Digital Trends

Paradigm Monitor 7 and UltraCube 10

January 4th, 2008 | by Ben Fowler

Out of the Box Observations and Setup

Out of the box, the UltraCube 10 sub came with a nice user manual and a tool to adjust the sub’s feet. The black ash finish is serviceable but certainly not gorgeous. The textured grain is nice in that it won’t show fingerprints and dust. But this finish is not unlike your road warrior touring band PA speaker. We’re used to subs with grilles so we were a little surprised to see this one go without. However, the active driver is face down so you really don’t need to worry about covering it up. Plus it’s made of a very strong metal material. The passive radiators are on two sides of the sub with the amp and its controls in the rear.

The amp controls are pretty straightforward. Unlike many subs that have multiple stereo inputs (high and low level) this one is simple - It has just one LFE input (which is nice in that 99% of the home theater receivers out there have just one LFE out). This we know will make things easier for many folks trying to reach around to the rear of the sub using their hands as their eyes as they feel where the sub cable goes.

There are three controls on this unit that are pretty standard for subs in this price range. A subwoofer level controls the volume. There’s a crossover adjustment (40 – 150Hz) with a bypass when turned up all the way. This was how it was set out of the box which is nice considering that most people will be using their receiver to make any crossover adjustments. Also there’s a “Sub/Sat Phase Alignment” control. This is variable from 0 – 180 degrees and controls the phase between the sub and your main speakers (especially nice if you have full range towers or another sub). But again, pretty standard features for this price point. For my listening test I started with the sub’s factory settings – Volume about half way, crossover at bypass, and phase at 0.

The sub is pretty hefty and solid-feeling for its diminutive size. We noticed that the LFE input jack is slightly recessed – a problem if you have a premium sub cable with a larger RCA termination (we were using a MonsterBass 300 series cable and it didn’t really fit on all the way – hopefully it will work!). There’s a tiny LED on the front. When we plugged the AC cord into the wall, there was no light. As soon as we plugged the RCA sub cable in though, it shone a subdued yellow color.

The Monitor 7 towers were annoying to get out of the box. A bunch of cardboard pieces fell out all over the floor. We can appreciate using cardboard over polystyrene foam as we think it’s better for the environment, but this feels a little kluge. The towers come supplied with 4 feet that must be attached to the base of the tower. These provide additional stability. There are also 4 metal floor spikes so you can raise these puppies up off the ground to reduce unwanted floor resonances.

The Monitor 7 cabinet is a vented enclosure with two rear ports. The speaker grille is pretty cool – it mounts to the speaker by magnetic force, so when you put the grille near its home it sort of “pops” into place! The rear terminal is appointed with some very nice gold plated 5-way binding posts, and two sets of speaker wire terminals indicates that these are bi-wireable.

Some of the gear used for testing:

• Onkyo TX-SR703 Receiver
• Toshiba HD-A1 HD-DVD player
• Apple TV (synced with our iTunes library)
• Cobalt Ultimate speaker wire
• MonsterBass 300 Sub Cable

We had our receiver’s crossover set at 80Hz – we tried 60Hz also, but wasn’t getting enough punch from the towers in the crossover range so moved it back up to 80Hz.