The 20's Sound
I was floored, absolutely floored from the very first note. What clarity. What depth. What sublimity! What a wanton freedom from anything which could be construed as objectionable.
In my acoustically treated room there was none of the "spice" which so many (including myself) have over the years reported on Paradigm speakers, further lending credibility to my theory that Paradigm speakers are properly neutral and that, by and large, it is our listening rooms that cause much of our system's tonality.
The critical midrange was remarkably unbiased, allowing such elements as female vocals a level of believability that left me breathless. Albums I remembered as being less than stellar in their sound now struck me as wholly transparent. Harmonies previously buried in the mix were now discernable without as much effort. "Revealing" does not seem strong enough a word.
For the majority of the review, we ran the 20s full range. On several occasions I had to verify, and re-verify, that the configuration was correct, i.e., that the subwoofer was off. Flabbergasted, I dug out the sine wave sweeps and nearly wept openly as this relatively small speaker reached down with credibility to the 30s, defying the preconceived notions of what can be squeezed from a 7" driver. Yes, the bass is that deep, that latent. In fact, this is the best bass, both in terms of quality and quantity, that I have ever hear from a "bookshelf" speaker, including a few models costing more than twice as much. By and large, in the near field roll, I could be perfectly satisfied without a subwoofer. In larger rooms of course (or for irresponsible playback levels) some bottom end support is warranted.
For this one would ideally pass the output of a THX controller through a secondary 12dB/Oct filter, resulting in a 24/24 combination, a crossover scheme which would play beautifully into the Paradigm's amazing response below normal crossover frequencies. Realizing few would bother to seek out such a perfect splice, we found the 60 Hz setting in the THX controller provided the most "correct" results, at a slight cost of upper end LFE track information. In this configuration there seemed to be no limit to the Studio 20s headroom. Ridiculous output levels could not alter their neutral character.
Truly this is "a speaker for all seasons".
