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.

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).

@initma

Appreciate you are asking about the Prestige. I thought you also asked  ownership and quality questions....got carried away....

I auditioned the Prestige and felt that like the previous versions of Paradigms I've owned, their upper end presentation was too bright and strained for my tastes. While I tend to prefer detailed and reveling speakers (vs "warm" and "lush" I guess), I've come to feel the Paradigms lack good balance and integration between the mid and upper range drivers. Of course this is all personal preference and not science-- you should buy what sounds good to you.