Paradigm Goes Mass Market With New Active Speaker and Headphone Lines

[Woochifer]

Yeah, the Paradigm site has alluded to the Shift series for a few weeks ...

http://www.paradigm.com/shift/

Very slick (although I HATE Flash websites!). Looks like they've done their marketing homework for their target audience. The marketing message is all about lifestyle and how you "play" (I notice that their product lineup will also include gaming headsets).

The article I linked also mentioned that the Paradigm Shift rollout will include an ad campaign with a paid endorser (wonder who that will be?). It would be great to see someone counter the incessant marketing for the overpriced Bose and Dr. Dre Beats headphones.

The article Wooch referes to mentions the old active Studio 20 and there was also an active Studio 40 -- they had excellent specs and reviews back in the day.

Yeah, they were mighty tempting and did sound great. But, like many others in the market at that time, I had already bought a home theater receiver. It didn't make any sense for me to essentially use that receiver as a preamp and pay an extra ~$400 for each pair of speakers, especially since my room configuration required 20' speaker cable runs (interconnects are a lot more expensive).

Rationally, self-powered speakers with custom, active crossovers and amps is the way to go. That is, if your goal is an accurate transducer. This is one reason actives are so popular among pro speakers. But of course audiophiles like to indulge there own whims and fancies when it comes to amplifiers, so active has never been big in the 'phile market.

Totally agree with you on this. Paradigm got it right with how they designed the active Studio 20/40 models -- active crossovers and biamping with higher powered amps driving the woofers. Active speakers never caught on in the home audio market because there is so much investment already made in amplification.

If you buy a receiver or integrated amp, you'd be paying for amplification that you're not using, while concurrently paying more for the speakers. Otherwise, they make a lot of sense because a speaker manufacturer can optimize the active amplification specifically to each driver. Plus, there's the higher cost for running interconnects instead of speaker wires.

With computer audio and wireless streaming, there is no sunk cost in amplifiers, so active speakers suddenly make a lot of sense. We've had some online brands already selling to that market, so it's nice to see an established brand like Paradigm reentering that market. This time it might work out better.

[Mash]

In the Music world "Active" means there is feedback from the transducer (cone) which is compared to the cone-amp's intended input, generating a correction to the cone-amp's input. Think Velodyne servo subs.

This is where Mackie rules. And "Active" dynamic speakers are a huge step above non-active dynamics, but active speakers are usually found at Musician's Friend, Music123, zZounds and the like, not at audio dealers.

An interesting trick you can carefully play with an active speaker is to tap the large cone lightly with your finger without any power to that speaker. Continue tapping as you power up the speaker and notice the rise in sound pitch from your finger taps.

If the Para-D speakers have transducer feedback correction they may be very interesting. The marketing risk is "Would they pull sales from Para-D's more expensive lines?"

[Feanor]

In the Music world "Active" means there is feedback from the transducer (cone) which is compared to the cone-amp's intended input, generating a correction to the cone-amp's input. Think Velodyne servo subs.
....

Maybe, but I think the more general term for such feedback control, (pretty much only used for subwoofers), is "servo-controlled".

[E-Stat]

Maybe, but I think the more general term for such feedback control, (pretty much only used for subwoofers), is "servo-controlled".

The founder of ATC agrees with you (as do I). Read this.

rw

[Mash]

mounted on the (usually a sub) woofer cone, said accelerometer running at a specified clock frequency, lets say 3600 Hz for a sub. If the sub inferred here operates UP TO 120 Hz then a 3600 Hz clock frequency is fine. But what if the driver in question operates up to, say, 1000 Hz. Then a much higher clock frequency would be required.

There are other ways to achieve feedback control. In other words, all speaker servo-control systems are intended to provide feeback control, but not all feedback-control systems are servo-controlled.

The Active Powered Mackie HR824 is NOT a sub but it does have feedback control....

[Luvin Da Blues]

Maybe, but I think the more general term for such feedback control, (pretty much only used for subwoofers), is "servo-controlled".

My Marsh amp uses 'Servo-Controlled' circuitry throughout.

http://www.marshsounddesign.com/a400s.html

[Feanor]

My Marsh amp uses 'Servo-Controlled' circuitry throughout.

http://www.marshsounddesign.com/a400s.html

Maybe, that sort of servo-control is more often called "feedback".

[Luvin Da Blues]

Maybe, that sort of servo-control is more often called "feedback".

To use your phrasing in post #11 "Maybe, but I think the more general term for such feedback control, (pretty much only used for subwoofers), is "servo-controlled"."

Are we talking in circles here?

[Feanor]

To use your phrasing in post #11 "Maybe, but I think the more general term for such feedback control, (pretty much only used for subwoofers), is "servo-controlled"."

Are we talking in circles here?

Well, yes, sort of. You likely know that a lot of amp circuits use "negative feedback" to correct what would otherwise be very high distortion; (large amounts of negative feedback are associated with classic solid state designs). However according to some schools of though, negative feedback, while correcting low-order harmonic distortion, creates unpleasant sounding high-order and intermodular distortion. Thus today many designs seek to reduce the amount of negative feedback; however few have eliminated it entirely (because some is good, even though too much is bad).

So Marsh saying "servo-controlled" really sounds like a cute way to get around saying they use feedback.