Paradigm Studio 20 vs B&W 602 S3

[Woochifer]

Actually I find Paradigm is quickly becoming the next JBL as someone else on another forum mentioned to me. It seems in this industry, any time someone enjoys mass success, particularly among knowledgeable people, the audiophile community rejects it as being mainstream and inferior for a whole bunch of odd ball reasons. And vice-versa, more exotic gear is often deemed better just because it's not as popular. Paradigm's definitely at that stage now.

Believe me, JBL's reputation went into the dirt for a lot of reasons other than their mass success. The main hit that they took was when they abandoned their long-time specialty markets and moved a lot of inferior product through mass merchandisers. The speakers that these specialty dealers sold were no better or worse than before, but JBL introduced a lot of bottomfeeding junk that got sold through mass channels and did not measure up to the best of their vintage models. But, rather than compete with the big box retailers, nearly all of JBL's long-time dealers opted to go with other brands that did not distribute to mass merchandisers. That's why JBL continues to put out well regarded speakers, like the K2 and the TiK series, that hardly anyone has heard in North America. And the only JBLs that most people hear are whatever gets stocked and displayed at Best Buy, which is basically entry level speakers getting demoed in a terrible acoustical environment. Not exactly the best way to establish or maintain high end credibility.

Paradigm has been successful, but that did not occur by going through the typical mass merchandising channels like Bose and JBL do. The Canadian speaker manufacturers in general emerged right around the time that JBL was alienating their specialty dealer network. If anything, they filled a hole in the market that emerged when all those dealers were looking for alternatives in the midlevel price points. Basically, at a lot of dealers, Paradigm (and Energy and Polk and B&W) replaced JBL, but I'm not sure if that means that they're on their way to becoming the next JBL. In the U.S. at least, Paradigm has been fairly selective about who carries their speakers. If anything, they're more selective than Energy and even B&W because they don't go with even regional specialty chains.

You're right though in that audiophiles often embrace and reject brands for a whole litany of illogical reasons that are outside of the bottomline performance. Once you get into some of the more esoteric approaches, it indeed is often "different" as opposed to "better."