Paradigm System 8 Home Theater Speaker System Page 2

The slim Monitor 11 is not only a three-way design but has - count 'em! - three woofers. The center speaker's trapezoidal cabinet helps to aim it at the listening position from atop a TV. The ADP-370 surround is a dipole radiator - the grille cloth on its "front" is a dummy. Two of the top edges of the PW-2200 subwoofer are attractively beveled. Its front-firing 12-inch plastic cone is vented on the rear by what is perhaps the largest-diameter port I have ever seen (5 inches across).

Installation posed no technical challenges, just muscular ones. I first dropped the cabinets into approximately correct positions, placing the center speaker on top of my TV and the surrounds on speaker stands; when I was done, all the tweeters were at or near my seated ear level. Then I wired everything up, connecting my receiver's amplifier outputs to the five main speakers and its line-level LFE (low-frequency effects) output to the sub. I set the receiver's bass management for a "large" front L/R pair and "small" speakers elsewhere.

Wiring completed, I powered up and started tweaking. The first thing I noticed was that the Monitor 11 casts a pretty fierce flux field (it's not magnetically shielded, though shielding is available as a $40 option). To avoid visual distortion on my direct-view TV, I had to move each tower about 6 feet away from the screen. The resulting 15-foot spread was a little wide for my room's layout, but acceptable.


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