run. Paradigm's room is quite the opposite to most -- it's fairly simple. A large black curtain covers the speakers behind. It is acoustically transparent, but visually it doesn't allow you to see what you are listening to. On this day, three loudspeakers were placed behind the curtain, each attached to a sophisticated switch box that matches output levels for each speaker. A rack of Anthem gear played the music. The key here is to keep listeners unaware of what they are listening to and thus able to concentrate solely on the sound.

When a Paradigm designer tests speakers that they are creating, they are not allowed to set them up -- another designer does it. Sometimes the person who sets up the test does not even put the designer's loudspeaker in the roundup! The listener is given a remote control and a special Paradigm-created score sheet to mark down impressions in various categories. With a remote control, the listener can leisurely flip between speakers, listening to each in any order and for as long as he or she wishes. Unlike with most blind tests, this control greatly reduces stress. Both of us took the test individually so as not to disturb the other listener and so that we could each listen according to our own tastes. This eliminates the other listener's biases too.

Much to our surprise, the differences among the speakers were quite easy to distinguish, mainly due to the fact that the ability to switch quickly between each speaker was a snap. This doesn't mean that you have to switch rapidly between speakers during the test; rather, it means that if you need to change quickly, it is done quickly. In the end, clear distinctions were made and, surprisingly, both of our score sheets showed almost identical results!

We had asked one of Paradigm's designers, Nageeb Khan (shown above left), who set up our test, if it was common to have a speaker sound poor in the blind-listening room even after it had measured well on the test bench. He said that from time to time it does happen. However, he added that if the listening test goes poorly, the designer will usually go back to the measurements and scrutinize them very closely. Almost all the time there is something in the measurements that had been overlooked. Nageeb, by the way, was part of the team that designed the astonishing $179 Atom that sounds like a speaker costing much more money.

• Proceed to Part 2: Production Facilities
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To find out more about Paradigm,
visit their website at www.paradigm.ca