Paradigm Persona series

No Rivionale, you miss our points entirely. It is not that a $10k set of Personas needs a lot of tweeking to sound good, but they do like, and respond well to using the right cominbation of electronics. ,

The point made with all the tweeks are being used in our $150k reference system which although is quite expensive the performance in many areas matches or beats systems that we have heard that were $300k and above in price range. 

In the example we sited above Persona 3F at a client's home with a normal Living Room, a circa 2008 $5,000.00 Classe Cap 2100 intergrated amplifier, with the $4k T+A amp, and a set of Wirworld Gold Eklipse Interconnects $1,600.00 and a set of Wireworld Silver Eclipse speaker Cables $3,500.00  plus 2 AQ power cords and an Audio Magico Power conditioner the Personas sounded good but not magical, we changed to a $13k Naim stack which includes a preamp with a built in dac and streamer, same everything else the speakers sprang to life and sounded amazing. Same room, same cabling, same speakers just with different electonics and the sound was extraordinary, without a hint of brightness, huge soundstage, deep bass, a great natural midrange.

We preach that it is a system approach you have to have the right combination of products working together. 

You are right there are easier audio products which can be just dropped into place and sometimes you can get pretty good results, generally these are the warmer and more forgiving designs which may not ever sound bright, but can sound rolled off and sluggish to other listeners.

Good luck to you Riovionale.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ

By way of an update, I had an opportunity to audition the Paradigm Persona 9H at some length at an Atlanta dealer recently. They did not sound bright to me in that audition driven by an Anthem SR series power amp and pre amp. I have to say I was impressed with them in listening to a a shortlist of tracks that I take with me on a thumb drive. I need to go back after they really have them dialed into the room properly and take another long listen and to take some in room measurements using REW. I did not listen to speakers further down the food chain in this series although they did have the 5F on display. If its the 9H or nothing the problem is the price of a pair, not a problem per se but if I decide to spend that much that means there are other things in the running which I’ll have to travel to another city (perhaps Chicago) to audition. AND Vandersteen is coming out with a new model to replace the 5A sometime this year which could also be a contender.  I'm in no hurry to make a decision.  The Atlanta dealer offered me a discount on his demo pair of 9H's but it was only 10% so there was no real incentive to deal on those.  I've come to expect 10-15% off when I place an order on a new item so a demo unit should be much more deeply discounted than 10%.  And at these prices, Magico (S3, S5) and Rockport Technologies are two lines I'm anxious to hear.

pwhinson
Thank You for the update. Hope you can score a demo with Magico and Rockport later this year.  Happy Listening!