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Our JBL Paragon

Posted by nsgarch (A) on October 23, 2007 at 05:28:50

In Reply to: JBL Paragon posted by dbphd on October 22, 2007 at 11:50:58:

My Dad got a Paragon around 1960 (I was 18 ;-) He was about to get ANOTHER Hartsfield, but my Mom said, "No". The interesting feature of the Paragon design was the parabolic curved front panel. The two 375 midrange compression drivers (horn-loaded) pointed toward the center of the curved panel (and each other) the idea being that no matter where in front of the speaker you sat, from far left, to center. to far right, you would get the same amount of L and R midrange from both drivers (after first bouncing off the curved panel). An elegant idea embodied in an elegant design.

But there ware drawbacks:
1. If you sat much off center, the L vs. R pathlengths were different enough to cause phase shift between channels due to unequal arrival times. If you wanted any stereo image at all (rather than a 'wall of sound', you had to sit close to center, close to the speaker, and on the floor, (otherwise your ears couldn't 'see' the 075 hi-freq. ring radiators mounted back in the black recess on the extreme upper L and R hand corners. (Many owners put their speaker up on a dias for this reason, as well as to get the horns up to seated ear level.
2. The Paragon's bass was pretty terrible (not tight, and not very low.) The LE15A is a great woofer, but it needs a proper volume enclosure, ported or otherwise-loaded. In the Paragon, it's mounted in a very small volume, sealed enclosure, only it was not designed as an acoustic suspension driver -- in fact, 'acoustic suspension' was still five years away.

The bass on the Hartsfield was amazing however! And the two-cabinet Olympus, which used the same drivers as the Paragon, plus a passive radiator to load the woofer, was a far superior-sounding speaker system.

The rest of my Dad's system was McIntosh + a Thorens changer ;-)

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