Surround Sound Speaker Systems

Paradigm Mini-Monitor 5.1 Speaker System

Setup

My listening room has gone through a myriad of changes over the last year, moving from a rather cozy condo in uptown Toronto temporarily into a finished basement west of the city. Currently, and more permanently, my listening is situated in my finished basement, which is open at one end up to the second floor, a distance of nearly 30 feet. The ceilings in the basement are nearly nine feet, and it is a medium sized (9'x14') rectangular room. I positioned the Mini Monitors on a pair of stands provided by Paradigm. The center channel was placed just off the floor, tilted upward toward the listening position. The front wall acts temporarily, until I get the projection screen mounted again, as the screen for the projector so the center channel could not be mounted higher or it would interfere with the picture. I mounted the surrounds around 6 ½ feet high in line with the listening position. The biggest room limitation is the presence of a bulkhead in rather close proximity to the surrounds. I am not certain how much the additional and early reflections off the bulkhead affected the performance of the dipoles. The subwoofer was positioned at the front left of the room. I set the relative position and gain of the speakers using the automated setup program on my receiver, which is fairly accurate except for the subwoofer settings which were adjusted afterwards. The receiver compensates for room effects, and attempts to provide a flat response for the system. As noted previously, I was unable to test the Perfect Bass Kit as I did not have access to a suitable PC capable of running the software package.

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