Paradigm Persona series

I still don't understand how you can use a cable to take something away from any speaker and not lose information.  Honest question and it goes for anything.  I am very surprised that if that specific cable needs to be used with the Paradigm in order to tame their high end.  I've never seen them offered at any of their stores I've been to and that's many.  

Kost 

It all depends on setup. Just because the "factory rep" set them up doesn't mean a lot.  

The rep may or may not know the store's gear, and may have setup a system that may or may not have worked for the speakers or for your tastes for any number of reasons. 

Then you have the other variables which is the room's  acoustics and the collection of gear that they have to work with. 

The Persona are incredible speakers if you set them up correctly, one of the most important issues is system tuning. The Personas have a very neutral tonal balance, therefore, they tend to need warmer electronics to not sound sterile.

So perhaps the Personas you heard you might have really liked setup totally differently or perhaps not. 

We have found that the Personas  respond very favorably with Isoacoustics Gaia footers, add some of the Furutech NCF boosters to your system and  just by adding those two items your tonal balance will be a bit on the fuller side.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ

Many of us are in the Most camp.  You can't fix broken, but many chase their tails trying. I'm making a point and not saying that the speakers are broken.  Not by any means. Many folks value what they do.  Many of us have the same issues of coherency and being too bright.  This is why they are successful.  

I've heard the same speaker(9H) in multiple sets ups, with top gear of different companies of both SS and tube and come away with the same issues for my ears.  I'm blessed that I have friends I can go to stores with or I'd never physically be able to, but I do when I feel up to it.  

If you need such specific details to make something listenable, then the basic concept it broken IMHO.  I've heard Rockport Lyra's in a few systems over the last year.  totally different size rooms. One was a poor set up and another had way too many things going on.  The cabling was inexpensive to uber expensive.  One had a great reel set up (oh man....just oh man) and one was vinyl.  One had vinyl, digital and a rebuilt Studer Revox.  That was a holy cow system.   

The bottom line is that the speakers had the exact same basic sound.  The base sound was outstanding in so many ways and the differences went from there.  I agree that most dealers show rooms are not the best sounding.  many reasons for this and some dedicated rooms have too much dampening as they are trying to sell the stuff, lol.  I have a local high end dealer who has a terrible 50hz vibration and it hurts the sound terribly, but his Wilson Alexa mk2's sound like any other Alexa I've heard in other's homes or stores.  

Many folks love the Paradigm's, but honestly, they are one of the most polarizing speakers on the market.  The threads on any board point that out and I even own a pair of older Paradigm's, lol.