Paradigm studio 20 vs 60? Help please

Aaronknock, There is a pair of pair of focal 806v's for sale locally for $500. I do have a nice sub that I am currently using. Do you think I should but the focal 806v's?

Kzhtoo, those dynaudio 140's look nice too! I like dynaudio quite a bit. Something also to consider.

Thanks for the input guys. It's funny, all of a sudden my paradigms have started to sound a little bright / harsh / shrill, whatever. The power of suggestion, or just someone else pointing out things that maybe I wasn't really tuned into? Anyways, seems to have been changing daily lately, but I think I am getting the itch to try something more laid back and less revealing. It would be nice if I could just spend $500-$600 at first, then I wouldn't have to part with the studio 20's right away...

I think you have take a lot of the advise you've been given with a grain of salt, since we don't know the size of your room, the amp you're using, or the type of music you like. Will the speakers be used for home theater as well?

I have older (v.2) 60's and 20's in my HT set up. If you have enough room to position the 60's and if you have enough power (at least 100w), the 60's are the better all around speaker. Contrary to other opinions, the 60's are great rockers in my experience. In a smaller room (say 10x12x8 or less) the 20's are a better choice.

The 5.5 woofer in the 60's may actually out perform (or equal) the 6.5 in the 20's because it's relieved of the midrange duties and can operate more efficiently.

The important thing is that you've heard both and preferred the 60's. Trust your ears and get what sounds best to you.

Hi, B_limo.
$500 for 806v's is pretty nice, but I'm not sure I'd bite. I'm prefer to arrive at a great solution in as few steps and little money spent as possible. I wouldn't want to make an impulse buy of bookshelf speakers, especially when I know in the back of my mind I'd rather the floorstanders. That will only result in nagging discontentment later on. I'd always end up imagining how much better things would be if I had just waited a little bit to secure the floorstanding speakers. Waiting sucks, but in this case, (either with the Focals or some comparable Dynaudios), the payoff seems worth it.

Before I bought the 816v's, I seriously considered pairing the 806v's with my Paradigm Studio Sub 12. I decided against the 806v's for several reasons (here's what I can remember):

1. Didn't want any variation in character from using both bookshelf speakers and a sub (which has its own separate and different amplifier). The sub 12 and the 806v's were never designed to work together to transition or play simultaneously together in a seamless and unnoticeable fashion.
2. Knew I wouldn't have a dedicated stereo amp for a while and would be using my AV Receiver for both movies and 2-channel music. I believed the sound to be superior in PURE DIRECT mode for 2-channel source music (CDs), which means using no sub; hence, the requirement of speakers with better bass performance (the 816v's).
3. On their own, the 816v's bass performance is unquestionably superior than 806v's.
4. Once I factored in the price for basic stands, it was only a few hundred more for 816v's.
5. By going with floorstanding speakers, stands would never be an upgrade issue. I knew in the future, I'd be thinking about how to get better sound from the bookshelf speakers by upgrading to superior stands. That means more money for speaker stands. Going with floorstanders meant that future upgrade money could be used for something else.

A 6th reason I discovered later:
6. Given my current room, optimal speaker placement means I can't place my sub in the optimal position. If I had gotten bookshelf speakers, I'd either have to compromise their perfect location, or the sub's, and a balance of compromises is not what I'm interested in—not if it can be avoided. And in this case, it was avoided by buying the 816v's. Have you yet played around with speaker placement to discover optimal placement (as apposed to aesthetically optimal placement)? The result may influence whether you want to use a bookshelf / sub setup for your music listening.

For what it's worth, transparency was the biggest thing the Focals had that pried me from any of the Paradigms I mentioned. When I went back and forth between the two brands, each time it sounded to me as if, when switching to the Focals, a lot of "stuff" was removed from between me and the music. They sounded much cleaner, but without losing neutrality or becoming overly analytic.

Hopefully at least some of this is helpful. Whatever you choose, I hope you get chance to listen to it first.

Cheers,

Aaron

60s are 2.5-way speakers (not 3-way), their mid-range drivers aren't relieved of their duty more than 20s.

Just going to sit tight until I can do a definite upgrade. Bought some decent stands yesterday for $20, drilled holes and put spikes (which my local stereo shop was nice enough to give me for free) in the bottom of the stands and I'm gonna call it good for awhile. i've been auditioning speaker cables from clear day (double shotguns), signal cable (silver resolution), and now tara labs (rsc prime 500) and found that the tara labs take just the right amount of harshness out of my system without losing out on the highs. Between my amp (classe ca-150), pre amp (classe ssp 25), speaker cables and speakers my system had gotten to be too revealing and a bit shrill / bright. The tara labs calmed it down in the way I was looking for.

Aaronknock, I agree with most of what you said in your post. Thanks for your help! You had asked about my speaker placement: My room is roughly 11x13, my speakers are close to 3 1/2 feet from the back wall, 2 feet from the sides, my sub is dead center and I sit about 2 feet from the back wall. I feel that this is a good set-up!

Again, thanks everyone for your help!