Keith from Canada
01-19-2004, 01:00 PM
I recently purchased a system for a friend of the family who wanted to have music in two rooms (kitchen and living room) and a home theater in a third (family room). After some auditioning, we went with Paradigm Atom for the front and rear channels of the home theater, along with the matching Paradigm center speaker and the 10" Paradigm sub. For the living room, she added two additional Atoms and for the kitchen, she went with the stereo in-ceiling speaker mounted on her wall. The center-piece of the system was a Denon AVR-1603 receiver. The total cost of this system (including speaker wire, stands, and the volume switches for the two non-HT rooms) came to just under $2k Canadian.
In terms of installation, we ran the kitchen in-wall (1) and living room Atoms (2) off of the receivers B-channel and used some Paradigm wall switches (with impedence control) for volume control in the those rooms. We ran the theater speakers off of the A channel.
Much to my surprise, each of the rooms ran wonderfully! Even with both the in-wall and living room speakers running at the same time, the tiny Denon provided more than enough power to drive them to very loud levels. Run together, the entire main floor of the house was filled with music. In the HT room, the results were just as good. The tiny Atoms did a great job with both music and movies. In fact, my long-standing allegiance to PSB may have just switched over to Paradigm. I've built numerous HT systems using similar PSB speakers and have yet to be as happy with the results as I was with the Paradigms.
On a similar note, most of the systems I've built had Yamaha's as the receiver of choice (based almost solely on the cost difference between Yammy and Denon in Canada) however, since the Denon was being cleared out, it was actually cheaper than the Yammie this time. I must say that this particular Denon is superior to the Yamaha's that I've used in the past (all at similar price-points). It is easier to use (by far -- Yamaha has some of the worst remotes EVER made!) and the sound quality exceeds (to my ears at least) any of the previous Yamaha - PSB systems that I've built in the past.
In terms of installation, we ran the kitchen in-wall (1) and living room Atoms (2) off of the receivers B-channel and used some Paradigm wall switches (with impedence control) for volume control in the those rooms. We ran the theater speakers off of the A channel.
Much to my surprise, each of the rooms ran wonderfully! Even with both the in-wall and living room speakers running at the same time, the tiny Denon provided more than enough power to drive them to very loud levels. Run together, the entire main floor of the house was filled with music. In the HT room, the results were just as good. The tiny Atoms did a great job with both music and movies. In fact, my long-standing allegiance to PSB may have just switched over to Paradigm. I've built numerous HT systems using similar PSB speakers and have yet to be as happy with the results as I was with the Paradigms.
On a similar note, most of the systems I've built had Yamaha's as the receiver of choice (based almost solely on the cost difference between Yammy and Denon in Canada) however, since the Denon was being cleared out, it was actually cheaper than the Yammie this time. I must say that this particular Denon is superior to the Yamaha's that I've used in the past (all at similar price-points). It is easier to use (by far -- Yamaha has some of the worst remotes EVER made!) and the sound quality exceeds (to my ears at least) any of the previous Yamaha - PSB systems that I've built in the past.