PARADIGM FOUNDER SERIES
Paradigm’s new ‘Founder Series’ is so-named because it’s the first completely new speaker line the company has released following its sale two years ago to Scott Bagby, who together with Jerry Van der Marel, originally founded Paradigm in 1972.
The six speakers in the new line-up, all designed and manufactured at Paradigm’s own factory in Toronto, Canada, comprise three floorstanders (120F, 100F, 80F), a bookshelf/ standmount (40B), an LCR (70LCR) and a centre-channel (90C). All models are available in four finishes — walnut, black walnut wood veneer, midnight cherry and high-gloss piano black.
All models in the Founder Series are passive designs except for the top-of-the-line 120F, whose three 215mm bass drivers are powered by an on-board Class-D amplifier rated at 1,000 watts. These three drivers cross to a passive 152mm midrange driver at 300Hz which takes things up to 2.4kHz before handing over to a passive 25mm dome tweeter.
The tweeter used in all models in the Founder Series is Paradigm’s own design, which uses a 25mm ceramic dome that’s fitted with two devices the company has trademarked, an ‘Oblate Spheroid Waveguide’ (OPW) and a ‘Perforated Phase-Aligning’ (PPA) tweeter lens, both of which act to smooth frequency response and control dispersion.
The midrange driver used in the 120F is also used in the 100F, 90C and 70LCR. It has an aluminium/magnesium 152mm cone driven by a 50mm diameter high-temperature multi-layer voice coil wound on an Apical former and is fronted by Paradigm’s unique perforated phase-aligning lens. Essentially, this PPA lens minimises deleterious sound-wave interactions while at the same time maximising the useful interactions. The driver is also isolated from the front baffle using a ‘Shockmount’ isolation mounting system. A similar driver is used in the 80F and 40B models, but it has a smaller voicecoil, one that’s only 38mm diameter.
The three 215mm-diameter bass drivers in the 120F have cones made from mineral-infused carbon-fibre and polymer in a formulation Paradigm calls ‘Carbon-X’. They’re driven by a Class-D amplifier with DSP whose performance is able to be calibrated to suit the listening room via the ARC Genesis Room Correction app. Available now, the Paradigm 120F speakers sell for $13,999 per pair (RRP).