All NEW Paradigm FOUNDER SERIES...Could they be Paradigm's best speakers yet ?

The personas are the highest resolution speakers i've gotten to hear yet and different components will make pretty big differences in playback. I only got to hear the founder 120 with a mac driving it. the personas need several feet around them with almost no toe in to keep from sounding bright while the founders were tucked into the corners pointed directly at the listening seat so maybe we can deduce the founder would be a better HT speaker, IDK, 

My wife’s cousin just received his 100’s. He is running Prim Luna electronics. Early reports are good. He also has Persona 3F’s so he should be a good judge. 

kren0006 +1

After owning two pairs of Paradigm's and auditioning a third the company has never had a problem with their designs achieving frequency goals affordably which has made their designs superior for home theater.

Scott Bagby or whoever the founders are, I still find the companies all in house ethos to lower production costs to their customers very admirable. The Persona's demonstrated just how close they are. All the best.    

Pounder series?

@steve59 I'd really like to hear your further impressions, both of the 120H in particular (with the built in amplification) as well as comparisons to your Personas and anything else you listened to along the way.  

Thanks, 

EW

bump, I just listened to the new founder 120? the triple woofers and I used the db meter in my phone and these speakers don't roll off the top end. My phone mic is good to 15-16k and they were flat all the way up. Most speakers I measure with the phone app start rolling off around 10k and is why I think a lot of listeners consider paradigm bright, they're flat in room which I like, especially considering the older I get th more my ears are going to roll off.

I've heard the Personas multiple times at shows and the clarity, imaging, and sound stage seem really good.  My concern about owning a set is that they certainly will tell you all about any bright recording, really tell you about it! 

The first review on the smallest Founders 40B Standmount speakers
 
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QayNKbwlCEg

I’m not saying Persona isn’t fine (not my cuppa heard them many times but for people who like forward speakers they’re good), I’m just saying the title of this thread is stupid. Of course founder not better than persona that’s my point 

Kren0006, I casted my vote for the persona being legit after dozens of hours with many different components I bought a pair of 7f and to one speaker having to suck for another to be good, well, there’s a lot of really good, great speakers out there.

Some say the Persona Series gets you close to the sound quality of the top of the line Vivid Audio Giya Series and the Giya Series are best sounding speakers that Doug Schneider has ever heard !

I’ll be hanging out at the paradigm dealer and a customer would come in and have their minds blown by the persona only to be gut punched by the price so paradigm needed a bridge, a believable step and the previous price gap between lines was too wide to help customers believe they could get comparable quality for less money. Maybe paradigm will satisfy the spinorama crowd and offer a bridge to their flagship product in the new speakers.

Ha, yeah, if a current series all with msrp under $10k sounds better than the current flagship series almost all with msrp above $10k, that means the flagship line is not any good. So the thread headline is likely clickbait, or the Persona series sucks, one or the other

Doug Schneider's first impressions on the Founders 100F speakers  
 
https://www.soundstageglobal.com/index.php/blogging-on-audio/133-doug-schneider/947-arriving-unboxing-looking-my-first-impressions-of-the-paradigm-founder-series-100f-loudspeakers 

 

"I predict the AL-MAC and AL-MAG and Carbon Drivers in the Founders will sound better to the ears than the Beryllium Drivers in the Personas" !..

Pretty sure Paradigm is smart enough to not make their cheaper speakers sound better than the flagship but who knows.

I look at the Prestige as a replacement for the Studios. I would guess these would be on tier of the Signatures and then the Persona are more of the cost no object (to a point) design? Anyway I will seek these out to hear once they are in the wild.  

Hi,
Your pre-release enthusiasm is perplexing.  Sure, Paradigm is a company with a strong tradition and some definite successes in the past, but they’ve made their share of misses too, like any big speaker company.  Why don’t we wait and see if these are really special first, hmmm?  

"I predict the AL-MAC and AL-MAG and Carbon Drivers in the Founders will sound better to the ears than the Beryllium Drivers in the Personas" !..

I heard the bookshelf speaker for a few songs. It seemed like a nice speaker for the money but I did not feel like it played out of it’s price range. I don’t expect these to be a “game changer” just another speaker. 

I guess these will replace the Prestige series which were a bit bland. This price range is very competitive and the Prestige had been around for a while. 

Our founders 40s and 80s arrive tommorrow 

Dave and troy 

Audio.intellect nj

Oh no doubt you can make as good of a speaker with aluminum drivers. But with those high end materials deployed will result in a very large price tag, and then you would also assume quality, driver matching, and the cabinets will be a lot better, which is more of my main concern.

So far my main issue with these so far is aesthetics, but maybe the measurements will win me over.

I think Beryllium Drivers are overrated !

These Founder series speakers look so stunning in Midnight Cherry

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeeXb2zA5_Y&t=1s
 
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0aO0PdrMyc

Passive speaker competitors to the Genelec 8351B or the Dutch and Dutch 8C would be nice, but they are possibly simply beyond what’s possible with passive crossover components.

My hope is Paradigm does a high end refresh with Founders design and maybe beryllium drivers, to push high end passive engineering. For people who don’t have the space for a TAD CR1, haha. Besides that’s getting long in the tooth, even if it was flagship engineering of 2008.

I'm really interested in seeing how the 70 LCR measures.

Doug Schneider of Sound Stage has a pair Founder 100F's right now testing them out with a full review coming in June !

They have the potential to. We’ll have to see how the Spinoramas stack up. I guess after the poor anechoic measurements of the Persona they are trying to project engineering excellence, especially with the point source WMTMW coaxial, and the deep waveguide, and tying that with the return of the founders and return to engineering principles with the eponymous "Founder" naming.

Either they are trying to cash in on all the popular current high end engineering designs (Genelec The Ones coaxial drivers, Geddes style deep waveguide like you see in the Buchardts) or just trying to fake it. We don’t know until we see it put through its paces in either 3rd party anechoic or Klippel NFS run.