Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Stereo Paradigm doesn't do NRC anymore?

I thought I’d chime in on the disconnect between Paradigm’s marketing and their actual measurements. They still talk the NRC talk, and that’s a good thing.

https://www.paradigm.com/en/research-development

For forward radiating speakers, good CEA2034 measurements that correspond with winning blind listening tests are a flat listening window curve AND a sloping and flat sound power curve. There should be minimal spikes and dips, and an absence of the more audible broad wavy hills and valleys in those two curves. It should look roughly like this:

https://www.axiomaudio.com/pub/media/catalog/product/m/5/m5hp-listening-window-and-sound-power.png

However, their recently available measurements show poor frequency response performance.

Paradigm Persona 3F, Olive score 4.5, $6900 CDN each.
https://pierreaubert.github.io/spinorama/speakers/Paradigm%20Persona%203F/Paradigm/index_vendor.html

Paradigm Founder 70LCR, unknown Olive score, $2300 CDN each.
https://pierreaubert.github.io/spin...2070LCR/Misc/index_misc-audioholics.html

Paradigm Prestige 15B, Olive score 4.7, discontinued, $800 USD each.
https://pierreaubert.github.io/spinorama/speakers/Paradigm%20Prestige%2015B/ASR/index_asr.html

Paradigm Monitor SE Atom, Olive score 3.9, $360 CDN/pair.
https://pierreaubert.github.io/spinorama/speakers/Paradigm%20Monitor%20SE%20Atom/ASR/index_asr.html

I think most people would consider an Olive score > 4.0 to be high fidelity, but if I’m paying more than $1000 a pair, I expect an Olive score of 6.0 or higher (without subwoofer) before voting with my wallet. That score means it’s likely to win double blind listening tests against 95%+ of the loudspeakers on the market without the biases of sighted testing.

What about waveform guides, active speakers with DSP crossovers, massive bracing, or exotic tweeters? It’s marketing. Having them doesn’t guarantee a flat listening window and flat sloping power curve, though they can help the audio engineer and designer in reaching those metrics.

So what happened to Paradigm? I’m only picking on them because I don’t have enough data on PSB, and we already know Totem doesn’t follow NRC principles at all (see their Soundstage Network measurements). It seems like a massive fall from the excellent measurements of the Paradigm Signature series from 20 years ago.