Paradigm Personas anyone heard them

I have loved Paradigm for 20 years (being Canadian its a given....) and for the last 8 years have had the privilege of owning S8v2s.  They are exemplary speakers at a real world price.  Moreover, as audiotroy points out, Paradigm is a big company and economy of scale is such they can do things others cannot; moreover, it also keeps the price down.  They are also one of the few whom totally design and manufacture everything about their speakers, which gives the company greater flexibility in design and execution.  All being said, the 9H's give me concern.

Being the top model it obviously is going to be the best, but the fact it is active in the bass worries me.  At the price point it is targeted for, it is going to be a given the buyer will have "commensurate gear" to accommodate the speaker.  And it is a given the amplifiers are going to be "good".  Essentially, with the 9H, you are being told to buy them plus the Anthem class D amps that power the bass speakers (Anthem is Paradigm's sister company).  There are going to be some whom take issue with that, especially those whom are steadfast Class A fans or those whom prefer more robust amps of tube origin.  I think had the OPTION of powered or not would of been better, and the non-powered version would of been cheaper.  Moreover, adding electronics causes more points to go wrong down the road......you don't see this with Magico, Rockport et al.  It remains to be seen but on an intuitive level, if the powered bass section were ideal, the aforementioned coompanies would be doing it.  Only subs get a powered option since the application of class D amps are ideal on this.  But on a $35K speaker?  Paradigm is not supposed to be competing with DefTech.  This line is suppossed to be far above it.


Granted,  I suspect I love a pair, but most likely the 7Fs since I already have 2 good JL Audio subs.  Can't wait to hear them.

Just visited a Paradigm dealer today . They had a large floor standing model . The dealer said it was the same as the $30k flagship model but not active . It was $25k . So you can get the top model un active . 

Blackfly, you have an interesting take on the 9H but are missing what Paradigm is doing and the reason why they are doing it.

The 9H is employing very good Class D amplifiers with high damping factor to enable the speaker to employ active room correction.

In order to use active room correction you have to be able to use dsp to eq the speakers output to compensate for the irregularities of the room, you can't do this unless you insert some kind of processor into the system and by just adjusting the bass you can put the eq where it needs to be.

Another advantage of this approach is that the heavy lifting is done by the bass amp and you are free to use any kind of amp to now power the easy to drive and 96db efficient top half of the speaker.

The active room correction ensures that you will get very good tight bass in any room. 

As per why other companies don't take this approach is simple, they don't have all the parts necessary to do this. Anthem invested heavily in creating their own room correction system and it is one of the best, ARC, and they also did create their own line of high powered amplifiers which were perfect for the bass amplifier for their  sister company Paradigm.

However, you are free to explore the line either way the 9h at $35,000.00 has the Active Room Correction and self amplified bass, the 7F at $25,000.00 uses the same drivers without the room correction and amplification.

The 5F is a smaller version of that speaker which is priced at $17,000.00  a pair and the smallest 3F starts at a $10k price point.

We have the 9H and they are indeed awesome, we also have the 3F and they too are awesome and for the price a truly amazing speaker.

I am aware of how biamping works.  In fact, I was hoping, in my system, to use a Class A amp for the mids/highs and a Bryston for the bottom end.  Turned out the Class A amp was running the highs only.  So I went for dual mono bridged.  

Again, I understand what Paradigm is doing; JL Audio, among others, is using active room EQ to flatten out room resonances/peaks etc so if they have access to incorporate it (with ARC) I can see why it was done.  

Don't get me wrong; I am not knocking the 9H, I would love them just as anyone else, but all I am saying is that they could of easily had a 9H and 9F version (for less money).  Most don't care about the Class D amps in subs since the bandwidth is so narrow anyway, but on speakers I could see some raised eyebrows about it.  The reason I find this significant is that, at the time, I had the option of choosing the S8 or S6 (analogy to the 9H or 7F for number of bass drivers) and I chose the S8 for the same reasons:  it is not just the fact there is more bass but a bigger cabinet and more air to work with.  

Regardless, I think it is a fabulous step up for Paradigm, although realistically I couldn't see myself with either; the S8's I have a still newer, with lots of life left in them, and with the addition of two JL Audio subs, provides a beautiful window on the music.  Of course, on financial matters, there is always random chance once a week.....

Von Schweikert vr 55 , Legacy Aeris , Off the top of my head offer active bass . Becoming more common .