Paradigm Persona series

The 7F shares almost no resemblance to the 1028be. Not sure where you get that.  Also, there is no enhanced bass in the 7F.  They have perhaps the tightest bass I have ever heard.  So to a lot of people that would likely be heard as “lean” in the bass due to years of hearing boomy speakers and hearing lots of the room or speaker enclosure.  Sounds like you’re letting what you read influence your impressions. I just saw you raving about them in another thread yet now you’re changing your tune based on what others are saying.

It’s amazing how much “audiophiles” are psychologically influenced and don’t even realize it.

What recordings did you hear through the 7F that made it sound two dimensional and boring? If the 7F is capable of providing a huge deep and wide holographic stage on good recordings, that means they can extract the same when available from other recordings. If the mentioned “bad” recordings don’t have the soundstage, there’s no way they’d suddenly have anything better on another pair of speakers. The speakers don’t pick and choose when they want to have space in the soundstage. That goes against logic, physics, and science completely.

Santa, that's my point.  We all like different things in a speaker. Some overlook hot and or bright thinking they are highly detailed and if they 'stage' great or have another positive thing, they love them...until they grow tired and get the next most talked about speaker (or amp or DAC).  

Bottom line is that it's all good.  I always caution friends who are getting into higher end audio, to beware.  Dealers know what tracks they can play on a system to make it sound 'best'. They will always stay away from tracks that won't sound good due to the compromises that said designers have to make.  Kind of like going to the store to buy a new top end TV, but they are all turned to their brightest setting where they will look their best for a half hour or so.  Good luck watching at that setting all day long, lol......  

Unfortunately that makes zero sense. The brightest tv at Best Buy only looks good if you’re ignorant and know very little about picture quality.

Dealers likely play “only good music” or only their music because I’m sure many customers come in with some hot garbage that would sound bad on any speaker. I don’t know of any dealer that wants to “trick” the customer, but when someone goes into a store and says “hey do you have this *insert artist here* album?” The dealer may play some garbage remaster on Tidal which sounds like trash compared to the CD master the guy has at home. That’s the kind of stuff I’d think they’re worried about, if they really are trying to exclusively play their stuff.

In my most recent speaker auditions the dealers were encouraging me to play anything from TIDAL. They were rather happy to hear me say, wow that recording sounds real bad or that recording sounded great. This was on the speakers I had come to audition, the Magico A3 and Persona 5F. Point is these guys were rather cool about demoing the speakers.

One example was the Clash "From Here to Eternity: Live" disc. I had been playing it on my car while driving to the demo and I rather enjoyed it (I love this disc in the car). When I played it on the Magico A3 it sounded awful. The dealer was rather happy to see that I could hear the bad sound via the speakers he was trying to sell me.

Bad sound because the recording was bad.

contuzzi, it really sounds like you have all of us and dealers figured out.  Why are you hanging out with us, after all...…"It’s amazing how much “audiophiles” are psychologically influenced and don’t even realize it." and..."The brightest tv at Best Buy only looks good if you’re ignorant and know very little about picture quality."   Are you here to save us from ourselves, if that's it we kind of feel we are already doing ok and don't need saving so you can feel free to go post on the next audio board knowing we are ok now.