Technology & Design: We're a little obsessed about measuring things

They say, "Measure twice, cut once."

We say: "Measure, test, investigate, measure again, check, re-test, assess, start over, get it perfect... then cut."

You could say we're a little obsessed.

But the ability to measure accurately and test endlessly is a fundamental part of building a better loudspeaker. It's how we ensure that the speaker you have brought into your home outperforms your expectations over the course of a long life.

And so we built intricate measurements and perpetual testing into our manufacturing process from the start. Our "concern" (okay, compulsion) with sonic accuracy led us to create some of the most comprehensive and sophisticated research and development facilities in the world.

One of the most advanced tools we use is Finite Element Analysis, or FEA. FEA is a powerful computer modeling technique originally developed to solve complex problems in structural mechanics.

Using FEA, Paradigm engineers can build an exact virtual component in the computer, down to the very finest and most important structural details and material properties. Every possible use and performance factor can be modeled. Then the component can be tested, measured, assessed and optimized, over and over, before any actual real-world prototypes have been constructed!

Paradigm engineers use FEA to test, assess, and optimize drive units and enclosures; to detect and correct sub-microscopic break-up distortion patterns in cones and domes; to monitor magnetic flow or heat dissipation, and to perform stress analysis, and much more. FEA allows engineers to test for the ultimate "what if" scenarios.

In addition to FEA, Paradigm engineers use many other bleeding-edge measuring and testing tools:

  • Our highly advanced digital data-acquisition measurement system aggregates massive amounts of manufacturing data to predict and control the most minute of outcomes. It, in turn, is controlled by custom-coded software designed and engineered in-house by Paradigm researchers.
  • The Paradigm Advanced Research Center (PARC) is unlike any audio science research lab in the world. It is dedicated to the design, testing, and implementation of state-of-the-art electronics, software, and advanced digital technologies.
  • Within our massive 225,000 sf manufacturing facility researchers find two specially designed and controlled double-blind listening rooms. They are ideal environments to perform the most accurate, repeatable, subjective speaker analysis.
  • Researchers also have access to the largest privately-owned anechoic chamber at Paradigm. This incredible 36,000-cu-ft (more than 1 million litres) room-within-a-room is so utterly, perfectly sonically "dead" that researchers often find it uncanny! This strange deep silence quickly reveals even the slightest anomalies and irregularities in a loudspeaker's design and performance.

At Paradigm, the research and development never ends. We've made huge strides in audio performance and design innovation. But we also know that science is a continual process. So we built-in the tools that give us the unique capacity to constantly measure, test, assess, improve and innovate.

This is how we continue to develop and produce consistently reliable, ever more realistic-sounding loudspeakers.

It's pretty much our obsession.