Paradigm Persona series

No Cotuzzi dialed in is not placement, dialed in the combination of electronics, cabling, digital, vibration isolation, power conditioning, roon tuning. 

Right now we are in the process of retuing due to the addition of the Innous Statement. 

When you are assembling a reference grade system everything matters.

When we were shopping for electornics to run the 9H we went through, Devialet, Electrocompaniet, Conrad Johnson, Thrax, Chord, and finally the T+A gear which sounded the best with the 9H's in our showroom.

We went through many different power condtioners including: Running Springs, Isotek, Audience, and Audio Magic, we even tested the Audioquet Niagra 7000, the Audio Magic was by far the best sounding with our setup.

Recently the addition of the Critical Mass Center Stage footers made a very noticable improvement. 

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Persona, T+A, Innous, Critical Mass dealers

Steve with any reference grade loudspeaker you do not get the drop and plob sounds great trick.

Most truly high resoltion loudspeakers will only come alive with the right group of components.

Ask Brownsf, one of the posts which was deleted by the moderators because some negative people derailed the thread went over
Brownsf journey to get a newly purchased pair of Kef Ref 5 to sound good in his room.

We started corresponding via Audiogon which lead to a series of recommendations on an upgrade strategy designed to make his system sound really good, this included a new server, a new dac,new cables, footer for the speakers, a power conditioner and cabling and a few more tweeks.

This ultimately lead to a visit to his California home to demonstrate what we could get out of the speakers if they were working harmoniously with the right matching components.

Long story short the addition of the new server, dac, interconnects, footers, power conditioner and cablingalong with repostioning of his speakers created a system which in our opinion was more lifelike than his local dealers $300k system with YG Haileys.  We kept his original ARC electronics and speaker cables.

So the key take away is great speakers require synergistic blending of components, digital sources, cabling, room tuning and accessories before you can create real magic.

Think of it this way a $200k sports car can not perform with 86 octane gas and cheap tires, no matter how good the car is.

Just put the wrong gas and subsitute the uber expensive and high performance tires the car came with with any brand of tire and see how the car performs guarantee the results wouldn’t be too good either.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ

I can understand what you're saying in regards to getting high performance from a system and a lot of us truly believe buying the speakers is 95%, that all amps sound the same, that if it measures good it sounds good. I don't think it helps manufacturers like paradigm that attract the cost conscious that their $35k speakers will probably sound worse than their $3500 speakers without a significant investment in everything else in the chain.  

If you believe that all amps sound the same, you either have poor hearing or haven't demoed on a decently resolving system. I don't disagree with your second point though, but everyone knows my opinion of the Personas in any event.

Anecdotally, my local dealer who runs a pair of Persona 3Fs in his second system at home says that he is done after a couple hours of listening.