Paradigm Persona series

@audiotroy 

Ah yes, my "naivity" shows... of course, if that was a real word we could debate that.  I believe the word you meant to use was naivete (with an accent over the final e) or heck even naivety... or heck in plain spoken english... "my lack of experience".

Frankly, something you should hope your customers have when pushing cables, acoustic isolation systems etc... that cost damn near what the components and speakers cost.  

Sure, I don't own a store but you know 35 or so years of building audio systems, components etc. Should count for something.  But maybe I'm just a dolt.

Bottom line, a 25k speaker should not need a 25k amp to sound outstanding.  You more or less double talk in your later post regarding the 3f, amazing enough all the Naim gear sounds great with it.

Want to see a dealer adding value to the board?  Head on over to the digital board.  Jimclarkstereo offering an exciting new piece and making it real easy to try.

Sure it's not a paid add, but its better than constant shilling and twisting about how everything he sells somehow outperforms the original posters question.  Putting his money where his "post" is.  

Trudat you totally miss the point. It is not that you have to use uber expensive or every tweek in the book to make the Personas sound good, the issue is that there is way more than just good you can get out of a speaker with this kind of resolving power.

Yes the 3F can sound "good" wih much less expensive electronics like we mentioned, there is a difference between passing good and excelling.

Perhaps our standards are different from yours, we walk most shows and hear all the rooms and most room barely resigister as sounding what they can sound.

Tweeks are tools used to make a system come alive, power cords, vibration isolation, room tuning are tools we use to sculpt sound until a system sounds as close as possible to live.

It can take years to tune one system until it sounds magnificent. 

In the case of the Personas we went through many brand of electronics, tried a few different cable variations, tried different dacs, different servers different vibration isolation and added newer tuning tweeks like the Furutech NCF products until the system sounded as close as possible to real music. 

We have the T+A gear and the Krell, the T+A noticably outperforms the Krell gear, the Krell gear is less expensive and sounds great for the money, the T+A gear just sounds far better but costs way more. 

IF you hear this sytem with the Krell gear you might think what a great sounding system, when you heard it with the T+A you might think wow that sounds so much better. 

It are these kinds of testing data that proves that the quest for really amazing sound is a process of trying different components until the sound becomes as realistic as possible.

We are willing to bet that you may be one of the zillion audiophiles who doesn't believe in tweeks, or cabling or whatever that these are expensive foolish toys for the gulible with out the experience of actually trying some of these devices, then again you might not.

The Critical Mass Centerstage footers are transformational devices, that makes a system sound way better it it one of the best vibration isolation devices out there.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ 

So what have been the most cost effective speakers to extract their best out of? The better the speaker the higher the ceiling right. If that’s true then active speakers would be the safe bet for someone on a budget. Is the ls50 active better sounding than the passive model, I don’t think it’s wrong to expect a $35k pair of speakers to be exceptional driven by any competent front end.

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

If an 8k amp and 25k speaker only sounds "decent".

Then one must conclude that then either the speaker isn't worth 25k, the amp isn't worth 8k... or both.

Any 33k pairing (and of course with expensive cables, power conditioning, and iso footers  on top)... that only sounds "decent"... is a joke.