Paradigm speakers

I think the reason they don’t get reviewed or held in high esteem by the press has more to do with the fact that they have focused their marketing and product development efforts on mass market mid-fi and ht product. A bit similar to when Volkswagen tried to go up market with Pheaton--just too hard to convience people you can do several things really well.

add to this their house sound really seems to polarize people (either too brittle/bright or too strained and analytical).

as to ownership, don’t think that is accurate re: they’ve been owned by the same folks a long time (private equity out of Minneapolis). These are the same folks who also own MartinLogin and Anthem. However I believe the founders of Paridgm are still actively running the company.

ive owned three pairs of their speakers in the past ten years--big Studio 5s and two sets of Signatures (S2 and S8). Try as I might I never really loved them and eventually went another direction. But in all three cases their build quality was first rate. In fact for all the neutral to bad wrap Paradigm gets from the "audiophile" press, poor build quality or lack of fit and finish isn’t one of them.

JSL you can’t be more wrong, "the fact that they have focused their marketing and product development efforts on mass market and mid-fi and ht products."

Paradigm has for years been getting rave reviews on both the Signature series and the Studio series.

We had the Signature S6 as well as the Studio 100, and both were good speakers. the Signatures actually sounded extremely good in their price range especially when driven by real high end electronics.

I would have to agree with you that they were good but were not amazing, they were competitive with the KEF and B&W and other similar products.

Paradigm realized that this series was getting long in the tooth and replaced both the Signature series and the Studios. The Studios were replaced by the Prestige series and the Signatures were replaced by the Persona series.

The Persona series are a dramatic step up from the Signatures, and in fact are the first time Paradigm has moved into the uber speaker class in a direct bid to challange the big players, the WIlsons, Magicos, YG etc

The Persona are full of remarkable technology: The line starts at a $7,000.00 set of bookshelf speakers, a $10,000.00 set of small floorstanders, a $17,000.00 set of larger floorstanders, and a $25,000.00 set of large floorstanders, going up to a $35,000.00 set of flagship floor standing loudspeakers with active bass drivers and on board room correction.

http://persona.paradigm.com/persona/

Paradigm spent $4 million dollars to develop this line, and it shows, from a state of the art custom painting facility, state of the art pure Beryilum drivers for both the tweeter and the midrange, unique long throw bass drivers, a phase aligning lens system.

(This is the only pure 7 inch Beryilum driver currently on the market. )

The top of the line floorstander the 9H uses four, long throw woofers, two which face out, and two which are internal which vent out through a real grill.

The bass drivers are powered by 2 sets of amplifiers, each being 700 watt digital amplifiers, the real kicker is that the speakers utilize the Anthem Room Correction system to flaten bass humps and eliminate valleys with the idea being to create a totally flat in room bass response.

The 9H have alot of really wonderful advantages:

1: They are reasonably sized
2: They play loud
3: They are 96db efficient
4: They have bass down to 19HZ
5: They have self amplified bass with room correction
6: They have pure Beryilum drivers for the midrange and tweeter

This is a fantastic line of speakers and the press is acknowledging it:

http://www.tonepublications.com/

as well as receiving a similar accolade in the Absolute Sound.

http://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/2017-golden-ear-awards-anthony-h-cordesman/

When driven by great electronics these are some of the most transparent and holographic sounding speakers you will ever hear.

We have the 9H, the 3F and the B or bookself models on display in Audio Doctor showroom in NJ.

Dave owner
Audio Doctor NJ

Not sure what you think I couldn’t be more wrong about? The majority of their product has been positioned as mid-fi and HT. Nothing wrong with that, they are damn good at it.

Their Signature series was the exception I guess, and while it got a couple of very good reviews (S2 and S6 v3 in particular), the Signatures were never held as a best in class audiophile speaker by the majority of the press that I can recall.

Like I said, I owned three pairs of Paradigm speakers over the past ten years--all three were great and were impressive compared to anything near their price point. The Studios in particular were a tremendous speaker--they are probably still missed in the market by many folks.

I read the two persona reviews and yes, the reviewers are impressed. Only time will tell however if the marketplace accepts them for how Paradigm has positioned them (I don’t think the Signatures ever did, although I could be wrong about that).

Well my question is specifically about the Prestige 85f, versus Revel Performa 3 line or other $4=5000 range floorstanders. My opinion in listening is Revels are a little smoother and less grainy in midrange and treble but can't play as loud or as effortless as Paradigm. Paradigm 85f sounds great with more bass but more forward and grainy , slightly more bright. These are both new so break in may change some of that. 
Second question is during break in period of 100 or more hours can the speakers be hurt playing loud or " pushing" them before fully broke in ?

Thanks