Ask questions to Audio insider Sir Terrence

[Sir Terrence]

Originally Posted by Neo65

Sir Terrence,

I'm glad you speak well of the paradigms. Back when I was a starving grad student with a bad habit of wasting hard earned T.A. money, I was big on CDs and LDs. I spent what was then a god awful amount of money on a pair of Paradigm monitor 7 series speakers. Years layer, gainfully employed I bought two more pairs of identical speaker and setup a 5 speaker config because I was hooked on dolby pro logic and wanted identical sound from all sources. Used to rotate the center channel with the spare every 3 months. Stopped that years ago.

My questions :

(1) Are the Paradigm monitor 7 speakers considered wide dispersion or controlled dispersion speakers?

I believe the Monitor 7's have a waveguide surrounding the tweeter. That would make it a controlled dispersion speaker.

(2) I am considering new speakers to upgrade to, what would be comparable to these and still be priced reasonably. (At various price levels)

I would look into the Klipsch Reference Line. Excellent speakers, and a far cry from the tinny blatty sound of horns of old.

M&K speakers sound excellent for both music and movies. You will found this brand in quite a few post production facilities all over Hollywood, and at Lucasfilm as well.

At the upper end, I love Thiel new CS-3.7 and his entire line of speakers.

The bargain versus perfomance champ is easily Vandersteen line of speakers. They have two feature that are a must for me, and what is found on my own personal reference speakers. They are phase and frequency correct. IMO that is a pretty important thing for speakers.

(3) I am also trying to clean up a main floor 2nd HT in a 20'x20' room used as an occasional game room and sometime theatre. Current 5.1 speakers are entry level Jamo, but I'm considering in wall (behind drywall) hidden speakers. Is this a bad idea or is this worth considering? Note this room has hardwood floor and is open to the rest of the house, meaning the acoustic properties are not that great, are there any in wall speakers that will sound reasonable or is that just not possible?

I have never been a lover of in wall speakers until I came across the Niles stagefront series. The subwoofer in that series will churn you guts to liquid.

If properly done, in wall speakers can sound good, and the fact they are in walls does not hurt asthetics. The hardwood floors are going to be a problem for any speaker installed in that room, but if that is not your critical listening space, it probably doesn't matter much.