Paradigm Persona series

I’m with twoleftears on these points.  

1) I love the sound of an orchestra live - it’s never shrill even though there’s a lot of high frequency information.   
2) one set of my speakers has a metal dome tweeter and I’ll never make that mistake again. I can’t tame it no matter what changes to electronics and cables I’ve made.  Metal and tweeters are a bad combination in my experience.
3) early DGG - heck most any recording by Deutsche Grammophone is nearly unlistenable.  It’s too bad because there were some really great performances that were very poorly recorded. I have a recording of Mahler’s 5th by DG that is so unbelieavably bad, it’s a wonder they ever released it.  Do those guys actually listen to these things when mastering?  Maybe the tweeters were blown out in the mastering room. It was a gift from my dad, or I would have returned it!

I used to be in the camp that a tweeter didn't even have to be auditioned to know how it sounded based solely on the material of the dome, but I listen first now because i've been proven wrong a few times. listening to speakers that sounded so good I couldn't even guess which driver a particular note was coming from let alone guess the material of the tweeter dome. I suppose the less radical the design the easier, safer, path to good sound, but speakers like these may have the potential to surpass them all, if you know what you're doing. 

@pwhinson can you let me know what tracks you found “bright” on the 9H?  Preferably stuff on Tidal or Qobuz.  I didn’t mean to be disrespectful or insulting and I apologize for doing so.  I’d like to hear which songs in particular you feel are bright.  

The rear bass drivers based on their design are vibration cancelling by working in concert with the front drivers.

The purpose of them is to provide additonal bass output and to vent the rear bass wave around the rear of the speakers to better allow for the correction curve to work optimally. 

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Persona dealers

@audiotroy Thanks.  Since that rear wave is out of phase with forward facing wave (am I correct on that?), I did wonder whether that rear wave is cancelling out bass waves that make their way to the rear of the cabinet creating a cardioid dispersion characteristic which you see some manufacturer's attempting.  Could that be at work also?  Paradigm oddly doesn't say much about it other than describing the rear drivers as "vibration cancelling."

@contuzzi  Really just about any large scale orchestral music recorded on BIS with large amount of brass.  The brass should be shrill but not so shrill that they no longer sound natural....since I'm in a concert hall at least twice a month with a real symphony orchestra playing standard repertoire I know what live performance sounds like (to me anyway YMMV), and although there's a definite shrill sheen to brass that borders on a speaker that pumps up that level by 4-5 db is going to make those peaks sound TOO metallic and too etched.  I DO believe the Personas do that because its what I hear but using only about 5-10 degrees of toe in does help mitigate it somewhat.  Still when it happens it doesn't sound "right" to me because it doesn't sound like the brass sound live in a concert hall.