Energy Con. C-5 vs Paradigm Monitor 7...

[htfan14]

I'm only upgrading the centre and mains, have 4 Polk r15's doing the job for surrounds and a 10" velodyne for a sub. All driven by a Denon 3802. Curious, someone here mentioned they would not recomend the Energy Veritas line, any reasons why as I was under the impresion they are quite good. I have only had 1 listen to them though on a expensive Arcam system. (very detailed and loud with good bass)
I will have a closer look at the C-3's as well.

[kexodusc]

Take recommendations and warnings with a grain of salt. I've had cheaper speakers that served me faithfully for years prior to the 3 setups I have now. At the time I knew what else was out there, heard some incredible (and expensive) speakers, but went with what I felt maximized my budget. I had some old Wharfedale Diamond (II's I think) that I still get teary-eyed over when I think about them...worked great in my dorm-room.
Some people graduate into more expensive product lines and forget what lesser product lines should sound like for their price. And every listener has a different preference for sound characteristics too, if that wasn't the case and there was one universal, truly superior speaker, there'd be far fewer brands to chose from.

[Woochifer]

First, A big company can buy OEM speakers for far less than you or I can. Societies operate on a global scale by buying from other coountries things that they can not make as efficiently or simply can't make period due to cost. Making an In hous driver or buying off the shelf has no inherant advantage unless whichever way you go you are making a superior product - or more than likely can increase profit margin.

In interviews I've read, Paradigm officials said that their OEM vendors could not manufacture the voice coils and driver components within the tolerances that they specified without bumping up the price outside their target market, so they began manufacturing their own drivers. At one point, they did outsource their driver manufacturing, but as their production volume increased, their economy of scale made in-house fabrication more feasible. Plus, it allows them to more quickly test new designs and ramp up production when new products are released.

Only the top end models of the AN E has the Alnico magnet and rest assured it is not the one that was in some 20 year old JBL. Audio note is a proponant of a lot of materials that some dislike, foam surrounds and paper woofers(Vifa or not it's not Kevlar). Then again musically Kevlar has issues with breakup frequencies as does Polypropolyne though Scanspeak has ONE Kevlar driver that is supposed to be excellent...B&W does not have that driver however. the trad-off with foam is that it deteriotes faster but it's a trade-off Peter has made - then again it costs next to nothing to re-foam them anyway. And assuming you're hous is not 100 degrees all the time or -20 you should be fine between 10-40 years. Kevlar may last 100 but I doubt I'd care by then. Hell since there are so many happy original Snell owners around I think they're a pretty safe bet to last since all the materials are much better than the original Snells. Some of their preamp tubes are gauranteed for 11 years 24 hour a day duration or something like a 100,000hours

It seems that alnico magnets are making a comeback of sorts, but I don't know if the ones being made today are any less susceptible to losing their magnetism with age or deteriorating under high loads than their predecessors. The cost and the long-term durability have been the tradeoff with using alnico drivers.

Adire Audio also uses foam surrounds and a Kevlar/paper blend in its subwoofer drivers. Their white papers state that foam was used because rubber and other materials did not allow for the long throws they wanted in their Shiva and Tempest drivers. They indicate that the foam surround should last 10 years. The other considerations like using a stamped basket rather than a forged one were cost/performance driven.

P.S. Car sales are down across the board, so it's not just GM that's hurting.

[ryewoods]

In interviews I've read, Paradigm officials said that their OEM vendors could not manufacture the voice coils and driver components within the tolerances that they specified without bumping up the price outside their target market, so they began manufacturing their own drivers. At one point, they did outsource their driver manufacturing, but as their production volume increased, their economy of scale made in-house fabrication more feasible. Plus, it allows them to more quickly test new designs and ramp up production when new products are released.

I don't want to doubt what the Paradigm official stated, but there are many companies that use vendors to manufacture their drivers and still keep costs reasonable. Take a look at the Vienna Acoustics Haydn, ACI Emerald, Norh, and StudioLab speakers.

It wasn't even the *potentially* inexpensive drivers Paradigm uses that bugs me. Many companies use inexpensive drivers and make them sound phenomenal. What bugged me was the seeming lack of quality in their crossover design and cabinetry. Particle board instead of MDF, and 20 ga inductors and cheap electrolytic capacitors are going to hinder the performance of any speakers.

[RGA]

Well and what a Paradigm official says will ALWAYS put their decision into the best possible light. It's not like their going to say well the OEM costs more and while it's vastly superior to our driver we want to increase profit margin 20% so we're going to make our own inferior crap. Not saying this is the case, but plenty pf speakers use off the sheldf drivers that sound for the same money better than what Paradigm puts out. My speakers are cheaper even at full US retail LIST than the Studio 100 and there is no comparison IMO that the AN K far outclasses the 100...but oh well, they're uglier and not advertised to the hilt.

I like the kit idea because you get to choose the quality of componants. I use AN as an example because i know it better, but there are several levels where the consumer buys the same general design of box but decides on what they want internally. Which also, BTW, means you can upgrade your speakers at a later date. So you buy the basic AN K, J or E and you can upgrade the crossover, capacitors, drivers, connectors, wiring etc. The basic box is not entirely the same as buying the top end unit to start with but still it'll be close. AN is slightly more anal because they need to match the crossover and driver with the box and they actually do it for every single speaker that leaves - not one in every 1000 speakers on an assembly line...Sugden does the same incidentally as do a number of others, Bryston used to do it they still may.

As you move up levels you get silver wiring, black gate caps, a revamped corssover, better drivers.

For instance my AN K has rubber surrounds the new models have foam as Peter prefers foam. When it comes time for me to upgrade I may make the move to foam.

DITers of course can have th enjoyment of trying their own upgrades and if they know the designs and other people's success stories they can try em out. Theoretically you can do that with any speaker. However, you need the design details of the cabinetry and how certain drivers ae going to behave with the other drivers.

Beginners are probably better suited to create a Bottlehead tube preamp for $150.00 that if they screw-up is not too big a financial hit, rather than expensive speakers until they get better at building...It sure would be fun and when i get some time after school I think I'll try some building.

[Woochifer]

Well and what a Paradigm official says will ALWAYS put their decision into the best possible light. It's not like their going to say well the OEM costs more and while it's vastly superior to our driver we want to increase profit margin 20% so we're going to make our own inferior crap. Not saying this is the case, but plenty pf speakers use off the sheldf drivers that sound for the same money better than what Paradigm puts out. My speakers are cheaper even at full US retail LIST than the Studio 100 and there is no comparison IMO that the AN K far outclasses the 100...but oh well, they're uglier and not advertised to the hilt.

Not saying this is the case? Really now? You sure spout off quite a few implications there for someone who doesn't necessarily believe that it's true.

Not familiar enough with the ANs, but please. EVERY speaker designer, including Peter Qvortrup, is going to phrase their philosophy in such a way that canonizes their particular way of doing business. The thing about Paradigm is that they are a high enough volume company such that vertical integration makes sense for their business plan and way of developing products. Because of their high volume, they have the OPTION of making their own drivers, smaller players don't. Keep in mind that Dynaudio was an OEM driver supplier for years, until their speakers started selling well enough for them to drop the OEM part of the business and maintain their driver fabrication exclusively for their own speakers.

And it's not like most speaker manufacturers just buy off the shelf drivers and start building speakers. The outsourcing frequently involves either custom built drivers or modified versions of existing designs. Vandersteen uses Vifa drivers, but it's not like you can just scan through a parts catalog and order one of them.

[RGA]

Wooch

The result is in the sound. I could care less whether a company buys off the shelf drivers or builds their own. There is simply no inherent advantage either way unless one knows what they're doing. Totem used to buy all of their drivers from Dynaudio and they made first rate speakers. Now that they can no longer buy the rivers they have come up with an alternative which they claim is a superior driver (whch is convenient) and the high end dealers after hearing them are dropping them here.

There is no need to re-invent the wheel. SEAS, Scanspeak Vifa among others are noted for building the best speaker drivers available. This however does not mean you can go out and stick em in a box and suddenly you have great speakers.

On another forum Legacy was being ripped to shreds for incompetant designs by people more technically savy that I regarding flush mounting and midrange phase problems that while they use very high end drivers get mixed assessments. (some love em some hate em - what else is new).

Audio Note is not a huge company and Peter sold off his prior BIG company because it was too big to manage the way he wanted it. (Audible Innovations or Audible illusions I can't remember which but the company is stil around).

Every company comes out with "our way is best" terminology and the one you buy is the one you buy. Audio Note in many circles will be written off simply because they're proponants of SET amps and turntables. I would too if I had read about them before I heard them I must admit. But hey if a Set amp can produce wall shaking bass and prestine extended highs with articulation in the midband and a turntable can sound that good well you're forced to re-think what people tell you about SETs and turntables as well no they can actually produce bass and no they don't roll off highs. Difference is they might actually know how to build a proper set and the other guy may not.

Back to Paradigm...my comments are an illustration not an accusation that not everything the owner said should be bought into 100% just as I don't buy into everything Qvortrup says, though much of it makes sense does not make it right just something, "Compare by Contrast," that I had not considered before but is just as reasonable if not more so than other evaluation processes. When a conglomorate speaker maker changes their buying decisions it will most likely be a financial reason not one related to improving the product. BOTH of course COULD happen but it will ALWAYS be a financial reason first unless the speaker maker is losing piles of business and MUST improve or go under. Since I'm not a fan of their treble response generally my conclusion would be different from an owner's view. I have not heard their old designs so I can't say...but the Matrix series from B&W as an example is better IMO to the newer more marketed and "updated" Nautilus line. It's still good but a step backward in my and many B&W followers and owners' minds. Just because B&W claims it's better and produces a white paper and external reviews and "hype" does not produce a better speaker in all cases.

AN's approach will drive the price up because of the fact that they acquire and work to improve already made products. He bought several of the best of designs from Planars elecrostats, boxed designs ToneArms, Turntables, Carts etc found the best, in his opinion basic designs, and re-worked them to take them to the next level. He filtered through them and came down to the final choices. Snell, for speakers, of course is a huge name in the industry and the original Snell were the ones that put Peter Snell on the map and the only ones he actually designed...the rest is corporate profit making and inferior speakers at higher prices from beancounters.

Audio Note has made their stance and written in detail - And considering that their best speaker is still based of a Snell E and runs off of "out of time" SET amps and have a weird cd player based off the original and horrible Cd players with zero times oversampling...that system I heard despite all of that was better than the BEST B&W speaker system with the BEST Classe amplifiers money can buy...The Model Nautilus "snail" shaped speaker with those 8 big classe Monoblocks and cd player at a system cost of more than double. And that showed me that with all the technical savy and testing that B&W has at their disposal(the biggest high end speaker maker in the world) and all the engineers that Math changes every year still, IMO, didn't beat, basically, a suped up, ugly square box Snell from the 70s. Yes the B&W will probably extend to 100khz which might be great if I could hear past 20 and it might extend to 2hz which would be nice if i could hear below 20hz which is more likely I can't below 30hz anyway.

And Snell isn't the only one from the 70s. Quad still has diehard support as does Magnepan and probably a dozen others. As does B&W and of course Paradigm. I was the biggest B&W supporter around this forum and for a long time...but after hearing several of the lesser known companies over the last couple of years, B&W has dropped several pegs especially on their higher end models IMO. And I really want to hear the Zero quasi transmission line floorstanding speakers from AN at under 1kUS that are supposedly outstanding.

[htfan14]

I went the extreme cheapy route for this upgrade. Got a pair of Energy xl26's and a C-C1 centre. After the trade for my xl25's and centre, only out of pocket $350. Decided to go this route because of the good trade value and I get 100%value for these speaks if I trade them in within a year. A noticable upgrade in bass and clarity and leaves me in a great position to get some good speakers next boxing day. Guess I have almost a year to scout them :-).