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Well, just in case you weren’t: A. at the condo the day I bought them (JasonC) or B. demanding a live update (teewee), the new item was in fact, the Cinema 220s. The name of the press event was originally chosen for the mac reference in an attempt to divert attention, but anyhow, the clues all kinda pointed to the speakers. Anyway, without further ado, the Paradigm Cinema 220 L/C/R speaker.

Right out of the box, with bad placement and no configuring at all, they sound rather tinny. This was a far cry from being blown away by Michael Buble’s Everything at the store. I had an idea of how they should sound and this wasn’t it. This wasn’t even close. This was like playing some KOSS computer speakers with the “DOUBLE BASS” button on the front, the button being off. I chalked it up to needing to “break in”, or “burn in” the speakers as we are so often led to believe. After a day of burning them in (which an audioholics article has actually proven to be useless) they weren’t much better.

I read more articles about setting up systems, speaker frequency response and crossover settings (oh my!), and it turns out that I was putting too much of the audio load on the 220s and not enough on the subwoofer. Now, with the size of these speakers (especially compared to the computer speaker size that we’re pretty used to), I was under the impression that they would carry most of the load and the sub would just be there for LFE (low-frequency effect). I was wrong, it turns out that these Paradigms have even less frequency response than the original Onkyos’ (claimed response) and so need even more help from the subwoofer.

The 220s frequency response is rated at 115Hz-20kHz +/- 2dB. The Onkyos are rated 60-50kHz without a dB rating or somesuch nonsense. I originally had the receiver’s crossover set to 80 Hz, which meant that I was actually sending the 80-115Hz range of frequencies to the Paradigms, which they couldn’t reproduce (or at least not well). After learning this, I set the receiver crossover to 120Hz and now the sound is a lot more full, and fairly tolerable.

However, due to not having an Audyssey microphone for the automatic speaker calibration that the Onkyo receiver is capable of, and also no real idea on how to set the equalizer manually.. I’m stuck with a sound which has the range, but sounds pretty flat and not rounded and “warm”, if you would. They’re far and away better than the Onkyos, especially off axis, but I’m fairly confident they haven’t reached their true potential as of yet.

My next step is to somehow get a hold of an audyssey microphone and calibrate the system properly. While first impressions of the 220s leave me happy with the purchase, or more accurately, the potential of the purchase, I have to reserve my full judgment until after the calibration.

The downside so far? The speakers have only too clearly revealed the weaknesses in the rest of the system.. which usually leads to one thing. Or many.