Paradigm Persona series

I listened to the Persona 7F yesterday for about half an hour in a room set up by the company rep. I was extremely disappointed with them. It's hard for me to imagine how a room or pairing of electronics could make a speaker sound that uninteresting, but they were the most uninteresting speakers I've heard in a very long time. I listened to a familiar album. The imaging was there. The bass was there. The details were there. And that's pretty much where they stopped doing their job. The dynamics were completely uninvolving. The tone and timbre, things I generally leave broader leeway for, didn't reflect the reality at all. When I attempted to harmonize with the singer, the difference between my voice and the reproduced voice was stark and very unconvincing. I'd like to think that something was wrong; the electronics or speakers not set up right somehow, a particularly lousy room....  The salesman asked me what I thought of them when I came out. I shook my head. "They're reproducing the music. The details are there, big and small. The soundstage was respectable. But they were thoroughly uninvolving. They had no slam or physicality." He tried to suggest that they were designed much different than the Klipsch LaScala I'd just listened to, and there's no doubt about that! I told him that my Focal at home sounded a LOT more like what I'd heard in that room (pointing to the Klipsch room) than what I just heard in there. I said I realize the tastes of listeners probably vary more than speaker designs do, but those certainly didn't represent excellent listening value to me, next to the Klipsch, or even my modest Focal. 
I tried them loud and soft, and they were commendably free of loss of details at lower volumes which made me think it wasn't so much the room. The shop is selling a brand new pair of 7F's for half off just to get them gone. It's Jamieson's Sound and Vision in Toledo, Ohio if anybody really likes them. They're really nice guys. I walked in and told them I had no intention of actually buying something, but I'd like to listen while my car was getting fixed and they set me up listening to everything I wanted to hear. 

Dude... Ain't no footers in the universe that could fix what I heard. Unless the amp was malfunctioning to the extreme, it wasn't that either. It was a big SS amp that they also powered their big B&W's with. It was their biggest, best treated room, the same room other speakers I've heard sound great in. My listening spaces tend to he far less than ideal but I've never heard a room make speakers sound that lifeless and uninteresting. I've never heard an amp make speakers sound that bad unless somebody was deliberately trying to horribly mismatch them. And the fact the shop was ready to shove them out the door for half price and there still not gone makes me think they can't be made to sound good. Why would anybody slash half off the price before they moved some gear around? That just doesn't make sense. This place has stacks of Mc everywhere you turn. 

I'm fairly familiar with this shop. First time I walked in this place was 25 years ago. The shop they're in now they designed themselves and it's got 7 listening rooms. Nobody is walking in that place falling in love with those 7F's and I'm not confused as to why. They were some of the most uninteresting speakers I've ever heard. I've heard speakers that cost 5% as much sound better with lesser gear driving them in far less fortuitous rooms. I wouldn't be so critical had I not listened to music I was intimately familiar with. I just can't imagine how any combination of amplification and room could make speakers sound that bad. 

These weren't powered by Mc amps. I didn't pay much attention to to the amp. It was a big, black box with LCD meters on their side, tops facing each other. This place has all kinds of amps on hand. Sorry, but any speaker that is that hard to pair with a room and an amp is a VERY poorly designed speaker, period.