Paradigm Persona series

@yyzsantabarbara  Thanks again for all this info.  I would love to audition the Vivid line but alas again I have to travel from Atlanta to another major city to find those.  I heard the A3 a few days ago but it was in a tiny room, poorly setup.  They're moving those speakers into a large room.  They do have good electronics on everything they sell, primarily VAC tube gear.  After listening this morning I've played with placement a little bit but I'm finding the Persona's produce a more diffuse sound field, less localization and large images of individual instruments than the Thiels.  Part of that may be my room...I'm convinced that a very large rectangular room, placement of large floor standers on the long side, well well away from side walls and 3-4 feet from the back wall is the ideal positioning for imaging/soundstaging.  The most incredible depth and image localization I've heard anywhere -- don't laugh -- is on a system using JBL M2 monitors powered by huge Crown industrial digital amps which are kept in another room.  I rolled my eyes when I first saw this system but the imaging and depth of individual instruments in the soundfield and the localization of properly sized (small) images of individual instruments just blows everything else out of the water that I've heard.  Not sure how much of this friend's success is due to his large rectangular room with high ceilings but its really astonishing.  I don't have the desire to go that route, but it is what it is.  It was amazing.  And over the 30 some odd years I've been in this hobby I've had my own assortment of high end electronics and speakers (Sound Labs(!), Martin Logans, Thiels, Magnepans, Audio Research power, preamps, dacs, etc.  Of course we're talking about several decades there.  It may sound like I change speakers every minute but I don't really.  Just looking for that last "best" speaker I can find.

Interesting take on your friends room. I also have a medium sized rectangular room downstairs that is currently my toddlers play area. That room has a 25 foot ceiling and would likely sound rather great with the KEF Blade. Just have to wait a few years to test out that theory.

The persona 9h for $20k if it could be done could be the solution. 1400 watts with 4 bass drivers have me salivating... Don’t they have ARC built in? I would jump on it. I can't let a white coat lab rat tell me what I like better because a tweeter does or doesn't have a waveguide there's so much more to the final design and in my room wide dispersion speakers soundstage like crap, everything else being equal if a flat response was all it took as cheap as digital processing is these days all speakers would sound the same. I sold my salon 2's to a gent that's driving them with a pair of mc 601's and he says they put them into protection! The 9h would rock with my puny little integrated.

I copied and pasted from the $20k thread where another poser suggested with the sale going on til the end of the month a pair of 9h for $20k might not be out of the realm of possibility...

I know what the dealer cost is.  Nobody is going to go to $20K.

With the 20% off sale going on I could see a dealer stretching to like $26k or something though.