“Now something of a pioneer in consumer active speakers, Paradigm is becoming very good at it, as the listening tests showed. Engineering a speaker from a line-level input onward gives the designers control of much more of the ultimate performance than when designing a speaker to work from an amplifier output. Of course, the amplifier(s) employed must be very good, or the design will be compromised…”

“Some speaker reviews are relatively short because there’s not much to say about yet another conventional or budget speaker; but others are so because the designer has done just about everything right, and has added to this synergy genuine creative intelligence. The latter is definitely the case here….”

“These monitor/subwoofer matched pairs come in a configuration that, as the width measurements suggest, stacks very neatly. And the neatness is augmented by the very nice veneered finish of the boxes, with their rounded corners and black front baffle. The subwoofer contains a high-pass filter, with an extra set of gold-plated 5-way posts to send it to the CHS-2. The speakers can also be bi-wired or amped…”

“The Oracle speaker project goes back quite a few years, and the Mentor Studio system is the culmination of that project, and its sleek finish reflects (quite literally) the tradition of craftsmanship associated with Oracle. Our review pair were finished in a shiny burgundy lacquer that looked as if it had been lovingly rubbed and polished by skilled hands…”

“A year ago the Mammoth subwoofer dominated the cover of our first A/V Almanac, and now we have son of, a smaller powered version that attempts to put essentially the same performance into a smaller package. The essence of the original design was an 18″ electromagnetic driver in an enclosure designed to fully vent the backwave and really move air…”

“This is our first PSB review in a few years, though AIG contributors have been aware of the Canadian brand’s growth and success. For example, contributing editor and columnist Gordon Brockhouse has been proud owner for years of Stratus Gold speakers, and has just upgraded to the newest iteration of these. The Century 300i comes at the other end of the price and size scale, a budget bookshelf model that is a 2-way rear-ported reflex design that uses a 6 1/2″ woofer/midrange and dome tweeter, both appearing to be made or polyproplylene….”

“Bob Carver’s unconventional approach to the subwoofer has been both derided and copied, but most important, it’s also sold like crazy, making a real mark for the little Snohomish, Washington company he founded several years ago after leaving Carver Corporation. The son of Sunfire sub is bigger, but uses the same amplifier and operating principle, with active and passive drivers, the latter mass-loaded…”

“You might think that this is the least expensive speaker model in the Paradigm Performance basic range, but, no it isn’t. The Atom ($199 pr) and the Micro ($169 pr) are below it in price. The last time we auditioned the Titan was in the Summer 93 issue, and then it was an all-wood box. The last time we auditioned the Titan was in the Summer 93 issue, and then it was an all-wood box. But Paradigm has had in-house injection moulding facilities…”

“Over the past few years Linn has become increasingly system-oriented, this trend accelerated by their strong move into high end home theatre. It was inevitable, therefore, that they would introduce an entry-level high end audio system, and here it is. Very cleverly, the product designers at the Glasgow company have combined a CD player based on the Mimik with an integrated amplifier based on the Magik I, and redesigned the Kann speakers to go with this new component…”

“I first heard these speakers at the Festival d Son et de L’Image in March after a recommendation from AAM; he’d been very impressed at what he heard from this particular model. Our review samples of the e:XL-25 came in the same attractive Northern Light Birch vinyl that graced the Sound Dynamics RTS-P100, much less of it covering this smaller, less expensive speaker…”

“As speakers, the 4 identical towers share a diminutive footprint and very narrow baffle, and all share the same drivers, a fabric dome tweeter, and 3 3 1/2″ cones for bass and midrange; the centre speaker is similarly slim laterally, with 4 of the 3 1/2″ drivers flanking the same tweeter. All of these are designed to operate down to a lower limit of 80 Hz. They are front-ported, but the real bass is reproduced by the subwoofer….”

“As part of the Synergy Series and the Premiere group of speakers, the Klipsch KSP-300 seems a little over identified, sort of like all those women going around with three names in the wake (and some wake, too) of Hilary Rodham Clinton (reminds me of Hickory Dickory Dock; I guess Monica’s problem is that she doesn’t have a middle name). Anyway, before I slide off into total irrelevance while hardly into this review at all, I should note that Klipsch’s Canadian distributor, Evolution Audio’s Saxe Brickendon..”

“PMC is that most unusual of speaker makers that sells its pro monitors to consumers altered only in exterior finish. Other pro companies like JBL usually have entirely separate lines of speakers for each market, while consumer speakers, such as certain models from Paradigm or Totem occasionally get sold into the pro market as nearfield monitors. I’ve been personally very pleased at the success of PMC…”

“It’s been a while since Ian Paisley, arguably the dean of Canadian speaker designers (but definitely no relation to Ulster’s rabble-rousing reverend) has introduced a breakthrough design, but here it is in the new OM-6. Described (and trademarked) as Omnipolar (Ian still regrets not registering “Bipolar”), this new speaker looks rather like a an electrostatic panel on top of a subwoofer, but it is a fully dynamic design, with double midranges and tweeters in the upper panel…”

“Those close to me (who have fathomed my innermost secrets) know that I dislike THX, which in my view simply adds distortion to the system, particularly in the surrounds, and I also dislike the reason for this so-called “decorrelation”, the mono nature of the Dolby Pro Logic surround channel. These guys (Dolby and THX) learned nothing from the research of CBS Labs, Jim Fosgate and others into matrix surround systems. Sorry, Tom Holman, I didn’t get the gospel…”

“Questions arise from time to time about how to interpret the measurements shown with each speaker review. Here’s an explanation of each of the curves in our charts from top to bottom, starting with that showing frequency responses. Pink Noise Sweep: Here at AIG we measure speakers in a room, using some absorbent materials to minimize reflections…”