Help with paradigm emotiva setup

L

llewop

Audiophyte
I am currently running marantz sr6006 to emotiva upa 1 through paradigm studio 100s.

I am having problems with the top end being to bright and harsh. I had a similar problem when I had wharfedales and a pioneer receiver.
Audessy also has the same verdict dropping the high freq down.

Where should I start new power amp new speakers better room treatment new receiver.

I was thinking maybe a parasound a31 power amp. Or maybe a tube pre.
 
Steve81

Steve81

Audioholics Five-0
Where should I start new power amp new speakers better room treatment new receiver.
Can you tell us a bit about the room, ie dimensions, speaker placement, furnishings, floors, any treatments, etc.
 
J

jcl

Senior Audioholic
The Stereophile measurements of the v.2 studio 100s show a slightly rising treble and a flair off axis. If your's are similar then experiment with toe in and placement as well as some room treatments if you haven't already. They are fairly sensitive and UPA1 should be able to give them enough power.

If that fails my suggestion is when you don't like the sound of your speakers replace the speakers. Fiddling with amps and tubes to try and color the sound is the wrong way to go about things imo.

My other question would be, how do they sound with Audyssey? If it makes them sound good, why not just use it?
 
S

sharkman

Full Audioholic
I have a pair of Paradigm Sig 6 V2 speakers and I have found a bright/harsh top end with Emotiva gear. (They are a wonderful speaker that retails for over $6000, and I'm not going to replace them when other electronics are at fault.) I had the XDA-1 as pre amp and XPA-3 with this brightness issue. I got an Oppo 95 and used its volume direct to the XPA. I still had a sibiliance at above 80db peaks. I could actually get a hard "sss" sound with vocals at 82db peaks, and it was repeatable and annoying.

Finally I replaced the XPA-3 with a Parasound Halo A21 and did an A/B comparison. The harshness was simply gone. No sss at higher levels and a more realistic soundstage. Then I scanned their speaker lines and noticed they all have soft dome tweeters, which tend to be warmer sounding than metal domes.

I view Emotiva as a good entry level brand, although when they first started out they apparently had some pretty expensive amps. When they discontinued that and came out with the XPA line, in bringing down the price to under $1000 some compromises had to be made. Then with the UPA line, more compromises. Which is fine, it's nice to get separates at these prices, but I think there is better gear out there but you'll have to spend much more.
 
ImcLoud

ImcLoud

Audioholic Ninja
I have a pair of Paradigm Sig 6 V2 speakers and I have found a bright/harsh top end with Emotiva gear. (They are a wonderful speaker that retails for over $6000, and I'm not going to replace them when other electronics are at fault.) I had the XDA-1 as pre amp and XPA-3 with this brightness issue. I got an Oppo 95 and used its volume direct to the XPA. I still had a sibiliance at above 80db peaks. I could actually get a hard "sss" sound with vocals at 82db peaks, and it was repeatable and annoying.

Finally I replaced the XPA-3 with a Parasound Halo A21 and did an A/B comparison. The harshness was simply gone. No sss at higher levels and a more realistic soundstage. Then I scanned their speaker lines and noticed they all have soft dome tweeters, which tend to be warmer sounding than metal domes.

I view Emotiva as a good entry level brand, although when they first started out they apparently had some pretty expensive amps. When they discontinued that and came out with the XPA line, in bringing down the price to under $1000 some compromises had to be made. Then with the UPA line, more compromises. Which is fine, it's nice to get separates at these prices, but I think there is better gear out there but you'll have to spend much more.
You get what you pay for I guess, I find my Emo amps sound well worth their price tag, and I cant justify 5-10 times the cost for 3% better sound... Maybe if I win the lottery or my rich uncle dies, I may change my mind, but until then EMO for me ;) , and plus I dont play the lottery or have a rich uncle... :( Although I have a hard tome believing its the amp, mine sound awesome.. and all I heard sounded on par with everything else I have heard...

Anyway, do you have a pic of the room, I founf empty rooms sound bright, Im going to have to agree with placement and acoustic treatments, the 100s are nice {some say brightish} but Im sure you can tame them with some strategically placed pictures and sand bags :)
Start taping the floor up {when I was setting up my speakers I used masking tape on the floor with little notes written on the tape, and left it there for about a week, since it took me that long to get it rite.. My wife hated it and reminded me of that every day...
 
Last edited:
JerryLove

JerryLove

Audioholic Samurai
I'm confused. Is there an assertion on the table that Emotiva amplifiers are not flat-beyond-human-tolerance in their output? I find that terribly hard to believe.

I have had problems where a speaker was very harsh when driven by an inadequate amp (my 801Matrix speakers sound bad off my Denon receiver, but fine once I put a YamahaPro amp in the middle); but I've yet to hear of a quality amp of any sort that was not flat (beyond human hearing) on something it could drive.

I'd suspect the room.
 
S

sharkman

Full Audioholic
I'm confused. Is there an assertion on the table that Emotiva amplifiers are not flat-beyond-human-tolerance in their output? I find that terribly hard to believe.

I have had problems where a speaker was very harsh when driven by an inadequate amp (my 801Matrix speakers sound bad off my Denon receiver, but fine once I put a YamahaPro amp in the middle); but I've yet to hear of a quality amp of any sort that was not flat (beyond human hearing) on something it could drive.

I'd suspect the room.
The thing is, when I put an Anthem pre amp into the mix, the sibiliance was gone. Same room, same everything else.

It's not how flat Emotiva amps are, it's how they react with a wide range of speakers, each having its own unique sound characteristics and complex load. Since I had my issues, I've read of many who've had similar problems with Emotiva amps with specific speakers. And of course I've read of many more who find the sound to be excellent.

It's no big deal, not all speakers present the exact same load to an amp, or are made up of the exact same components and have the same sound.
 
P

PENG

Audioholic Slumlord
The thing is, when I put an Anthem pre amp into the mix, the sibiliance was gone. Same room, same everything else.

It's not how flat Emotiva amps are, it's how they react with a wide range of speakers, each having its own unique sound characteristics and complex load. Since I had my issues, I've read of many who've had similar problems with Emotiva amps with specific speakers. And of course I've read of many more who find the sound to be excellent.

It's no big deal, not all speakers present the exact same load to an amp, or are made up of the exact same components and have the same sound.
It just doesn't add up, may be it was how you do the comparison but regardless, if that's what you heard then that's why you heard. I am sure the Halo stuff could sound better, they cost much more, and look better, to me anyway.
 
JerryLove

JerryLove

Audioholic Samurai
I have run Paradigm S2v1's, Studio 40v3's, and Studio 60v3's off the stock amp in a Marantz receiver without noticeable problems.

I would expect that the S6 isn't *much* more demanding (perhaps more full range and less efficient, so maybe), and that the Emotiva amp was more capable than the Marantz receiver... but I cannot say I have actually used either.

(speakers that failed to sound good, requiring more amp included the 801MatrixII and 801S)
 
S

sharkman

Full Audioholic
The V2 was the version that the Berylium dome tweeters were introduced, and this particular speaker(S6 V2) dipped down to 3 ohms.

As I mentioned, I get sibiliance with the Emotiva XPA-3 and my speakers with higher volume levels at 82db peaks. This sibiliance was not there with the Anthem pre amp or the Parasound A21. Same room, same speakers, same cables and same volume levels.

As the thread starter mentioned, there can be an issue with the Emotiva gear and some speakers. Personally, I feel this is why Emotiva speakers do not have metal dome speakers, soft domes sound better with their electronics. But don't let this be an issue for you, believe us or not.
 
TLS Guy

TLS Guy

Seriously, I have no life.
I am currently running marantz sr6006 to emotiva upa 1 through paradigm studio 100s.

I am having problems with the top end being to bright and harsh. I had a similar problem when I had wharfedales and a pioneer receiver.
Audessy also has the same verdict dropping the high freq down.

Where should I start new power amp new speakers better room treatment new receiver.

I was thinking maybe a parasound a31 power amp. Or maybe a tube pre.
You should start by putting those Paradigms up for sale.

Those are speakers I auditioned at length at a good dealer, in a good room, with good Rotel amplification. My principle reference speaker in the room was a pair of B & W 802 Ds.

The Paradigms sounded nothing like the B & W 802 Ds, nothing like them.

The Paradigms had pretty much every vice I can't abide or tolerate in a speaker.

The bass was wooly exaggerated and ill defined. It was clearly a high Q speaker.

The HF just fizzed at me and the speaker was sibilant indicating problems in the 4 to 5 kHz range.

Listening to the last movement of the wonderful Sibelius second symphony through those speakers was a severely unpleasant experience I will never forget.

Digging up what I could find on measurements showed I was not wrong.

The bass tuning is far too low and one of these very poor sounding so called extended bass alignments.



You can see the dip of the saddle between the tuning peaks is around 20 Hz. No drivers of the size in those speakers is going to have an Fs anywhere near that frequency.

The result: -



There is a rising response below 300 Hz, peaking at 60 Hz. However you know this will sound even worse than it looks, as it has to be a speaker with high Qts. Speakers like this have very poor bass quality, and these did.

In addition this tuning has resulted in a very poor impedance curve and phase angles. So yes, it could embarrass some amps.

Looking at the frequency response there is indeed a rise in the 2 to 5 kHz range. This is a very bad place to have even a small rise. The response above 7 kHz is just awful and ragged. The tweeter on those speakers is just bad pure and simple.

However it is worse then it looks. The lateral response is less than stellar.



This results in this spatially averaged response: -



You can see their is a whopping 5 db rise in the 4 to 5 kHz sibilance band.

So that is why your speakers are sibilant and why they fizzed at me.

This all adds up to a less then satisfactory spectral decay plot: -



So Audyssey was correct in shelving the HF. However it will not cure the situation, as the tweeter is in break up mode well in the audio band, so there will be a lot of retained energy and unsatisfactory HF performance.

Those measurement explained what I heard and severely disliked about those speakers. More to the point they also explain your dissatisfaction with your system.
 
L

llewop

Audiophyte
aaaaaaaaaaaaaa_zps20890dbd.jpg picture by llewop69 - Photobucket

Its a quick and not to scale.

I have actually tried bypassing the upa 1 and just using the marantz and the harshness has gone. The marantz is a little warmer not as detailed and not as tight. But the harshness was gone. I think its the high gain with paradigm high sensitivity. As far as selling the speakers there is no such thing as a perfect speaker. Its just one big compromise. As far as the b@w i prefer the paradigms. Certain pieces sound better on different speakers i felt the B@W got in the way of the music.
I am actually a classical musician and have played Sibelius 2.
I could also say the orchestra you were listen to was crap. That would be my opinion.
Also you are showing graphs from v3 mine are v5.
As far as making sound improvements by graphs no professional musician I know does this we use our ears. Maybe in a recording studio and that is only ever a guide.
Have a listen to a sample from the program Vienna symphony you can use logic to create music. Mars the planets it is perfect rhythm pitch everything vibrato. It still will never be as good as the real thing.

Music isn't perfect in fact it is the imperfections that are desirable.
 
S

sharkman

Full Audioholic
Interesting info TLS guy, I'd heard that the Studio line isn't as good as it used to be, something about it being reworked for home theater use(and not up to snuff when playing classical or horns), but your explanation is much more complete. Have you tried any Emotiva gear?

Interestingly, the Paradigm Signature S6 V2 were reviewed by this very site, here's a link for anyone interested.
 

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