Paradigm Persona series

What I find so facinating is the villification of the Personas from certain posters  here,  because they have a bump in the high end vs the scores of  other high end loudspeakers which have a pronounced dip in the top end. 

So therefore a speaker which is bright is bad but a loudspeaker that has a rolled off top end is not villified or pronunced being  bad for sounding dull?

Lets remember that a high hat or cymbol crashes, if you reproduce those instruments  without having the realisim of what those instruments actually sound like and make them sound unnaturally smooth is that better reproduction? 

In terms of what benzman and a few others have said, you can add asorpative material, or use components which are warmer to tone down a speaker which is perceived as bright but how can you add detail to a speaker which is rolled off?

The sound of the Personas when setup correctly is pretty special are they for everyone don't think so, but when played with the right gear they sound more like a $20k speaker for the $10k 3F and the $35k 9H can easily compete with a $58k pair of Wilsons. 

We would also question Rivondale's testing methodology who says that is Schitt amplifier is good enough to drive the Personas, what cables were used, what source? There is so much more to setting up a world class sound system then arbittarily trying amp A with speaker B, maybe with his Schitt amplifier a dac or source change might have been required.

We would welcome anyone in the area to visit our shop and hear our setups with the Personas.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ

I agree with audiotroy. There are negative posters whos reference are vandersteen. Of course they will think the paradigms are bright if they use vandersteen. Night and day difference when comparing these two speakers. The vandersteens sound like a blanket is covering the tweeters

maplegrovemusic,

"Going on a forum that is discussing a speaker I don't like is a waste of time and a disservice to that company products .", but then you post, "The vandersteens sound like a blanket is covering the tweeters." I don't own Vandersteens,  but this is the hypocrisy that I'm talking about. Everyone has preferences and it's as simple as that. The Personaa are good speakers,  but there are a lot of good speakers. 

I have a pair of Persona 9H’s in my listening room for evaluation having received them Thursday. I have to say I’m really impressed with them, and on just about everything I listen to except classical they sound very very good. The not so slight problem is that 95% of the music I listen to is classical. Re the brightness issue, I’ve attached below a link to the way they measure in room in my space after ARC’ing the built in powered subs. You can see two things here: (1) the slight rise beginning at 4K and continuing up to 10K, and (2) a small suppressed "smile" shape centered at 2K. This is somewhat consistent (although not as pronounced) with Stereophile’s measured response of the 7F the version of this speaker without the powered subs. You will notice in my room however that the tilt up is very slow and is not particularly pronounced. I would be more inclined to say that tilt up is inconsequential in my room IF your goal is flat response in this region. The slight dip centered at 2K is "almost" inconsequential as well. However I think MOST people (me included) are used to listening 3db or more DOWN at 10K, more than 6db down when compared to the Persona 9H. This is easily corrected with a couple of filters in Roon but when I do some very minor corrections in Roon I lose a good bit of the air/coherence/not sure what to call it, presence maybe?  So I’m on the fence about whether or not to keep these at the moment and will be auditioning some Magico’s Tuesday to get an idea of the Magico "house" sound as well. The speakers these are replacing are Thiel 2.4’s which are simply awesome but compress at high volumes on large scale orchestral music. The Persona’s DON’T compress at high volumes that’s for sure. I’ve only had them one full day at this point so I’ll be doing some more critical listening over the next few days. The power they bring to orchestral peaks in the low end is astonishing.  You’ll also notice the sharp dropoff in response at begins at about 13K. Initially that might look problematic but I don’t think it really is listening-wise...according to this its about 7-8 db down at 20K...again my room is pretty well damped with alot of thick wall to wall carpeting and upholstered furnishings. Here’s the link to the measurement, and a couple of photos of them being moved into my home.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/yaphaka7vzc2bmv/inroomParadigm9H.jpeg?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4t9h6pfk4mf7v8m/IMG_2593.JPG?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/d00i6maudbymwv8/IMG_1952.JPG?dl=0

Ricred1 I think the point that Maplegrove is making is that there are a whole bunch of guys that jump on the "its too bright camp" while there are many others that don't make the same stink about a speaker which is rolled off and if you look at many of the measurements in Stereophile you can find many, many reference loudspeakers which have a recessed top end one really expensive loudspeaker had that and had a huge peak in the lower mid bass frequencies and that was a $125k set of loudspeakers.

We agree with you that there are a lot of great loudspeakers we sell the Kefs, the Legacys and the Dalis as our main loudspeakers lines and they are all excellent and suitable for different listeners. 

Our point about the Personas which would also apply to any of the uber high resoloution designs, like Rahido or Magico is that when you have this low a level of coloration or a driver that has uber clarity you are challenged with adding a bit of warmth somewhere in the chain.

Rivondale sounds like one of those guys who have never played with power cables or footers or tuning accessories which can alter the sound in ways that can be very beneficial in bringing out the things you are trying to accheive. 

Dep14 we apply a methodical method of tunning. We try many different brands of electronics, multiple digital front ends, cabling, power conditioners to the mix unti we get the sound we are looking for.

In the case of the Persona 3F that room has 54 different components in it is you took out the four pieces of surround sound gear and two headphone amps and a Zenith streamer that would leave you with 47 possible pieces of gear to play with from cheapie $1k integrated amplifiers up to a $30k Naim stack. we have high end intergrated amplifiers from NAD, Musical Fidelity, Micromega, Naim, Krell, Anthem, Sythesis,  as well as CJ, Cary, Anthem, Electrcompaniet and Coda separates, so we can create a very different sound depending on which particular set of gear is being played. 

For that reason alone we wanted to be able to play with some different gear for Mr. Hoffer.

You would be shocked to see how many stores just hookup what they have in one room to a set of speakers, meaning if they have ARC in that room which may sound great with a pair of  different speakers that are also in the room, that is what they play, you won't necessarily see sales guys saying we need to move in a pair of blank amplifiers from another room or change dacs or cables sometimes you do but many times you don't. 

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ