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Paradigm speakers are well built for the money. They lack vice, but also lack soul.
Bob, is the X-30 sub control unit a must?
I could be wrong, but I think AudioAdvisor will ship that sub for free.I think you could do a lot worse than sticking with Paradigm.I don't know anything about the Stello DAC, but Benchmark has recently released a USB version of their DAC1.If you have any questions about the sat/sub connection, drop me an email. I'm happy to help if I can.BTW, you might want to look at the Outlaw receiver - builtin bass management and USB input. http://www.outlawaudio.com/products/rr2150.htmlGood luck,Bob
Dr Octagon,Here's my $.02.The problem with trying to reproduce good bass in small rooms is that you will have a very distinct room-induced peak-and-dip pattern that will give you too much bass at some frequencies and not enough bass at others. If you want to be able to crank the bass up, you also want it to be smooth so that it doesn't sound overpowering and muddy at any one frequency.The difference in bass that the room itself makes will be greater than the difference in going from one decent-quality subwoofer to another. In other words, the primary factor is room acoustics, not subwoofer quality. And you really can't do much to change the room's acoustics - but as you will see there is a way to work with the room's acoustic effects instead of against them.For instance, equalization can help, but only for one listening position (it's an electronic solution to what is fundamentally an acoustic problem). Move somewhere else in the room, and the equalization may well make the bass even worse than it was before.Now each bass source in the room (full-range speaker or subwoofer) will generate a unique peak-and-dip pattern at the listening position. So, we would expect two full-range speakers to give you smoother bass than a single subwoofer, because each full-range speaker will generate a different peak-and-dip pattern at the listening position, and the average of these two will be smoother than either one all by itself would have been.An even better solution would be two subwoofers, located in very different places within the room. Like one near the left-front corner, and one along the right-hand wall about 2/3 of the way back and up closer to the ceiling than to the floor. The ideal would be to stagger the location of the two subs in all 3 dimensions (actually there's an argument for going with more than 2 subs, but 2 is probably the practical limit for most people. Remember also, the more subs the smaller each one can be). Now we're talking about an acoustic solution to an acoustic problem.So my suggesion is to get the smaller speakers and two smaller subwoofers instead of one big subwoofer. This way you can scatter the two subs around the room, which will maximize the dissimilarity in their individual room-induced peak-and-dip patterns, resulting in a smoother average.A couple of things to keep in mind: The ear cannot even detect a bass note until at least a half-wavelength of it has reached the ears, so don't worry too much about getting the arrival times of the bass to coincide exactly with the arrival times of the two main speakers. Also, if you are going to use this widely-scattered format, you MUST have a very steep low-pass-filter on your subwoofers' plate amps. You want at least a 3rd order filter, and preferably a 4th order filter, so that you cannot hear the location of the subwoofers because of upper bass emerging from them. Finally, the two subwoofers do not have to be identical. They will not be operating in stereo mode; each will be reproducing a summed mono signal. But at least one of them must have that steep slope low-pass filter; position that one well outside of the main speakers nd back closer to the listening position, and position the other one near or even partway between the main speakers.Best of luck to you.Duke
Dr. Octogon,(thats a rap band i thnk, right?)
