Paradigm Personas anyone heard them

FWIW,

I have heard the Persona 3F and I was blown away. First off, I thought they looked hideous in photos and was not excited about that aspect of them at all. However, when I saw them in person (the steel gray or whatever, which looks like a slight blue gray), I was stunned. Completely gorgeous and elegant looking. The phase aligning grilles on the tweeter and mid look like jewelry in person. They look expensive.

Anyway, I was expecting to not like the sound in some way, or at least be turned off completely by some aspect of the sound. I never have thought of Paradigm as "high end" at all. The Signature series have always greatly disappointed me every time I heard them, and to be honest, made me wonder if Paradigm really understood good sound when designing higher priced stuff (their low end monitor series are great).

To say that I was impressed would be an under statement. I want a pair now. I think Paradigm is making a huge mistake showing off those big 9F’s at all the shows, because that’s a really high price point for most people, and it was astonishing how good (and full range sounding in a modestly sized common room) the 3F sounded for "only" 10 grand. I think and hope Paradigm will have great success with this line. So taken back by how much I liked them.

If I had to sum up the sound in some simplified way -- I’d say they sound most like Focal Sopra/Utopia, Magico... and less like Dynaudio/Sonus Faber/Revel/Vienna etc.

VERY open and lively without ever being harsh.

Ok I’ll stop ranting -- just wanted to chime in with my enthusiasm. Take this product seriously. :)

Thank you for posting your response, I will say the better the setup the better they perform!  I am curious what you heard them on? 

We are running the 3F on a Naim 272 preamp and 250Dr amp and the sound is glorious!

Both myself and Dave, are blown away by the speakers, to say the 3F is a good value is an understatement. 

I would be willing to bet that if you put a $20k price tag on these you could get that much for them, I think these will be the speaker that will put Paradigm on the map in terms of performance to price!

At the Audio Doctor show room we have the 3F floor stander, the B bookshelf and the 9H and all three are impressive in their own right. 

I would say that unless someone has to have a bookshelf speaker the 3F is the way to go. 

I am sure that the 5 and 7 floor standers are going to be contenders in their price points for those folks with larger rooms and who are craving an even larger sound stage and more bass. 

If anyone is in our neck of the woods give us a ring and ask for Dave who is in the shop most of the time, I am there on some weekends and you will be in for a treat.

I have loved Paradigm for 20 years (being Canadian its a given....) and for the last 8 years have had the privilege of owning S8v2s.  They are exemplary speakers at a real world price.  Moreover, as audiotroy points out, Paradigm is a big company and economy of scale is such they can do things others cannot; moreover, it also keeps the price down.  They are also one of the few whom totally design and manufacture everything about their speakers, which gives the company greater flexibility in design and execution.  All being said, the 9H's give me concern.

Being the top model it obviously is going to be the best, but the fact it is active in the bass worries me.  At the price point it is targeted for, it is going to be a given the buyer will have "commensurate gear" to accommodate the speaker.  And it is a given the amplifiers are going to be "good".  Essentially, with the 9H, you are being told to buy them plus the Anthem class D amps that power the bass speakers (Anthem is Paradigm's sister company).  There are going to be some whom take issue with that, especially those whom are steadfast Class A fans or those whom prefer more robust amps of tube origin.  I think had the OPTION of powered or not would of been better, and the non-powered version would of been cheaper.  Moreover, adding electronics causes more points to go wrong down the road......you don't see this with Magico, Rockport et al.  It remains to be seen but on an intuitive level, if the powered bass section were ideal, the aforementioned coompanies would be doing it.  Only subs get a powered option since the application of class D amps are ideal on this.  But on a $35K speaker?  Paradigm is not supposed to be competing with DefTech.  This line is suppossed to be far above it.


Granted,  I suspect I love a pair, but most likely the 7Fs since I already have 2 good JL Audio subs.  Can't wait to hear them.

Just visited a Paradigm dealer today . They had a large floor standing model . The dealer said it was the same as the $30k flagship model but not active . It was $25k . So you can get the top model un active . 

Blackfly, you have an interesting take on the 9H but are missing what Paradigm is doing and the reason why they are doing it.

The 9H is employing very good Class D amplifiers with high damping factor to enable the speaker to employ active room correction.

In order to use active room correction you have to be able to use dsp to eq the speakers output to compensate for the irregularities of the room, you can't do this unless you insert some kind of processor into the system and by just adjusting the bass you can put the eq where it needs to be.

Another advantage of this approach is that the heavy lifting is done by the bass amp and you are free to use any kind of amp to now power the easy to drive and 96db efficient top half of the speaker.

The active room correction ensures that you will get very good tight bass in any room. 

As per why other companies don't take this approach is simple, they don't have all the parts necessary to do this. Anthem invested heavily in creating their own room correction system and it is one of the best, ARC, and they also did create their own line of high powered amplifiers which were perfect for the bass amplifier for their  sister company Paradigm.

However, you are free to explore the line either way the 9h at $35,000.00 has the Active Room Correction and self amplified bass, the 7F at $25,000.00 uses the same drivers without the room correction and amplification.

The 5F is a smaller version of that speaker which is priced at $17,000.00  a pair and the smallest 3F starts at a $10k price point.

We have the 9H and they are indeed awesome, we also have the 3F and they too are awesome and for the price a truly amazing speaker.