Persona B + Rel to the next upgrade

Bumping my own thread. I upgraded to a Blade 2 and couldn’t be happier. 

Did you compare the Paradigm's just before you installed Blade's?

The sales overlapped so I literally disconnected the 7f and connected the blades. The blades do everything bigger, but that was part of the allure of the persona’s to begin with. Listening to each speaker back to back made me appreciate each for what they do. The Blades are less likely to fall off a cliff when the components driving them aren’t ideal, some would say that makes the persona more revealing idk. Having the persona’s was like inspecting the performance while the blades are more relaxed and easer to settle into.

Steve, perfect. Nice to have an in home direct comparison.

The weekend I replaced my Paradigm Studio 100’s with used Avalon Eidolon’s, I was auditioning a dealers pair of S8’s. Not at all a cost wise fair comparison but one that allowed for a detailed system evaluation while demonstrating the unmistakable value of that extra cost.

Some years later I had a short listen to some all ARC amplified 9f’s at that same dealer. The Persona were clearly a dramatic improvement and the remaining Paradigm "inspecting" house sound was far less noticeable. All the components that failed to improve my Studio 100’s were laid bare powering the Eidolon’s. Surprisingly they performed quite pleasantly with them.

All the best

M

As Steve kinda mentioned, the reason I upgraded to the Blade 2 was also partially induced by my preference for the Persona B. I've heard a lot of speakers at 20-30k, but Blade strikes as a speaker with the similar neutrality as Persona B, but symbols and instruments have significant more weight (both in punch and the instrument symbols) and more special specifity than the Persona, possibly due to the integration with the mid range and lower bass drivers. I also noticed that Persona B does sound slightly more detailed than the Blade 2 on the mid and lower bass range but I don't think anything could really match that. Oh, Blade 2 is also occupies more and less the same floor space as the persona B stands, so lifestyle wise it is really friendly transition from bookshelf.