Tower Speaker Reviews

Darryl - thanks for the entertaining write up on the Persona's. It was as amusing as it was insightful. The Persona's are certainly beautiful to look at, and now, based on what you wrote, equally as beautiful in the sound they recreate. I may never afford a Ferrari or a Megayacht, but these luxurious speakers might someday be possible to own. (And I probably would get more use and wife approval too, then from the former two.) Bravo to Paradigm.

It's great to dream of spending hours in the rapture of driving a Ferrari Le Ferrari, or for that matter carefully listening to every nuance of the Persona system. Sadly they will remain in my dreams.
Meanwhile, I will continue to work towards the purchase of $65,000 Mustang Shelby 350R and $8,500 Goldenear Reference Towers.
You keep on dreaming, while I rumble through the twisties in my Shelby.
Thereafter bring down my blood pressure as I listen to my music on my Goldenear Reference system.

it would not a very good anchor make

I foolishly made some comments prior to auditioning the Persona 3F (see my July 29 stuff of dreams comments).
I spent an hour transfixed with arm hair raised listening to the sheer transparent sound of Paradigm's Persona 3F.
My children are now in their 30's so no chance of me getting much for them.
Oh well, there's always the Lotto.

Whether it's the fancy room acoustic compensation circuit or the actual performance of the loudspeakers, there'a couple things I'd like to mention:

1) In answer to your comment below: Perhaps you've never heard many other $10K + loudspeakers. Start/try the superb KEF 'Reference 1's.

" What can I say? There are damn few speaker systems that I’d consider selling my children—or myself—for medical experiments to acquire."

Solid point. Point taken

#2) Some journalistic investigation integrity would have revealed that the actual drive-units (of the Persona line) is actually -and almost proudly claimed by Paradigm itself- are screwed into the baffle board with 'self-tapping' wood-screws, as opposed to the far more sophisticated method of 'bolting-in' -to a specific torque specification no less. In a $10,000. plus loudspeaker ?

Consider the driver mounting technique of (by many accounts brilliant) Q Acoustics 'Concept 500' loudspeaker valued between $5-10K, or in fact the aforementioned KEF REF-1's -secured with 6-8 threaded bolts (within a highly advanced baffle board composite including a steel plate which the co-incident mid/tweeter is firmly secured !

At $10-$30K/pair, it wold be prudent for a reviewer to respect the sheer expense and do a thorough investigation before waxing poetic on subjective interpretations -with no reference to competing models.

You can, you must do better -for readers.

peter jasz

I know this is an old article, but did the reviewer try a different speaker system for auditioning the same movie that sounded as if it was an ATMOS track without the ATMOS speakers? I suspect the processing and the source movie recording itself had more to do with the quality of the surround track than the speakers did. This has always been my objection to adding more and more speakers- a good 5.1 system with a well done track is just as good.

Nice review, they must be truly amazing. For those like me who like to listen to the described sound tracks on their own system,... "Gregory Porter’s 2016 release, Take Me to the Alley, has a number of exceptional tracks, with two of the most notable being the bonus duets “Holding On [featuring Kem]” and “Insanity [featuring Lalah Hathaway]”. The 3Fs showed them off, beginning with the finger snaps at the start of “Holding On,” which were strong, dynamically crisp, and holographically placed at dead centre." Actually the finger snaps are on "Insanity" not "Holding On"!
Read more at https://www.soundandvision.com/content/paradigm-persona-3f-speaker-syste...

I put this on after the Gregory Porter. This is another great recording to admire your systems performance. Some of the best sounding guitar, both electric and acoustic, saxophone, piano, bass and drums, recorded masterfully at Inception Studios, it features some of the new Jazz virtuosos coming out of Toronto Canada!