Which would be better, the Paradigm Persona 3Fs or the Dynaudio Focus 60 XD speakers?

Ah, but my question revolves around whether a digital crossover can provide a superior response to speakers with hard wired crossovers yet possessing superlative driver materials.  Surely the physical components in a typical crossover circuit will add their own sound to the output of the speaker.  Is this enough to overwhelm the output of the drivers, however transparent they might be? 

I've heard none of these speakers, but I cannot see how the Contour 20 compares to the Persona 3F.  Perhaps to the Persona B? 

I chose the Focus 60 XD speakers and the Persona 3F speaker as both are similarly sized, both have twin 7" bass drivers and both have mid-range and tweeter drivers.  The Focus 60 XD is roughly US$4000/pair more expensive than the Persona 3F, but that is due to the included amplification and crossover network.  I submit that in any given living room, the Focus 60 XD will have the same effective price as the Persona 3F, if not actually less. 

And again, the question is, in the short term, should OEMs sink more money into diaphragm materials or improved crossovers?

It seems that year after year we hear of new speaker diaphragm materials with near magical properties.

We never hear of new crossover topologies with near magical properties.

Now I’m all for superlative diaphragm and motor technologies, but should not some thought also be given to crossovers?

If new digital signal processing capabilities allows us to generate in cyberspace superior crossovers and to improve upon the old school and expensive meat space components of yore, should we not embrace this development?

My question is, how close are we to achieving this breakthrough, or have we already achieved it?

PS: nitewulf and shadorne, thanks for your replies! 

mmeysarosh: Thank you for your careful explanation. It still does not quite address my concerns. My thoughts are that a signal from whatever source component must be brought through an imperfect path to energize diaphragms vibrating in our listening rooms for us to enjoy reproduced music.

We can think of this imperfect path as having various choke points in it. Cables, both interconnect and speaker, need to be decent. Pre-amplification and amplification add their own issues. Then we get to the speaker where the signal must pass through physical electrical components before finally being handed off to the drivers, which themselves have issues regarding motor design and diaphragm material. Let’s forget about issues such as speaker enclosures and room acoustics.

I fully understand and applaud the efforts to improve diaphragm materials. This will go a long way to reducing ill effects from that particular choke point. However, I don’t understand the same lack of interest for technologies that completely eliminate choke points.

By this I mean digital signal processing (DSP) breakthroughs that allow OEMs to simply throw away the electrical components that make up a traditional crossover. For years we’ve been told how critical these components can be, and how we need to spend extra $ to get better ones. Now they can be set aside altogether. I submit that this is a development of some interest and one we should pay attention to going forward.

Proper implementation of DSP not only allows OEMs to ditch (and thereby save money) hardwired circuitry, from my poor understanding it also allows correction of things such as time alignment and phase issues between individual drivers in a multi-way loudspeaker. It also allows consumers to save money on cabling and grandiose external amplification, while delivering a pristine signal to the speaker drivers. What’s not to like?

audiotroy: So your shop sells the Persona and ATC series? What are your high end brands? ;-) Seriously, I’d love to be able to drop in and play some music there!

I do have some questions about the Persona line.

It appears that the tweeters and midranges are uniform across the floor standing speakers in the Persona line. It appears that the Persona B uses the same tweeter, but uses a woofer that is an amalgam of the diaphragm in the tower series midrange and the surround and motor structure in the 7" woofers in the the tower series

I get that the Persona Bs are $3,500 each. I note that the Persona 3Fs have enclosures over twice the size of the Bs and throw in two 7" woofers while being $5,000 each, an increase of $1,500 each. When we get to the Persona 5Fs, the enclosures are marginally larger than the 3Fs, add one 7" woofer, and yet the price rises by $3,500 each? Ouch!

However much I strain my imagination, I cannot see how a pair of 5Fs are a better value than a pair of 3Fs and a Persona SUB. The SUB has SIX additional 8" woofers, plus a substantial cabinet, plus built in amplification and DSP to fine tune it to your room. Indeed, it seems to me that a 3F and SUB combo could punch up there with a pair of 7Fs while being far less visually intrusive. If you want to bring the 9H into the discussion, I could add an additional SUB to my system and still have US$12,000 in my bank account.

Any thoughts?