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.

what can you expect when their whole marketing model is to release a new brand line every 2-3 years so that they look fresh and innovative. This whole Axiom thing of making a great speaker and sticking with a design only to release a new model when there is something worthy of improving on seems the be so antiquated. Nobody would buy that sort of thing would they???

All the curves look great with "room correction".

I do have to make a correction. I was second guessing whether a preference score of 6.0+ would put you in the top 5% of the general audiophile loudspeaker market.

I checked ASR's website of measured loudspeakers as a representative sampling. As of today, Amir's sampled 243 models, but calculations have only been done on 177 of them. 15 have a score 6.0 or higher (8.5% of represented sample), and 8 models score a 6.5 or higher (4.5%). So, technically, I'm off by 3.5%.

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?pages/Reviews/

Arent most nearfield studio monitors?

I think you might be weighting this olive score too heavily.

Buy a dsp and start horsing around with shaping response. Report back.

I could be weighing the score too much. But I'd rather tweak a neutral loudspeaker to my tastes and my room than tweak it to fix an inherent design flaw.

Since posting my room layout in the Axiom gallery last month, I decided to revisit my Onkyo's AccuEQ program. I disabled the Cinema Filter (which cuts treble to the center channel) and the -6dB treble toggle of the surround speakers, moved the surround left speaker into the corner, and reran the room calibration. AccuEQ reduced the brightness of those channels by the same level as I would have tweaked them manually. And repositioning the surround speaker means the lounge chair is now a viable listening position without making any adjustments. I'd love to try Dirac, ARC or Audyssey one day to see what I'm missing.

On a side not, I found a thread on ASR written 3 years ago that was asking the same thing about Paradigm:

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/what’s-the-deal-with-paradigm-speakers.8927/

If I was a loudspeaker designer, in light of modern room correction, I'd be asking myself just how neutral my product has to be. What is the modern definition of neutrality vis a vis room correction?

If room correction fixed everything, there would be no difference in sound between every speaker, theoretically.

Can't rely on products previously made by a company. You can only judge their merits on what they have now or have made lately. In consulting there's a saying "you're only as good as your last contract".

I expect these companies may change over time for all the reasons noted. What might happen with Revel and Harmon after Toole and Olive are gone?
What is happening now with Axiom customer service with the new addition of Bryston on their plate (although the customer service slowdown seems to have occurred before that occurred, i suspect after Noreen, JC and Brent all retired; a loss of three primary customer service folk replaced by one?).
People move on; companies change.

It seems that if you can nail everything above 300-500 Hz with a good loudspeaker, you can let room correction and subs handle the rest.

re: Pages 23-25
https://documents.pub/document/audio-science-in-the-service-of-art.html

I think you should buy his book and read it.

I think you should stop researching online if you want to get serious. Start buying textbooks. Buy hardware to measure and alter response. Learn how to align speakers and to measure and shift phase.

ASR suffers from the same absolutism as the other forums they rail against.

They banned Erin btw…. So yeah…