I remember my first trip to purchase my own stereo speakers like it was yesterday. It was 1989, and I had just passed my driver’s test. My Dad had won some points in a sales contest and allowed me to pick out anything from the incentive catalog. I picked a Technics Stereo receiver. It looked great, and claimed to have 100 watts per channel. I needed speakers, I had just gotten my driver’s license, had a few hundred bucks in my pocket, and immediately headed to United Audio Center at the Fox Valley Mall in Aurora, Illinois. From the minute I walked in the door, I was hooked. Four of the five senses were lit up like a Christmas tree. Sight, hearing, and touch were obvious. Smell, I wasn’t ready for but Lord knows most of you reading this know that audio store smell. Everything was cool, but for me speaker rooms were where it was at. That day I shopped in the “reasonably priced room” (I went home with a pair of Infinity bookshelf speakers). I pined however to one day shop in the “you gotta be kidding me” room. Today, I review a speaker that would have been that room’s crown jewel, known as the Paradigm Founder 120H.
The Paradigm Founder 120H is a five-driver, three-way hybrid speaker with active bass. It uses a one-inch AL-MAC ceramic dome tweeter housed in waveguide, and a six-inch AL-MAC midrange driver with their PPA Lens, along with three eight-inch ultra-high-excursion CARBON-X Unibody Cones. These woofers are driven by a 1,000-watt Class-D internal amp that can push 2,000 watts out for peaks, and use a scaled-down version of Paradigm’s ARC room correction to correct from 300 Hz on down.
What Makes the Paradigm Founder 120H Loudspeakers So Special?
- The Paradigm Founder 120H is a hybrid speaker meaning that the bass drivers are powered and use optional room correction. The high and mid frequencies are powered by an audiophile power amp of your choice. Then 1,000 watts of Class-D room-corrected power will take care of the low end and use ARC room correction to get a solid foundation for making awesome full-range sound, starting with the bass performance in this partially powered speaker.
- The Paradigm Founder 120H is the top speaker in the Founder lineup. The Founder Series is towards the top of the line with Paradigm and these speaker represent a reference level, very high end speaker.
- Paradigm benefits from research and testing because they are designed and made in Canada. They aren’t the only speakers that get this type of help but it is an important difference between them and many other domestic as well as imported speakers in the audiophile market today.
- The finish options on the Paradigm Founder 120H are plentiful. With the introduction of the Founder Forty-One finishes, there are seven very high-end finishes to choose from. (Mine is the Black Cherry. I would love to have the Frozen Charcoal.)
Why Should You Care About the Paradigm Founder 120H Loudspeakers?
Have a large room? These speakers can fill it. Have a medium room, but want a huge sound, big bass without boom or bloat? These speakers can do that too. Have no desire to own a subwoofer, but want your speakers to go deep? The Paradigm Founder 120H have you covered. Want a simple but powerful two-channel system? The Paradigm Founder 120Hs would absolutely crush with a nice integrated amp of your choice, tube or solid state, with a built-in streamer/DAC. Something like the Pass Labs INT-25 or INT-60 or maybe the NAD Masters Series M10V3 comes to mind as you could build a $15,000 system that would rival many other $30,000 systems out there.
Some Things You Might Not Like About the Paradigm Founder 120H
- The Paradigm Founder 120H floorstanding speakers really shine at mid to higher volumes. They are absolutely fine at low levels, but once those woofers get charged up with some volume, it’s an entirely different experience, and you will likely like the ride if you are willing to listen at a slightly higher volume. If you are a listener who listens at very low levels, there might be better options for you and the powerful internal bass that comes from the Paradigm Founder 120H speakers isn’t all that relevant. For most of us, having great bass is a big deal, and the Paradigm Founder 120H speakers deliver on that promise as well as any speaker near their price range.
- Some audiophiles have a bone to pick with digital room correction. That would make these speakers a less compelling option if you felt this way. However, the old school audiophile no room-correction-objection is a goofy one, as the room correction is only in the bass, just as you would find with a subwoofer that has room correction. The upside of getting your bass right in your room has sonic benefits in the higher frequencies that can be really significant.
- As a hybrid speaker, you have no choice but to physically plug the Paradigm Founder 120 loudspeakers into the wall. Not everybody has perfectly-placed AC outlets, but a visit from the electrician can solve that issue for a few hundred dollars and in a few hours. You might need to patch some drywall and do some touch-up painting, but that’s no big deal, and this work keeps your installation looking photo-ready and nicely finished.
Listening to the Paradigm Founder 120H Loudspeakers …
The Bass. The bass. The bass. While that is not at all the only thing that this speaker is great at, I’ll suggest that it is best in class. The class is an awfully big one. Yes, the speakers are powered, and yes, you need to take some time to play with room setup; you may need to run the EQ more than once. But the payoff for doing so rewards you. That reward is not only the bass. Once you have the bass right in a room or a speaker, you then can really hear what that speaker sounds like. Everything falls into place very nicely when the bass is right.
Since I started my review talking about my first time in a stereo store, it is only right to start the listening tests and room EQ setup with the first song I would test speakers with back then. Full 1980s audiophile cliché: Dire Straits, Brothers in Arms. Side One, Track 2 “Money for Nothing.” All 8:26 seconds of the non-radio edited glory.
I have four GIK corner bass traps at my disposal. I started my setup with two in the rear corners, and none in the front, with no digital room correction. It sounded boomy (but Lord, there was a lot). So, I ran the ARC room correction. There was an immediate and positive change to some of the best bass I’ve ever heard a speaker produce. So, if some tweaking is good, more is better, right? I dropped bass traps into all four corners, ran the room correction again, and queued up Sting demanding his MTV again. Well, the bass was tighter, really tight, and really deep. But it missed a little of the bass energy that I just remediated. So, out went the front corner bass traps, back to the prior room EQ, and yes, for me that was listening bliss. If you are familiar with the non-radio edited version of “Money for Nothing,” you constantly find yourself resisting (or not resisting) turning up the volume about 1:45 into the song … you know it’s going to kick in, you want it to kick in. Well, with the Paradigm Founder 120H, patience is indeed rewarded. It allows you to truly appreciate the subtle build-up in the song and the dynamics involved when the bass really kicks in around the midpoint of the song in a way that will make your forget about the need for a subwoofer.
For many, a speaker’s midrange really is what defines its sound. Make no mistake, for all of the Paradigm Founder 120H bass prowess, that room EQ for 300 Hz down truly allows the rest of the speaker to shine.
“Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes” by Paul Simon (AIFF – CD) is a track I often use to get a feel for how dynamic a speaker is. When the horn section in particular comes into the mix, I’ve found that some speakers are a bit boring, and with others, they can almost startle you and leave a smile. I prefer the latter of those two, and the 120H absolutely makes you jump. Once again, this is a track that isn’t bass-shy, and the Paradigm Founder 120H really does the track justice. Tight, fast, and produces every enjoyable thump.
I’m an unabashed hard rock and heavy metal fan. Having just watched the 2024 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony, I felt it was only right to listen to a fair amount of Ozzy Osbourne, with an appropriately loud volume on the Paradigm Founder 120H loudspeakers. At the risk of offending Ozzy purists, I believe No More Tears is his creatively best album as a solo artist from start to finish. Listening to the title track and album namesake, from the opening bass line, I was grinning. When the keyboards and drums kicked in, it was clear these speakers sounded huge. Zakk Wylde starts in on his custom Gibson Les Paul, and it’s like he is standing there just off on the right side of my room, and then Ozzy at about the one-minute mark sonically appears in the center of my room. All the members of the band are doing their thing, right where they should be. My room no longer feels like it’s 13 by 19 feet … I feel like I’m damn near in a stadium. But, let me make this clear … the Paradigm Founder 120H was never sonically overpowering in the room. It’s making an Ozzy track sound huge, but these speakers also kept everything else in proper scale. It’s a huge room all of a sudden, but it is not overpowered or fatigued whatsoever.
Will the Paradigm Founder 120H Speakers Hold Their Value?
Paradigm speakers do really well on the used market, and these are top-performing, feature-laden Paradigm speakers, thus there will be audiophiles all over the world interested in owning pair of killer audiophile speakers like these. Paradigm does a lot of marketing, which helps promote demand. They are well-loved by audiophile reviewers, thus they get a lot of editorial love, which also helps create more consumer demand. Paradigm is sold at the best AV dealers and custom installers all over the world, which also creates more consumer demand. All of these factors will keep your audiophile speaker investment safe with the Paradigm Founder 120H speakers.
What Is the Competition for the Paradigm Founder 120H Speakers?
One of the closest speakers to the Paradigm Founder 120H speakers is likely the Legacy Signature XD. They have an $11,200 price tag for the pair. They are a four-way speaker, featuring two 10-inch woofers, and an internal 650-watt ICE power amp that can be configured to power the whole speaker, or, like the 120H, the bottom half of the speaker. They do not have a built-in EQ option. Legacy does offer an outboard EQ, and they are known for having visceral bass from their speakers. Every time that I have heard Legacy speakers, they have deep, powerful and pleasantly strong bass.
GoldenEar has produced full-range speakers with powered woofers for a number of years now, and the GoldenEar T66 ($7,200 per pair – buy at Crutchfield) is their most recent offering from the post-Sandy Gross era. They feature an internal 500-watt DSP controlled amplifier to drive the woofers, and you can use your choice of audiophile-tastic amp to drive the higher frequencies. They also feature the ability to run a direct LFE output to the woofers for additional set-up flexibility.
Final Thoughts on the Paradigm Founder 120H Loudspeakers.
Since I first set foot into United Audio Center as a 16-year-old, I’ve been an audiophile. While I enjoy the electronics piece of the hobby, speakers have always been the thing for me. The Founder 120H has been one of my favorite speakers to have listened to, and in this case own. They look great with a variety of finishes offered, they come from one of the most respected names in the audio industry and, most importantly, they absolutely perform. If you are willing to put in a little time with room placement, and run the ARC room correction a few times, these will reward you with a low end I’ve rarely, if ever, heard in a speaker, including others with built-in amps. Having a tuned-in low frequency really allows the midrange and top end to shine.
The Paradigm Founder 120H speakers are an aspirational but within reason purchase for many audiophiles. There are more exotic options at the price. There are bigger or higher output options. What you will struggle to find is a more well-balanced sound that starts with a killer room-corrected low end and moves up the frequency range to an open midrange and an accurate yet airy high end. There is a lot to like about Paradigm Founder 120H speakers in the under-$10,000 per pair category, as they have to be considered one of the elite best audiophile speakers in this ultra-competitive class.
