Paradigm Export Monitor Speaker System Review

The Canadian-made Paradigm Export Monitor is a moderately sized two-way speaker system with an 8-inch woofer and a 1-inch soft-dome tweeter. The woofer, which operates in a vented enclosure, is assembled on a die-cast aluminum chassis and has a mineral-filled copolymer polypropylene cone, a Kapton high-temperature plastic voice-coil former, and a butyl surround.

The tweeter, which takes over at 2,000 Hz, has a laminated-textile dome and a high-temperature ferro-fluid-cooled voice coil on an aluminum former. The crossover from the woofer is a fourth-order (24-dB-per-octave) quasi-Butterworth type, using the natural rolloff of the woofer’s response to augment the inductive and capacitive elements of the crossover network.

According to the manufacturer, every production unit of the Export Monitor is matched to a reference system within 0.25 dB (it is not clear whether this figure refers to the system’s frequency response or its sensitivity). The cabinet is made of composite fiberboard with Medite front and rear baffles for improved overall damping and higher stiffness. The woofer is located at the center of the front baffle, with its port below and the tweeter above. The black cloth grille is retained by plastic snaps. The cabinet is covered with oak, walnut, or black-ash veneer on all surfaces except the front speaker board.

The multiway binding-post connectors, separate for the tweeter and woofer, are recessed into the rear panel of the cabinet. The two sets of terminals are normally joined by jumpers, but the Export Monitor can be operated as a bi-wired or bi-amplified system by removing the jumpers. In any case, the individual crossovers (for tweeter and woofer) are always present between the amplifier and the drivers.

The system’s specifications include an on-axis frequency response of 55 to 20,000 Hz ±2 dB, sensitivity of 88.5 dB, and a nominal impedance of 8 ohms. The cabinet measures 24 inches high, 10-3/4 inches wide, and 14 inches deep, and each speaker weighs 33 pounds. The Export Monitor is designed to be operated on matching stands, away from any room walls, and for best results the tweeters should be approximately at the listener’s ear level. Price: $790 a pair; stands, $120 a pair.

Lab Tests

Lacking the matching Paradigm stands, we used other available speaker stands to bring the tweeters nearly to the ear height of a seated listener. The room response of the speakers was impressively flat, within ±2 dB from 200 to 20,000 Hz. The output rose slightly at lower frequencies to a maximum of about 5 dB between 50 and 70 Hz in the composite curve, which was constructed by joining a close-miked woofer measurement to the averaged room response of the two speakers, corrected at high frequencies for the room-absorption characteristics. The overall composite response was an excellent ±4 dB from 20 to 20,000 Hz (the upper measurement limit in this test).

The quasi-anechoic FFT response plots from our IQS analysis system confirmed the uniformity of the output of the Paradigm speaker. On-axis, the output was flat within ±3 dB from 180 to 30,000 Hz. The response measured 45 degrees off-axis did not diverge significantly from the on-axis curve at frequencies below 8,000 to 10,000 Hz, indicating good horizontal dispersion.

The success of Paradigm’s efforts to preserve phase coherence over the audio range was demonstrated by the system’s group-delay variation, which was less than ±0.2 millisecond in the overall tweeter range from 2,000 to 28,000 Hz and much better than that, about ±0.02 ms, from 10,000 to 20,000 Hz.

The system’s impedance reached its minimum of 6.2 ohms from 110 to 140 Hz and its maximum of 35 ohms at 1,200 Hz. The sensitivity was 88 dB sound-pressure level (SPL) at 1 meter with a pink-noise input of 2.83 volts. With a drive level of 3.5 volts (equivalent to a 90-dB SPL), the woofer distortion was 3 to 4 percent from 60 to 100 Hz. The effective crossover to the port was at about 50 Hz, where the distortion was 2 percent, increasing to 5 percent at 30 Hz.

The Export Monitor was able to handle very large peak inputs without distortion or damage. At 100 Hz, the woofer cone began to rattle with a single-cycle input of 500 watts into its 6.5-ohm impedance. At 1,000 Hz, still in the woofer’s operating range, the amplifier clipped at 242 watts into its 31-ohm impedance before any distortion was audible.

Comments

The overall sound quality of the Paradigm Export Monitor speaker was characterized by balance and clarity. The common speaker aberration of an emphasized upper-bass response, which gives male voices a tubby, unnatural quality, was notably absent, and there was no obvious sign of an emphasis or lack of response in any other part of the audible range.

Comparisons with other speakers on hand revealed what appeared to be a slight crispness in the Export Monitor’s upper-midrange and treble output. When we checked our response measurements on the other speakers, it was apparent that their high-frequency output either sloped off gently or was shelved at a lower level than the woofers’ maximum output. If the overall response of the other speakers was assumed to be “correct,” the Paradigm’s sound could be considered slightly bright. But it would be equally justifiable to accept the response of the Export Monitor as “flat,” in which case the other speakers could be judged as soft sounding or perhaps somewhat lacking in high-frequency output.

This situation points up the virtually unsolvable problem of determining objectively what is the ideal speaker response. We found the Paradigm’s sound to be distinctly different from that of some of our previously favored speakers, though it was at least as enjoyable, and after a brief period of listening to it, the other speakers seemed a trifle dull sounding! This dichotomy between the perceived sound characters of two different speakers is one of the more fascinating aspects of loudspeaker performance, and since either type of response may be preferred by different listeners, or by the same listener for different program material, it is not advisable to be too dogmatic about the “correctness” of one or the other.

The Paradigm Export Monitor was a very smooth, natural-sounding speaker with good, if not exceptional, imaging properties. Its low-bass performance was at least adequate, and the middle and high ranges were exceptionally smooth and extended. Its overall well-balanced, unified sound was what we would expect, but do not always hear, from any speaker in this price range.

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