Paradigm Special Edition Speaker System (The Perfect Vision 86)

Greater Than The Sum Of Its Parts

Look further if: you’re a connoisseur of treble detail and refinement and are therefore a fan of ultra-responsive and revealing tweeters. While the Special Edition’s aluminum dome tweeter is very good, it can’t quite match the standards set by Paradigm’s higher-end Signature-series Beryllium tweeters. In practice, this means that the higher up the frequency spectrum you climb, the less sophisticated the Special Edition sounds, so that you’ll miss out on some of the very high frequency detail and the sense of “air” surrounding instruments that you would hear in Paradigm’s top-end models. 

Ratings (relative to comparably-priced surround speaker systems)

• Transparency and Focus: 10
  
• Imaging and Soundstaging: 10
  
• Tonal Balance: 9 Dynamics: 9
  
• Bass Extension: 8
  
• Bass Pitch Definition: 8
  
• Bass Dynamics: 9
  
• Value: 10

FEATURES 

Special Edition SE 3, SE 1, and SE Center speaker system highlights:

• All models share 1-inch G-PAL(Gold-Anodized Pure-Aluminum) dome tweeters with ferro-fluid damping and cooling, and with GRIP (Glass-Reinforced Injection-Molded Polymer) frames that double as waveguides. Note, please, that the manuals supplied with early SE production units state that the speakers used Monitor-type titanium tweeters, which is not the case. In fact, the SE’s use higher-end Studio-type G-PAL drivers.
• The SE 3 and SE 1 models share 5 ½-inch S-PAL (Satin-Anodized Pure Aluminum) mid-bass drivers with solid, satin-anodized aluminum phase plugs, and GRIP (Glass-Reinforced Injection-Molded Polymer) frames. The SE Center uses a similarly constructed, but smaller diameter, 3 ½-inch S-PAL midrange driver with ferro-fluid damping and cooling.
• The SE 3 and SE Center models use pairs of 5 ½-inch mineral-filled polypropylene bass drivers with 1-inch voice coils, Santoprene surrounds, and GRIP (Glass-Reinforced Injection-Molded Polymer) frames.
• All three Special Edition models feature bass reflex enclosures with “Reference quality” cabinets offered in two finishes: rosenut and black gloss. Note that manuals supplied with early production SE units state that a white gloss option is available, which is not the case.

Special Edition SE Subwoofer highlights:

• 10-inch woofer with CAP (Carbon/Aramid-Fiber Polypropylene) driver cone.
• 300-watt Class D amplifier.
• Paradigm proprietary DSP circuit with USB port for connectivity to Paradigm’s optional PBK-1 Perfect Bass Kit.
• Distinctive bass reflex enclosure “converts to down- or forward-firing driver orientation” via a clever set of repositionable legs. Cabinet finishes are the same as those offered for the SE 3, SE 1, and SE Center models.

SONIC CHARACTER

To give you a useful “character sketch” of the Special Edition system, let me highly several of its most noteworthy sonic qualities.

Neutral Tonal Balance: Paradigm speaker systems have long been characterized by their natural, neutral tonal balance—the result of accurate and well-balanced frequency response, and the Special Edition system is no exception. When a system gets rid of obvious colorations, as the Special Edition does, it conveys a certain relaxed, ready-for-anything quality that invites you to listen to whatever content your heart desires (this in contrast to more colored systems that dictate terms vis-à-vis types of material they can or cannot handle well).

One point to note, however, is that the SE 3 floorstanders, while offering surprisingly good dynamic punch, are not the last word in bass extension, so that you will definitely want to buy this system with its matching subwoofer to help and weight and depth in the lowest two octaves of the audio spectrum.

Luxury Liner-Grade Midrange: As noted above, part of the “magic” of this system is that its midrange qualities sound like those of a far more expensive speaker system, which, in fact, is precisely the case. What you get, here, is midrange performance that comes surprisingly close to that of Paradigm’s roughly twice as expensive Reference Studio v.5 system (as reviewed in Playback 18). In practice, this means that midrange frequencies (which convey most of the sonic information in music and in movie soundtracks) sound—through the Special Edition system—open, effortless, and transparent, and are chockfull of dynamic and textural nuances. There’s a pleasingly natural and almost “organic” quality about the SEs’ mids, too, so that you never have that annoying sense of listening to movies or music through the sonic equivalent of an electron-scanning microscope.