Paradigm Concept 4F Speakers Preview

gene

gene

Audioholics Master Chief
Administrator
The Engineers at Paradigm and Anthem were told to build a cost-no-object speaker, and what emerged is the Paradigm Concept 4F. Featuring pure beryllium drivers, built in amplification with ARC Room Correction, and refined looks in a compact enclosure, the Paradigm 4F will be part of a speaker line featuring multiple towers, bookshelves, and a center channel.



Read: Paradigm Concept 4F Speakers Preview
 
j_garcia

j_garcia

Audioholic Jedi
$10-40k? Built in room correction for the woofers sounds like a nice capability, but that's a lot of dough. Is there still a big market for cost is no object level speakers these days?
 
TLS Guy

TLS Guy

Seriously, I have no life.
At first glance I'm not over impressed.

The speaker appears to be a coupled cavity isobarik with the sealed cavity at the rear and the front ported cavity at the front, with the port at the bottom.

So right away you have sacrificed half the amp power in the bass.

Now I'm going to make a few assumptions, and this may not be correct. I suspect that one amp drives the rear facing "unseen" woofers, and drives them thought the loading frequency. I suspect the other amp drives the front drivers, and that the front drivers also handle the bass and go up to the mid.

Since there are only two amps, I suspect that the low pass, mid pass and high pass crossovers are passive.

There is only one mid driver in each speaker, which seams a pity, as it must cause earlier thermal dynamic compression issues than using two mids would have.

Useful power at 16 Hz could mean anything. I assume it is more than 3 db down at 16 Hz.

These days if you are going to make a truly full range speaker, you need to have a way of capturing the LFE signal for use in HT.

If I was given an unlimited budget, I would not have come up with that design.

It would have more assets devoted to the midband. It would have been a fully active design, with no passive crossovers. There would be a way to incorporate and capture the LFE signal.

In addition I would not sacrifice 50% of the bass amp power in a no holes barred design.

In addition I would have been much more imaginative in the bass loading.

I would like to hear those speakers, but I highly doubt I would hear anything that would make me swap them for this rig hear.

The power on those front two is 100 watts short of what I have, but I would be pretty certain I have significantly greater electro acoustic efficiency.

At first glance for a no holes barred project, that appears to me to be a pretty lame effort.
 
P

Paul Lane

Audioholic Intern
I thought Paradigm was supposed to be affordable ? Sure I will match them with the $5000 NAD Preamp. If I was going to spend this type of Cheddar I would buy Magico. These are former friendly brands that want in on Magico or Lansch $$$.. Ha ha..
 
Rickster71

Rickster71

Audioholic Spartan
So right away you have sacrificed half the amp power in the bass.

Now I'm going to make a few assumptions, and this may not be correct. I suspect that one amp drives the rear facing "unseen" woofers, and drives them thought the loading frequency. I suspect the other amp drives the front drivers, and that the front drivers also handle the bass and go up to the mid.
I just listened to the video.
There are two 700watt amps, each powers a pair of bass drivers.
Mid and tweeter powered separately by amp of the owners choice.
 
Steve81

Steve81

Audioholics Five-0
The speaker appears to be a coupled cavity isobarik with the sealed cavity at the rear and the front ported cavity at the front, with the port at the bottom.

So right away you have sacrificed half the amp power in the bass.
Not sure if that is the case. Taking a closer look at the image, there seems to be a screen vs solid cabinet on the business end of the rear firing woofers.
 
j_garcia

j_garcia

Audioholic Jedi
The cutaway shows the x-over/amps etc... on the rear wall, so it is not open, unless they radiate out to either side. Those sides are the curved rear of the cabinet, so I am guessing what looks like the screen is damping material.


 
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TLS Guy

TLS Guy

Seriously, I have no life.
The cutaway shows the x-over/amps etc... on the rear wall, so it is not open.


I agree it is not open.

That design only makes sense if it is a coupled cavity isobarik speaker.

Therefore, they have sacrificed efficiency for a smaller cabinet.

The other issue is the bass augmentation bandwidth.

The problem with this arrangement, is that if you choose high bandwidth then you have high Q, if you want low Q then you have a narrow bandwidth.

Knowing Paradigm it is high Q. Their speakers always sound high Q to me and I don't think much of them.

The other issue is that this bass section is driven from the speaker level input. That is way short of state of the art.

To be honest, if I was given and unlimited budget and came up with this I would not own up to it.

The more I think about this design, the less impressed I am.

It really is just a similar version of these speakers are deigned and built 20 years ago, slightly over in fact.

The reason I built them was to have a location monitor that could reach below 30 Hz and be very accurate for monitoring recordings.

The difference is that none of the bass speakers radiate into the room, all speaker radiation is from the port.

The bass section is not driven form the speaker input.

It uses two bass mids of wide bandwidth. These drivers are in their own sealed compartment and have a frequency range of 90 Hz to 3 KHz. This speaker therefore has excellent power handling though the mid band.

Q of the isobarik bass section is an acceptable ( Just) 0.7.





So there are 5 drivers in each cabinet, but you only see three. These speakers where not designed as a last word design, but for a specific task, which they fulfilled admirably.
 
j_garcia

j_garcia

Audioholic Jedi
I think they're trying to balance out the isobaric design with the built in PEQ for the bass drivers: this is their fix for that trade off. The amps seemed overly powerful, but they are rated that high because they know they needed enough power to achieve output due to the design. The amp looks pretty small though. Midbass driver is closed back because it shares air space with one of the large bass drivers.
 
Steve81

Steve81

Audioholics Five-0
Here's another shot of the rear of the speaker. Looks open to me...
mesh2.jpg
 
Steve81

Steve81

Audioholics Five-0
Also taking a closer look at the bottom of the speaker, it appears to be sealed, not ported. Not sure what the circular hole at the bottom is, but it wouldn't make much of a port either way.

cab bottom.jpg
 
j_garcia

j_garcia

Audioholic Jedi
Port looks to be to the front, but the opening at the bottom does appear to be open to outside as well.

Yes, with that rear shot, it is definitely open.
 
B

bsf

Audioholic
$10-40k? Built in room correction for the woofers sounds like a nice capability, but that's a lot of dough. Is there still a big market for cost is no object level speakers these days?
No... A very small portion of the population are willing to spend the money on these.
 
Steve81

Steve81

Audioholics Five-0
Port looks to be to the front, but the opening at the bottom does appear to be open to outside as well.
Not seeing anything resembling a port on the front (or rear). IMHO, sealed would make the most sense with what we know, i.e. the relatively compact cabinet for a claimed extension of 16Hz. With the built in DSP, it's not overly complicated to boost the low end assuming a sealed alignment. Given that a pair possesses 8x8" drivers (roughly equivalent to a 21" driver in Sd) and 2.8kW of amplification, one would imagine they'd be able to put out a fair amount of low end.

pdigm.jpg
 
3db

3db

Audioholic Slumlord
At first glance I'm not over impressed.

The speaker appears to be a coupled cavity isobarik with the sealed cavity at the rear and the front ported cavity at the front, with the port at the bottom.

So right away you have sacrificed half the amp power in the bass.
You said that too about the Paradigm Seismic subs and it turns out you were incorrect about that sub's prodigious bass output. Just sayin.
 
j_garcia

j_garcia

Audioholic Jedi
Not seeing anything resembling a port on the front (or rear). IMHO, sealed would make the most sense with what we know, i.e. the relatively compact cabinet for a claimed extension of 16Hz. With the built in DSP, it's not overly complicated to boost the low end assuming a sealed alignment. Given that a pair possesses 8x8" drivers (roughly equivalent to a 21" driver in Sd) and 2.8kW of amplification, one would imagine they'd be able to put out a fair amount of low end.

View attachment 17489
So it has no grille? Something is attached to the front, so what looks like a port in the cutaway in the closer view it looks like an attachment for that baffle only. And yes, on the bottom it does look like the open hole is not connected to the chambers, so probably sealed.
 
S

shadyJ

Speaker of the House
Staff member
While not my idea of a money-no-object speaker, I definitely would not mind owning a pair. They look terrific too. Looks like they will be bringing a pair to Axpona, I am looking forward to giving these things a listen.
 
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