Paradigm Persona series

No Steve just because you have expensive gear doesnt mean that the pairing will be correct.

Take our ancedote mentioned previously we tried amplifiers from Devialet, Electrocompaniet, Chord, Manley, CJ, Thrax,Krell, and T+A to pair with the Personas.

The cheapest amps were $8k the most expensive $25k they all sounded decent the Thrax was excellent however the T+A still sounded even better.

It is all about synergy.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ

No trudat it doesnt work that way.

Buy a Porsche put 82 octane gas into and put some cheppie tires on it does it drive like it was designed to drive?

The higher the quality the speaker the more resolving it is therefore you will hear more of what the amp is doing.

Why do you think people buy $20k-40k amps if they didnt sound better?

The combination of gear must combine to produce the sound you are looking for.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Persona dealers

D2girls you may be getting great sound however you may be missing the true potential of what your speakers are capable of with what you are currently using.

As per using Anthem Electronics the Str amp and preamp at $10k sounds very good with the Personas however even better gear brings out better performance.

As per taking years to get a system right how many people buy everything at once?

First you select speakers, then electronics, then digital etc please tell me if you are searching for the best in each class you  can evaluate many of the products so quickly.

A well set up pair of 9H challenges many $60-70k speakers.

So you can put together one terrific system for the price of some of the other leading contenders

Dave and Troy,
Audio Doctor NJ

Dep no they are not extremely similar across the line.

Like any manufacturer there will be a house sound, but it does change a bit as you go from model to model.

The 3F sounds similar but different to the 5F. We demoed the 3F to 5F comparison at another dealer and the 5F was a bit more mellow, had a bigger soundstage and of course had more bass.

The Persona 7 and 9 are the same speakers with the 7F not having the 9’s active bass.

The Persona 7 and 9 also use different bass drivers then the 3F and 5F.

Do they sound similar? Yes they do, but there are still audible differences between the models.

We demoed the 3F in the exact same room with the same gear, as our 9H and they sounded very different.

As per the Personas 9 needing less of an amp, because the bass is powered, again not true, as the 100 watt Manley tube amp, the Snappers are fantastic did not sound as good, as the CJ which were 275 monos, nor did the Devialet, nor did the Electrcompanient, nor did the Thrax gear the T+A gear was clearly the best sounding this was the consensus for both the Polymers MKX-S our previous reference loudspeakers and the Persona 9H.

As per your ridiculous assertion that the majority of your budget should be spent on speakers, look back at the car analogy.

If the heart of your car is the engine, the loudspeakers, and the rest of the car is your electronics and ancellory products, then this analogy should make it perfectly clear,

Take a 600 hp Ferrari engine and drop it into a Toyota Camery and lets take it for for a drive, did you just save your self $200,000.00 by creating this pairing?   Now ;ets suppose that the car’s transmission could actually handle the horse and power, do you think that the Camery has the braking power, suspension to enable this mess to actually drive?  The second you would try braking into a corner you would be dead as the suspension and brakes would be woefully inadequate for the job at hand and you would be headed to the guard rail and your untimely demise.

There is a reason why a high perfromance sports car drives like it does. A high perormance sports car is built around all the major subassemblies peforming their function optimally and in concert with each other. 

If you have a great engine, you need adaquate brakes to stop the car and high performance braking systems are expensive, so is the suspenson system which must hold everything together which also includes the entire frame and body which must also do its job. Hence a $200k sports car costs $200k because it is built with all of its parts working together and specified to provide a working envelope that the vehicle can perform optimally in. 

Substitute any cheapie parts and watch the car's ability to perform be compromised severely.

In our experience the electronics and source components, should cost 1 to 2 times the cost of the loudspeaker as a general rule. The addage garbage in garbage out is very true in audio. That is not to say that you can't buy a $5k amp and run a $10k set of speakers nicely that is also summising that you are not getting all you can get out of those $10k loudspeakers.

That is also not to say that you can't sometimes find value pairings that can sound surprisingly excellent but as a general rule the more exotic and expensive a loudspeaker is the higher the quality of what you need to drive it is going to be.

As per the other point that someone made about the Anthem electronics they are excellent for the price, but do you honestly think that the Anthem design team brought in tons of different competiting brands and tested and evaluated how they could build a better product, or did they forumulate some ideas, design a circuit based on some of their previous work and then build said product.

We have done these kinds of tests and the Anthem STR amp and preamp are great, but not in the same degree of great as the T+A gear or the Krell Illusion preamp and 300XD are.

So the moral of this story is if you are looking at this kind of product you must be prepared to use the right gear.

As per your doubling the electronics comment, we demoed the 3F at a client using a very good older Classe Intergrated amplifier a $5k amp along with a T+A dac so this would be a $10k package and the 3F didn’t sound a lot better than his older Dali Helicons.

Switched in a Naim Nac 272 preamp/dac and a Naim 250Dr and boom the 3F sprang to life, and sounded fantastic.

So again your experiences don’t mirror ours at all. The right set of electronics, cabling, and source components can make or break a set of speakers.

As per a dealer blowing out any product, so have we, certain products didn’’t work in our store or were not to our preference that doesn’t invalidate that product it just means it wasn’t working for us and our clientele, the same can be said of other dealers.

All I can tell you is when our Persona 9h are running with the T+A gear and a good source, the sound is among the most three dimensional and life like sounding systems we have ever heard and that includes some crazy expensive systems that are $200-400k.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Persona dealers

Yes mofojo both are delicious.

Dep sorry to disagree, changing speakers is like changing an Apple for an Orange.

Changing electronics is like going to the supermarket and picking fruit that is a week old vs going to the orchard and picking it fresh.

Sure you could say that both are "apples" however the week old one has muted flavors, the texture isn’t crisp, and the colors of the apples are a bit dull.

Please compare a store bought apple pie to a fresh baked pie made with top quality ingredients and you will very quickly get my point.

Even the best chief can’t make a great pie with poor quality parts. The better the quality the ingredients the better the pie comes out, ergo, the better the electronics you use with the speakers the better sound you get out of the speakers it is really that simple. 

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Persona Dealers

djverne,

Honestly don’t know what you are hearing with that setup,

a couple of questions:

1: Were the speakers toed in?

2: What kind of cabling was being used?

3: What was the source?

There are a few really weird things in your description the midrange is anything but recessed, the top end tends to be hot, with a lot of air, so you had something rolling off a lot of detail.

You said the coherency  was average compared to what which speakers are in your mind coherent.

Love to know more about the place you heard them, your findings are very different than what most people find about the speakers.

Could it be that you perhaps didn't like the Mcintosh with the Paradigms, the sound you are describing could be very attributed to the Mcintoh amplifiers which are not very transparent but tend to sound warm and rolled off due to their design. 

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Persona dealers

djverne, interesesting, every speaker you mentioned as liking are Two way speakers, vs a three way loudspeaker.

Could it be that you don't like a three way loudspeaker?

Also almost every loudspeaker has a soft dome tweeter that you mentioned. 

You are also assuming that the speakers are set up correctly at this person's house?

The reality is that ANY high resolution loudspeaker will be totally dependent on the equipment your are driving it with, the quality of the playback gear, and the cabling, then factor in the room's acoustics as well as postioning and you are going to hear glorious sound or horrible sound.

Yes you might not like the speakers but your findings are hard to extrapolate as to what was the issue with the setup.

We would welcome you to hear the Pesona series setup with the right gear in the right room at our shop, they are marvelous loudspeakers when setup correctly, they are however, very picky about what you use with them, they will show you everything both good and bad with the setup. Unlike other high performance loudspeakers they have both a Beryillium tweeter and midrange and therefore are going to show you everything in that stream, if the dac was sup par you are going to instantly hear it. 

Also with a three way loudspeaker you are going to be much more aware of coherence issues with placement and sitting distances, if you are too close you might not find the drivers blending correctly, other issues can be toe in as well.

We are not saying that the Personas are for everyone, there are people that are not going to be in love with their remarkable clarity if comming from certain much warmer voiced loudspeakers if that is their predilection, but it certantly sounds that you did not hear them at anywhere near their best. 

It is like a panel guy who loves panels most direct radiating loudspeakers are going to "sound" wrong to that listener. 

Sometimes it is a case of listener bias and or preference while others are going to be down to setup.

You mention a whole host of speakers you like however, you did not compare a single one in the same enviornment to the Paradigms, so your logic and testing methodology is not exactly the same.

You may want to relisten to the speakers at a Pardigm dealer and you might think differently about them or not. 

When we judge loudspeakers, amplifiers, or dacs, we don't just use one sampling before we get a picture of the line, we often will hear said product at multiple shows before we get a real impression or better yet at our shop and testing under known circumstances.

Good luck.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Persona dealers

David Ten, the only way you start with the amplifier first is if you are in love with an amplifier that you allready own and have to then go the backwards route of finding a set of speakers that will work optimally in the room with that amp.

We start with the speaker selection first as the speakers are based on room size, output spl required, finish, physical size, asthestic design, of course sound quality.

So we start our clients with the speaker selection first then move to the electronics, then digtial.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ

David here is the rationale.

Loudspeaker choice is determined by a few factors:

1: Room size the larger the physical amount of air to be moved the larger the loudspeakers need to be, ie small room, small speaker, medium room medium sized loudspeaker, big room big speaker and gigantic room really big speakers. For the medium to large room a set of subwoofers may augment the mains in place of larger displacement woofers, subs pro and con are another discussion.

2: Physical look: for many people especially with a signfiigent other, the look color, size, shape, wood or painted finish may be part of that factor

3: SPL requirements: There are gigantic loudspeakers that don't play that loud for their size and smaller speakers that will play very loud, so it all matters to the design, efficiency and power handling/heat dissipation of the drive units.

4: Bass output, midrange flavoring, or treble clarity, ie loudspeaker voicing is strongly dependent of the overall design

5: Imaging abilities: some loudspeakers image better than others.

Therefore the loudspeaker has way more variables in terms of finding the right loudspeaker than the electronics do.

We will say that finding the right matching electronics to a particular set of loudspeakers will require auditioning a number of amplifiers, then cabling and source interactions until the system comes alive but again, it is much easier to schlep in an amplifier or dac then to physically move large speakers in and out of your home.

Therefore for all of these reasons we recommend that when someone is starting this jorney the loudeakers come first as the initial decision.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ

Prof, 

Again we get that these speakers aren't for you, but have to ask what was the gear, electronics and source driving them?

We have found that with the right electronics and digital the speakers can sound extraordinary, but with the wrong gear they are not going to be a good sounding speaker, 

The Paradigms are very particular in what you use them with, we have found using them with warmer electronics, and or a dac will bring them alive.

Based on your previous likes with Devores which are very organic but highly colored loudspeakers we would think that you would not find the Personas to your taste.

It is like the Vandersteen or Harbeth guys, they are not going to like a Rockport, or  a Persona. 

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Persona dealers

Very interesting Rionvondale, that a guy who sells Paradigm, bought a pair of speakers that he  feels sound fatiguing and can only play a few albums. 

Could it be that the speakers are showing weaknesses in his system, could it be his cartridge is tipped up, or he may need a better phono stage,  or that his current line up of gear isn't working for the Paradigms.

Many times when you add one new component you must re-balance the system to keep the good new things and minimize the things that you are not liking. 

We tested five or six lines of amplifiers before we found the electronics that really made our Persona 9H come alive all of these amplifiers were fantastic pieces from great companies, it is called synergy.

So just because this person has a warm sounding SA 103 doesn't mean that the rest of his components were working with the speakers vs the previous set he was using. 

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Persona dealers

Ct you have a problem understanding we went through this with you before.

We said multiple times that when you heard the 9H on that day the system did not sound like it normally does.

In fact we agreed with you and if you remember we didnt want you to visit that day.

Later we found out that the tone controls on the preamp were engaged with the treble beIng raised along with a few other issues.

It would be entirely different if we thought the system sounded great on your visit.

Hi guys we were Usher dealers great speakers in their day the personas are much more transparent and inage better

For your room persona 3fs

Or the personna b or kef ref1
With a good small sub for the persona B the Ref 1s go low enough for most

DAVE AND TROY
audio intellect
Paradigm and kef dealers