Paradigm Premier 800F Speakers

by WebKeyDesign | Oct 28, 2021 | Audio, In Stock

In college one of my many part-time jobs was working at BestBuy in the Audio department. At that time, that meant selling home audio systems, car audio, and for some reason we also handled the cell phone sales. Believe it or not, one of the top phones we would sell was a bag phone that looked like an actual home phone! Back in the G1 days, cell phones had very limited range and so the bag phone was a good choice for people who wanted a phone for their car or tractor. Anyway, the big takeaway from that job was my addiction to high-end audio. There is just something cool about having massive speakers and a high-end receiver (that only appeals to the male gender). Over time, I would go through several home theater receivers, from Pioneer, Sony, Yamaha, Onkyo, to my personal favorite: Denon. Each had its strengths: the Pioneer was powerful and loud but ended up breaking, the Sony was just okay, the Yamaha was impressive but did not work well with my speakers, Onkyo had a bad HDMI board. Denon always sounded the best to me and my first Denon receiver is in my man cave. It is hooked up to a Raspberry Pi for music streaming.

The latest Denon is setup to drive a 7.2 home theater setup. Most people today do not setup home theater systems anymore. BestBuy does not even have a speaker listening room anymore. Customers usually only want a flat screen TV and maybe a sound bar. Since no one really buys blu-ray movies anymore, high quality audio is something most people don’t even experience. Streaming audio from NetFlix and Disney can’t compare to the lossless audio on a blu-ray 4K disc. For my 7.2 channel setup, the main speakers were the Eosone RSF-1000 towers that I had purchased while working at BestBuy. After multiple decades, one of the towers started to tick. The built-in amp for the subwoofer had blown and so it was time to replace the towers. These giant tower speakers had been responsible for reproducing the incredible sound stages of some of my favorite films: the opening scenes of Matrix Reloaded, the Gandalf vs Balrog battle in The Lord of The Rings, and pretty much every Star Wars movie action scene. Unplugging them and moving them down to the basement for storage was both physically and emotionally tasking.

Klipsch

The center channel speaker is the most utilized speaker in any setup. From all my speakers, my Klipsch center speaker is my newest speaker, so I figured why not match it with some new tower speakers. After some quick looking online, I found some very affordable Klipsch R-28F towers. Since the Eosone towers had built-in subs, I had to also find a subwoofer solution. I eventually ended up getting a pair of Klipsch R-12SW Subwoofers. In all these new additions were all pretty affordable and at first I was impressed with he new sonic clarity and booming bass of my Klipsch setup, but over time, I kept thinking it could still be improved upon. Klipsch speakers have an excellent bass sound to them and this makes them sound immediately loud to me. From years of headphones, my hearing has dropped off in the treble range and so I have trouble hearing the voices in movies at times. This moved me to find a more neutral sounding speaker setup. I should stress that the Klipsch R-28F towers in combination with the two R-12SW subwoofers was a huge improvement. The Eosone built-in subwoofers have always sounded a bit muffled and not as clear. This is why I had to return the Yamaha receiver, as it made the smaller subwoofers on the Eosones sound worse.

Paradigm

The problem with internet shopping is that there are things that you must try out before buying them. Sometimes it is trivial, such as the color of the new iPhone is not visible in any online pictures. You have to see it for yourself and then hold it in your hand to see if it fits. How does the functionality work for you. In the case of speakers, they will sound different to you than they will to me. There is also your environment. How and where you place a speaker matters. This means that if you are making any kind of investment in audio equipment, you really need a test drive. After reviewing some audio sites, I focused on Paradigm speakers. Paradigm is a Canadian based company, located in Toronto. You won’t find their speakers in many online sites; they mostly sell through local dealers and a couple of online sites.

Paradigm Demo

Lucky for me, there was a local dealer that was an hour away and which would allow me an opportunity to listen for myself. My friend and I went on a Friday afternoon for a listening session. When we arrived, I found that they did not have any of the Premier line speakers. They did have their lower end line of speakers. The Premier line is their middle tier of speakers. For the demo, the dealer played some titles on an AppleTV. We watched the opening scene of Thor Ragnarok and a couple of concert titles. A demo through an AppleTV is disappointing because it is not the highest quality audio signal. Instead, it would have been better to use a 4k blu-ray player. However, the AppleTV is what I use most often, and so while it won’t produce the best audio, it is convenient and will be closer to everyday use. I compared the Premier towers to a couple of other brands they had in the store. Of all the speakers we listened to, the Paradigms were exactly what the online reviews concluded: neutral sounding. You could hear sharp and distinct dialogue in the Thor movie and the sound effects were crisp and separate. The other brands resembled the Klipsch or worse, over-pronounced the S sounds in dialogue. Once you notice the over-pronounced S sounds in a movie, you can’t stop listening to them. It ruins the experience. My friend confirmed my observations and agreed that the Paradigms were the best sounding speakers. While we were demoing the lower end series of Paradigms, I figured the Premier line would be a slight improvement, but equally neutral. The decision was pretty easy, if you don’t mind opening your checkbook. I asked the dealer to match the online price of one of the two online sites that carry the Premier series. He agreed to match the price and my new Paradigms would arrive in about a week in the store.

Paradigm Setup

The immediate difference between newer tower speakers and the older Eosone towers is the weight. The Klipsch were much lighter and the Paradigms seem even lighter. The bottom of the speakers come with either spikes for carpet floors or flat knobs if you do not have bare floors. Unlike the Klipsch, the Paradigms would work with banana plug speaker wires. I bought new wires from Amazon that have the banana plug ends. A few minutes to hookup and then it was time to try out the new speakers with some music. Using some CDs instead of blu-ray movies to hear what the Paradigms could do, is the best way to calibrate your speakers and to burn them in. I tried a few different selections.

I started with the best song of all time to use for figuring out how loud to set your subwoofers: Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean. The song features one of the best bass lines and gives you a consistent base line. Once you adjust your subwoofer levels to where you can hear the bass and listen to Jackson’s vocals at the same time, you know you have hit the sweet spot. You can do sound calibration with a physical meter or with your receiver’s setup mic, but I find that these calibrations are close they still don’t match your listening preferences.

The next selection was a collection of Rush: Red Sector A, Subdivisions, 2112, you can go deeper, but I default to these most often. Here I am looking for clarity of all the instruments, the drums, guitar, and bass. It may be that the subwoofers will need to be lowered a bit. Finally, I went back and tried some newer music. For this Dua Lipa’s Levitating is one of my favorite songs. Music made in the last few years is balanced for headphones and not tower speakers. This makes it sound different when you play it in your living room. At this point, Dua Lipa sounded good to me without any more adjustments.

It was time to see how the AppleTV and blu-ray player performed with Paradigms driving the main 2 channels of the 7.2 setup. The obvious choice for a movie was Thor Ragnarok, since that is what the original demo in the store was. The opening scene and final battle scene were what I watched first. The 4K blu-ray was of course better than the AppleTV and was immediately impressive. The difference that the Paradigms added was the neutral clarity, higher treble sounds were evident. Listening position was a bit wider as well. You did not need to be in the center or right in front of the speaker. It was possible to sit just to the left or right of the each speaker. I think I am going to work on moving the Klipsch subwoofers a bit back, but other than that the physical location of the speakers was good. Now that I had the volumes right, it was time to sit back and do some binge watching. My friend had recommended The Expanse series on Amazon. I don’t watch Amazon shows very much, so I was not aware of this series. The sci-fi series was an excellent show to start with. The Paradigms made for a great listening experience and I ended up watching the entire series.

Final Notes

The next upgrade will be replacing the center channel speaker with Paradigm to match the towers. Unfortunately the width of the Paradigm center channel will not work with my current media stand. I’ll have to build a new media stand. Until then, I will stay with the current setup. A combination of Paradigm towers and Klipsch center channel and subwoofers.

Additional Information:

• Paradigm Speakers
• Audioholics Review Paradigm Premier Speakers
• AVS Forum: Paradigm Owners
• AVS Forum: Klipsch Owners