April 2017 review of the Paradigm Persona 9H A home run for Paradigm!

Disclaimer..... I am also a Vandersteen owner, but open minded enough to be able to live with a variety of different speaker brands.

Ctsooner, I didn't say it isn't possible to make a good speaker using a first order slope, I said many engineers won't due to the multitude of problems inherent in a first order design as per expensive, it is is also expensive and in some ways more to build a steeper slope as you will need to spend more money on a more elaborate crossover with more elements. 

Any good engineer will work on phase related issues by tweaking their crossover slopes and by building in compensation networks, so you can electrically delay the summed output of the drivers to create a wave launch which will be close to being in perfect phase even by using a steeper slopes, and as I mentioned there has been a ton of great speakers that are not time and phase aligned or are time aligned but not phase aligned. So great sound is much more than just building a time and phase aligned design.

Our camp, of Paradigm Personas lovers,  including Tpinto, which is now an owner of these magnificent speakers,  is trying to raise awareness of how fantastic these speakers are and you said you heard them before, but not at our shop, so you may have a different opinion when you hear them at our shop. It took us weeks to get them sounding right, not to mention having the right matching equipment, I have no idea where you heard them and the competency of that store's setup, so why don't you come here and judge for yourself?

When Dave heard them at their first North American tour, he did not like them, either.  We discussed this matter at length, our choice to bring them in was that he felt they had potential to sound good,  this particular dealer only had mid priced electronics and cables, and did not clearly have the correct gear to present the speakers properly.

In all of my posts, I never said that the speakers weren't anything other then a contender and may do things as well or in some ways better than the other sacred cow brands. 

 When I related our experience in actually having some very exotic and expensive brands and products in comparison to the Personas's the thread broke up in a tit for tat between myself and another member on the Wilson forum who is not getting that this is how we test and how we know in our experience just how good the Personas are did we test them vs everything no but we have been around the block. 

What I was trying to do, was not to hijack that thread but to point out to the OP that there was an alternative that he should check out, that he might like and would work well in his room and cost less than an Alexia. 

So that is "selling" it seems to me that is about helping a guy to consider an option he wasn't thinking about. The only way that would have been selling if the poster was in our territory and visited our shop and then purchased a pair from us. I don't think that really happens much here as this is a big country, and Paradigm has dealers in the other states. 

By that same token all of you Vandy guys should have also chimed in on that same post, and let that man also know that he should consider the Vandy 5A as they also have room eq  and boundary compensation,and they cost the same as the Sashas.

It may be their size and shape that made the Vandys not desirable to the guy who bought the Sashas or it could be the sound or a zillion other reasons.

The fact are in and I agree with Tpinto, the new Persona Line represents some incredible engineering at affordable price points and should be auditioned by anyone looking at high performance speakers.

I know of no other brand to offer such advanced driver technology for a set of speakers which start at $7k a pair and that is just one of the reasons the Paradigms should be a must audition product, whether or not someone likes them better than brand x is up to the listener. 


My invitation stands if you want to meet me, our new friends Kuppe and Fixbin1, and Dave you are more then welcome and come to the shop and actually hear our setups, and to judge for yourself. 

Who knows you might actually like what you hear. 

As per selling on Ctstooner, I see your name everywhere clearly proselytizing the merits of Vandersteen and Ayre, either way you could be considered in the same way zealotry is selling, I would also think that from anyone seeing your posts.

You will also note that in any of my posts I have made it clear that I don't think Paradigms, ATC, or any other of the many lines of products the store sells are better, than any other brand, I said we prefer them and they may compete and in some ways may be better than brand X, while you clearly seem to state that like the great Peter Montecreif, all else is boat anchors, meaning that only Vandersteens are accurate and musical in in some way is a better speaker than brand X, Vandersteens,  are very fine speakers, some people love them and purchase them , while many other people  do not, they are not better than any other brand of speaker you may think so and that is your reality and your choice, the entire industry is made up of people who embrace Focal, Wilson, Magico, Monitor Audio, Spendor, and many other brands there are over 300 brands of speakers out there.

Audiotroy, so now you have resorted to calling people zealots???? Unbelievable.....

Guilty or zuilty as charged!!!! Are we having fun yet?

No. But I would guess there are people out there that march to the tune of a different drummer, ah, er, speaker....