First Looks: Paradigm's Premium Wireless series of speakers
By
First looks at Paradigm’s Premium Wireless Series of speakers
Paradigm has long been known for quality speakers in the home audio space, and now it seems they’re ready to move into the multi-room audio streaming space too, with their first ever Premium Wireless Series. The series starts with three models: the PW 800 premium wireless speaker, the PW 600 compact premium wireless speaker, and the PW AMP premium wireless amplifier.
What’s unique about the system is that it uses DTS Play-Fi technology to stream high-resolution audio (HRA) in up to 24bit/192kHz losslessly over Wi-Fi to any number of connected speakers. DTS Play-Fi is an open platform, so you’ll be able to mix and match any of the products from the Premium Wireless Series with other DTS Play-Fi products. Got an existing pair of speakers that don’t have any wireless technology built in? Just hook them up to the PW AMP and they instantly become a set of DTS Play-Fi enabled wireless speakers.
Somehow, Paradigm has managed to fit a Class D Anthem amplifier inside the compact PW AMP, allowing it to power anything from bookshelf speakers to full floor-standing speakers. This makes it an excellent way to keep your equipment relevant as the PW AMP is able to handle high-resolution audio either from online music streaming services or your music devices whether they’re Android or iOS based, or a more traditional PC/laptop.
As is becoming a trend these days, every speaker unit from the system will also ship with its own calibration system, allowing you to precisely tune the acoustics for the specific room you install it in. Known as Anthem Room Correction (ARC), the system uses a calibration microphone that you place at your intended listening position while the speakers fire a series of sound waves to calibrate your system.
We were given a short demonstration of the system’s capabilities, with the track Perhaps Love by Jheena Lodwick played first in 320kbps encoding with the PW 600 bookshelf speakers. With this piece, the speakers delivered a pretty enjoyable rendition, with good naturalness to Jheena ‘s vocals and a nice warm timbre overall.
Switching over to the lossless version of the same track though, it became apparent that there was better clarity right from the start, while Jheena’s vocals seemed more forward than before. It certainly seemed as though the bass was a little rounder too.
Finally, the PW 800 was given a chance to show off its capabilities, and it certainly delivered. The PW 800 packs two 1-inch S-PAL dome tweeters and two 5-inch S-PAL woofers into a medium-sized speaker cabinet that measures just 17.8cm tall and 50.8cm wide. You might expect a smaller sound stage from a single-unit speaker, but the PW 800 seemed to be bristling with power, easily filling the room with sound. The track was exactly the same as before, but with better clarity in the trebles and a much wider soundstage than before.
Overall, it certainly was an impressive display from Paradigm, and it will be interesting to see what else joins the family. Hopefully there will be some lower priced options too, as the PW 600 and PW 800 retail for S$1,199 and S$1,499 each respectively, and the PW AMP retails for S$999, which is a bit more than the offerings by the likes of Bose and Sonos. Still, being able to stream HRA via Wi-Fi is definitely something that audiophiles will appreciate, so we look forward to seeing what Paradigm comes out with next.
