I'm a bit new at this and could use some advice. I'm running a yamaha rx-v465 with paradigm monitor 7's for the fronts. I have an Oppo BD-83 and some lower end speakers for the rears, center and sub. I'm running a 5.1 setup. When listening to music, I set the yamaha receiver in "Direct" mode which I believe lets the oppo do all or most of the sound proccessing and it sounds great, but it sounds as if the paradigms are under powered. They just don't put out much bass at lower volume levels....you have to crank it to get a decent bass response. I know that I own a low end receiver and I'm guessing I need to purchase an additional amplifier to push the paradigms to their potential. Would this be called a post amp? The system sounds great when watching movies but, for two channel listening, it seems that the paradigms are under powered. I've tried powering up the sub in two channel using the options on the receiver and it sounds like crud...I lose my crisp highs because you are forced to take the receiver out of "direct" mode and use the yamaha's sub-par proccessing. I would like something that I could just turn on when I'm running two channel and have some sort of bypass switch when watching movies so that I don't have to re-wire my system everytime I switch modes....Please help! thanks in advance for your time and consideration.
Shane
I don't understand why you have to rewire your system. That is not making sense to me.
Your receiver has pre outs for the front three channels. If you bought a two channel amp for your paradigms then you would connect the amp with a stereo RCA cable from the pre outs to the line in of the amp, and leave speakers wired to the amp. The front speaker terminals of your receiver would be unused.
At this point I have to ask you what your musical preference is. Also what were your impressions of those speakers before you bought them? I have a feeling you just might not like those speakers.
I auditioned the Paradigm Studio 100 speakers recently and was very disappointed in what I heard to say the least of it. They were in a room were there were good speakers for comparison and the Paradigms were capably driven by Rotel electronics.
I have not heard your speakers, so can not comment on the sound directly, but there are a number of features about the design that make me worry.
First of all they will be four ohm speakers because they have two bass drivers. There is no getting round this. Manufacturers lie on this point more often than not. So your receiver will actually deliver half its rated power into those speakers. However the speaker are of high sensitivity, so the spl will be as high as with a speaker with a sensitivity of 3 db less. So you ought to be able to deliver decent spls.
The next issue is the bass tuning. They have what they call a resistive port, with third order roll off. This means a roll off of 18 db per octave. A sealed enclosure rolls off at 12 db per octave, a usual B4 ported reflex at 24 db per octave.
It sounds to me as if this port is some type of resistive vent, like to old Dynaudio Variovent. In this type of enclosure, it is basically a sealed unit, but with a controlled leak. The purpose is to reduce the system resonance or Q. The problem is it cause the bass to die away quicker. I have not found this approach very helpful and more often than not you have a speaker sounding bass shy.
The spec is for the speaker to be 2 db down at 54 Hz, so it will be about 20 db down at 30 Hz.
The German DIN spec is useless, and is purely a sleight of hand to pull the wool over consumers eyes. It is an estimate of how low the speaker might reach in an average room and is a pointless spec. So for the size enclosure, the bass in not at all impressive.
The next issue is the narrow band width of the mid range driver. In my view if you are going to design a three way, the midrange needs to have crossover points at least 3 octaves apart. Those speakers have a spread of only 1.5 octaves, with low order slopes for a three way. Therefore there is huge driver overlap, and I would say the band pass gain almost impossible to control optimally. This tends to lead to a shouty forward speaker. That was certainly one of many defects I noted on the studio 100 audition, and that speaker has a greater spread of the band pass crossovers than yours, but still not adequate.
If you have a dealer you know well see if you can borrow an amp, to see if it helps. If not then you need to seriously consider trading speakers. Actually I'm dubious an amp alone will solve your problem, but worth seeing if it improves the situation.
