If you’ve ever visited us at our store or are a regular visitor to our website you’ve probably picked up that Paradigm loudspeakers rate pretty highly around these parts. Paradigm are based in Canada and produce a large range of speakers across many price points. Our main reasons for backing Paradigm products is their excellent sound quality for the dollars in comparison to many well-known brands, first-rate build quality, and the fact that all the parts that make up their speakers are engineered and manufactured in-house by them.

This allows excellent quality control and fine tuning of the finished product, in contrast to many other speaker brands who often outsource various speaker components. The smallest speaker available in Paradigm’s Performance Series is the Atom, and this review focuses on this impressive little bookshelf speaker in its newly released Version 4 guise.

The V4 Performance Series is purely a cosmetic update over the V3s – technical specifications remain untouched. You know the saying: "If it ain’t broke…" The exterior update gives the Atom and the other speakers in the Performance Series a more contemporary and attractive look. The Atom is a two-way bass-reflex design, with the port located at the rear. Drivers include a 19mm ceramic-metal dome tweeter and a 140mm polypropylene cone woofer. The Atom's grille and MDF baffle are integrated into a single unit that can't be removed.

Each Atom is 267mm high, 166mm in width and 216mm deep – weight is 5.9kg per pair. They are 8 ohm rated speakers with a power handling of 15-80, and sensitivity is rated at 89dB (2.83V). Black Ash and Light Cherry are the two finishes available. For this review the speakers were placed approximately 2.5m apart for stereo listening. When used as surround speakers the Atoms were placed on 900mm stands in each corner of the listening room, and toed in slightly. The couch in the listening room is situated 1m out from the back wall. The review room is approximately 4m x 5m, with 3m ceilings.

The Atoms can be used in a variety of applications and are very flexible in terms of placement. I have seen them used as front stereo speakers, surround speakers, mounted as speakers for background music, and several people have purchased them to replace the speakers that originally came with their mini stereo system.

Used as stereo speakers the Atoms give a surprisingly lively performance and punch out high volumes for a speaker of their size. They extend down reasonably low considering their size, and with tracks such as Beyonce’s Naughtly Girl, the Atoms do a satisfactory job in reproducing part of the heavy bass line that pervades the track. But who am I kidding? You can’t fool physics, and the little enclosures have their limitations. But the inability to reproduce deeper bass is inherent in any speaker of this size due to a small cabinet volume and lack of larger size bass drivers or multiple bass drivers. These limitations can be overcome by adding a decent subwoofer into the mix to take care of the low end, but many people will be happy to listen to the Atoms minus a subwoofer, especially if the speakers are placed in a small room, and bass performance is not a priority.

Mid-range and high frequency performance is impressive considering the price point these speakers fall into. Sure, these speakers won’t worry a pair of Studio 20’s, but I have heard many small bookshelf speakers with a $500-plus price tag that don’t give anywhere near the detailed performance of the Atoms. The smooth but strong voice of Beyonce in the track mentioned earlier comes through clearly and doesn’t sound at all trebly. Spin a different track such as Keith Urban’s Days Go By from his latest album ‘Be here’, and the upbeat tempo of the song is presented in an exciting way that soon gets your toes a’ tapping.

The Atoms generate music in a manner whereby no part of the sound dominates – high frequencies, mids and bass are reproduced smoothly, in a way that makes these speakers easy to listen to, even at high volumes. This trait is evident in many of Paradigm’s speakers, something that clearly demonstrates the accuracy and time that Paradigm invests in the engineering and testing of their speakers.

Turning to multi-channel movie soundtracks, the Atoms can be used quite effectively as left and right front main speakers, as well as performing surround speaker duties. They can be situated on a bookshelf or stands, and have pre-drilled holes at the rear of the cabinet for wall mounting. Using two pairs of Atoms (a pair at the front and a pair at the rear) with a Paradigm CC-170 centre speaker results in an excellent tonal match for movies and multi-channel music, as the drivers used in these speakers are exactly the same. Being a direct radiating speaker (as apposed to a dipole or bipole surround speaker) also means the Atoms will perform well with multi-channel music such as Super Audio CD (SACD) and DVD-Audio discs.

We have many customers with small to medium sized rooms who have purchased the particular combination above and experienced excellent results. If you have a larger room and require larger floorstanding speakers for your front soundstage, the Atoms integrate well as surround speakers when combined with the floorstanding models in the Performance Series. They can also be used successfully as surround speakers with non-matching front speakers. Their bass limitations becomes a moot point in surround sound applications as little, if any, bass is mixed into the surround channels in modern movie soundtracks.

In terms of movie performance, these little speakers fairly rock. Matching drivers ensure sound panning is seamless, and the Blue Room scene from Hero sounds so realistic that you’ll be ducking for cover to avoid injury from Jet Li’s sword. The Atoms don’t complain when you turn up the wick either, maintaining their composure at volume levels that would have similarly priced Home-Theatre-In-a-Box (HTIB) speaker systems sounding stressed, harsh and tiring if played for any length of time.

The Atom’s flexibility in terms of how they can be used and where they can be placed makes them a great choice for many applications. Small and medium sized rooms are where they work best for stereo listening, and they can comfortably be used as surround speakers in any size room.

If you’re considering purchasing a compact HTIB system, as a comparison I’d highly recommend auditioning the Atoms and matching CC-170 centre speaker as a 5.1 combination. This system may be a little more expensive than many (but not all) HTIB solutions, but the improvement in sound from the Paradigm setup is clearly evident and justifies the extra outlay.

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Product: Paradigm Atom Bookshelf Speakers – Version 4

Website: www.paradigm.com