Dear Friends;
I owned and, for almost three years, loved the Paradigm Sig8 speakers. Three months ago, I sold the Paradigms and bought a pair of Revel Ultima Salon 2s. You’d have to hear them to believe what I’m saying but, it’s frankly very difficult to imagine how Revel could improve on this speakers performance.
I think that when a good company hits what they consider to be their ceiling, they stay put for a while. I’m not saying that the Sig8s or the Salon 2s are ’the best speakers out there’ - how could that be the case? I am saying that with respect to the individual company’s performance to price calculations, their R&D capacity and their overall production objectives, there may be nowhere for these two companies to go - just yet.
On my part, I’ve got nowhere to go. I was building my retirement audio system - built on the premise that, once I retire and travel becomes a greater priority, I will not be able to assemble this Salon, Ayre and AR system. I am, of course, interested in what these companies have planned but, from the point of view of my living room, it’s irrelevant. I have more than I need.
i should mention that Ayre is quite like Revel. Most of the Ayre line of electronics is years old. The company develops upgrades and owners can avail themselves of that service. When you have a product that is so good, you don’t need to replace it every year. It’s also the case that the yearly ’new model’ approach is to some degree, misleading. We cannot seriously believe that, in relation to is consumer models, Pioneer annually introduces discernible performance improvements. More likely, they’ve shifted the huge number of buttons around and added a few more.
What's stuck? This gear still sounds better than the vast majority of new products.