 Paradigm
Reference Seismic 12 Subwoofer
They say you can never be too rich or
too thin. I certainly wouldn't know about either, but in the world of subwoofers, it is
undeniably true that you can never be too small.
Well, of course, you can be too small -- in fact,
most subwoofers are. Because of that, they lack sufficient bottom-end extension to justify
the name subwoofer. What I meant to say was, in the realm of subwoofers, one that
can actually output 20Hz can never be too small.
In fact, I know diehard sub fanatics who scorn anything
sensibly sized as not being "manly" enough. Don't tell them about the Paradigm
Reference Seismic 12 -- they'd rather believe their lying eyes than their ears. Anyway,
the Seismic 12 ($1700 USD) is too good to waste on the likes of them. But it's the
subwoofer the rest of us have been waiting for.
Inner harmonies
The Reference Seismic 12 is a compact (14.75"H by
14.25"W by 14.25"D), downfiring subwoofer with a 12" driver and two
10" passive radiators. The cabinet is handsome and sturdy -- an almost featureless
black cube (well, almost a cube) resting on deco-influenced feet.
That 12" driver employs a high-excursion, low-mass,
mineral-filled, copolymer polypropylene cone with ribs -- Paradigm calls them Resonance
Control Ribs (RCR) -- mated to an oversized, flexible surround. The voice-coil is a
3" bifilar (two windings), eight-layer jobbie on a high-temperature Apical former. It
sports dual spiders, dual suspensions, and AVS diecast heatsink and chassis. The magnet is
very high-tech -- it weighs 29 pounds and is computer-optimized, with
focused field geometry to generate, in Paradigm's words, "an enormous magnetic force
field while minimizing inductance distortion." The passive radiators, also
high-excursion designs, serve to extend the bass response and diminish distortion by
lowering cabinet resonances and flexion.
The Seismic 12's class-D amplifier is an interesting
design. Of course, class-D is known for its efficiency, and this tiny
pulse-width-modulated design generates 1200W RMS (4500W peak). Paradigm claims its PWM
power processor improves on conventional class-D designs by inherently rejecting
variations in the power supply. The amp's output stage is "direct-connected" to
the power line; this, Paradigm claims, provides maximum power.
The inputs are opto-coupled, which, Paradigm says, offers
better isolation and lower noise.
The Seismic 12's amplifier uses ultrafast diodes (Paradigm
defines ultrafast as "ten times faster than conventional slow built-in diodes
of the output MOSFETS") in its output stage, which, the company claims, increases
switching speed and efficiency -- and because the whole point of class-D amplification is
to maximize switching speed and efficiency, this is a very big deal.
Other notable features of the Seismic 12's amp section
include: a voice-coil temperature sensor that temporarily pots down the amplifier's output
if it senses the coil overheating; an amplifier temperature sensor, which does the same
for the amp; and short-circuit protection, which can react within 10µs.
No wonder it took Paradigm four years to develop this baby
-- it's packed with new technology.
The Seismic 12 offers a raft of input facilities and
accommodations on its rear panel. There are single-ended low-level input on RCA and
balanced input on XLR, although there's no internal crossover bypass, which would have
been a nice touch. As is the custom, there's auto-sensing turn-on with input (and auto off
after not receiving a signal), as well as a remote trigger input.
Naturally, there's an output level-trim control, which
allows you to balance the Seismic 12 with the other speakers in your system -- and there's
another trim for the sub’s high-pass filter, which does the same. A phase-alignment
control lets you sync the sub with the loudspeaker/room response -- another fairly common
feature.
However, the Seismic 12 has one very useful feature that is
not all that common: the Bass Contour, which switches the bass response from flat
(0dB), which is perfect for music reproduction, or up to a 6dB boost at 60Hz for
"more bass impact" for movie LFE response. Like many consumers, I use my system
for both movies (which do seem to benefit from bass emphasis) and music (which
doesn't, in my opinion), so I found that this simple acknowledgment of multi-use reality
greatly simplified the switch from one listening mode to the other. Bravo, Paradigm.
Music is the eye of the ear
I installed the Paradigm Reference Seismic 12 in my current
way-past-cool reference system: the T+A M-series stack (DVD820M
DVD player, PT820M preamp-tuner, DD820M 5.1 digital decoder-amplifier, PA820M power amp),
which fed my display system of SIM2 HT200 DMF projector
and Stewart Filmscreen GrayHawk screen. Loudspeakers were the Magnepan
MMG W/MMG Cs, which I chose to challenge the Paradigm's integration abilities (and
because they were already set up).
I said earlier that I wish the Seismic 12 had a filter
bypass, but I can't say I had any problems integrating the sub into my reference system or
my new HT room. Granted, I had to work a little to get it properly dialed in, but no more
so than with any other sub capable of producing the sort of low bass the Paradigm puts
out. In fact, the sub's small size made it even easier to employ the old trick of
"set the woofer up in the listening position and prowl the room looking for good
sound" -- easier on my back, at least.
I ended up with the sub about 4’ along the front wall
from the right side wall, about 1’ from the center-channel speaker's location. In
that position, the Paradigm produced tuneful, nonlocalized bass for music, and
wall-flexing effects bass for HT blockbusters.
The wise musicians are those who play what they can
master
Despite the Seismic 12's small footprint, it was a monster
subwoofer when it came to producing deep, deep, deep bass. I was far more impressed by its
ability to "disappear" when augmenting musical programs, but I'm not above
collapsing into pleased giggle fits when reproducing the subterranean rumbles of The
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or some of the effects from the Battle of Minas
Tirith in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
There's a reason we love these big set-pieces and their
larger-than-life soundtracks: They take us out of reality and immerse us in the fantasy of
the movies. The Seismic 12 did this in a big way. Well, it did it big in a small
footprint, but you get the (ahem) picture.
I'd never heard such bass extension with so little slop.
The Seismic 12 got the scale of the big effects without letting them get out of hand. The
last time I had a system that performed that particular balancing act so well, I had to
use two M&K MX-150 THX woofers, each measuring 23"H by 15.25"W by
19.625"D -- and it took two days of high-tech measurement to get 'em sounding their
best. But that was nearly seven years ago, and time and subwoofer technology have marched
on; even so, getting that level of performance out of a single 14" cube is pretty
amazing, even at $1700 a pop.
The bass from the Seismic 12 was good enough to make me
revisit some of my favorite "big-sounding" movies. Crimson Tide was, if
anything, even tighter and more percussive than I’d remembered (which is saying a
lot). The low synth atmospherics that underline Hannibal Lecter's menace in The Silence
of the Lambs seemed even more ominous than I’d remembered them -- they were even
harder to locate, seeming to just roll through my listening room with no apparent source.
(I'm not sure my next-door neighbor would agree; next time, I'll try that
particular experiment when he's at work.)
I even pulled out a few cheap cinematic thrills so
déclassé that I won't even confess to owning them. Yup, they, too, sounded about
as good as I've heard them. (And stop smirking -- five’ll getcha ten that you
own 'em too -- even if they aren't out on your DVD shelves.)
You are the music while the music lasts
However, as we used to say back in the 1960s, unreality is
easy; it's the real thing that's hard to fake. This time, of course, I'm talking about
music -- and that's where the Seismic 12 really impressed me.
That sounds as though I'm being catty about home-theater
special effects, but I'm not. All HT effects have to be is convincing -- after all,
I have no idea what a depth charge sounds like, or a medieval siege weapon, or even a
bomb. If it sounds real, I'm pretty accepting. Heck, I'd probably dismiss the sound
of a real bomb because it didn't sound like they do in the movies.
But music is something I have a reference for. I listen to
a lot of it, and I'm picky about it -- critical, even. And most subwoofers these days just
don't sound natural when reproducing music. I'm not even sure how much I should fault them
for it, because many subwoofer makers have stopped designing subs for music -- it's the
effects they want a sub to handle, because that's why people buy them.
Audiophiles like -- well, like me -- haven't helped
this situation. We talk about the importance of the midrange, and we rave over extended
high frequencies and overtone production, all the while forgiving speaker systems for
inadequate bass extension. But the fact is that music needs its foundation -- nothing
sounds less finished than, say, a fugue without a ground, or R&B without its fatback
bottom. So why do we forgive speaker systems that can't deliver the bottommost octave? I
suspect its because they're so hard to get right. Sometimes it's easier to do without --
and our brains seem to do an excellent job of filling in the missing bass information.
With the Seismic 12, I didn’t have to fill in anything.
It got down there almost to the lowest notes you'll ever need to reproduce. (The
few it won't handle don't occur all that frequently, so you probably won’t miss
them.) But the best thing about the Seismic 12 was that it was agile and fast enough that
it didn't drag -- it could keep up with my primary speakers no matter how transparent and
nimble they were. It may be a beast, but it's an articulate beast.
I use Jerome Harris' Rendezvous [CD, Stereophile
STPH013-2] as a reference a lot -- partially because I coproduced it, and became intimate
with its sound in the recording sessions and the months of mastering that followed. There
aren't many recordings I know more intimately.
But a funny thing happened after we'd mastered the
recording -- I became convinced that we'd mixed Jerome's Taylor acoustic bass guitar too
far down in the mix. It was a recording of a band led by its composer-bassist;
shouldn't it sound, well, deep?
Jerome could be more prominent in the mix -- but, over the
years, I’ve noticed that the better balanced my entire system is, the more Jerome's
bass takes center stage. Rendezvous will never sound like a bass and four
supporting musicians (at least not on a system that's playing what's actually on the CD),
but with a system like the Dynaudio Temptations -- or one featuring the Paradigm Seismic
12 -- that Taylor bass is in no way a background instrument. No sir -- the Seismic
12 let me hear the woody, living sound of the hollow-body Taylor, not to mention the pop
of Jerome's fingers on the strings and the bloom of his amp in Blue Heaven Studios.
Suddenly, the JH Quintet was a band led by a bass player -- and I don't mean simply that
he sounds louder and lower.
I mean that Harris is out in front of the band rhythmically
as well. A lot of other speakers and subs can handle the tones as well as the Seismic 12,
but where it really shone was in its ability to get the pace of the bass right -- and
that's an area where Rendezvous is a veritable bear of a record. Jerome
isn't a lay-back-and-play-the-changes bass player -- he pushes the band along with his
rhythm and syncopation, he darts into the beat, lags back to create tension, and locks
into and supports the phenomenal drumming of Billy Drummond. In other words, he's a
virtuoso who's capable of doing whatever it takes to give a song what it needs to live and
breathe. The Seismic 12 made that virtuosity apparent as very few subwoofers I have heard
can do.
Part of this musicality, if you will, is the way the sub
never sounded heavy, or deeper than it needed to. It could go deep, of course, but it
didn't sound deep on most music. It simply sounded right.
You want deep? Play Leonard Bernstein’s last recording
of Mahler’s Third [CD, Deutsche Grammophon 427 328] and marvel at the sound of the
NYP in full forte. It'll roll over you like a Liebherr T 282B -- but only as much as the score (and Lenny) call for,
which is plenty. Play Ravel's Pavane pour une infante défunte [CD, DG 469 628],
however, and you'll hear no more deep bass than the score and the hall support -- which is
quite a different texture.
This is, of course, how subwoofers are supposed to work --
and rarely do.
The ear should remain the first and last court of appeal
The Paradigm Reference Seismic 12 subwoofer is small and
handsome, but it's about as serious as a subwoofer can get. It's got the deep-bass
extension of a much larger sub, but it's easier to place in a room and integrate into a
loudspeaker system than most large subs. At $1700, it's not for the light of budget, but
big-speaker performance in a small package isn't an easy feat to pull off. Paradigm
tackles it with cutting-edge technology, and that has never come cheap. But as attractive
as I found the Seismic 12's size and bass extension, it was the sub’s sheer,
unrelenting musicality that captivated me -- with every recording I played on it.
Does it have shortcomings? I'm sure I could have made it
sound ugly through sheer abuse or poor setup, but it performed as well as any subwoofer I
have ever had in my system, including models that cost four times as much. Those subs,
it’s true, did actually measure a few Hz lower in the lab, but I'm not sure that
translated into performance benefits worth the extra money.
No, for the real world -- or what passes for it around my
house -- the Paradigm Reference Seismic 12 is the subwoofer to reckon with. If
you're looking for deep bass and great musical performance, it's the subwoofer the other
guys will have to beat -- and that's very bad news for them.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhometheater.com
Paradigm Reference Seismic 12 Subwoofer
Price: $1700 USD.
Warranty: Three years parts and labor.
Paradigm Electronics, Inc.
205 Annagem Blvd.
Mississauga, ON L5T 2V1 Canada
Phone: (905) 564-1994
Fax: (905) 564-8726
Website: www.paradigm.com
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