Paradigm Persona 5F Tower Loudspeaker Review

Persona 5F Introduction

The popular Canadian speaker manufacturer Paradigm is well known for their widely-available and affordable loudspeakers. Their highest-end speakers before recently were the Signature collection, which topped out with the Signature S8 floor-standing speaker at $4,500 each. That is a pricey speaker to be sure, but their recently released Persona series blows well past that price point. Paradigm has set their sights on the high-end market with the Persona line, and their new flagship speaker, the Persona 9H, will set you back a cool $35k a pair. Paradigm has decided to take all of their considerable expertise to engineer a speaker series that takes an uncompromising approach to loudspeaker design. Paradigm loaned us the 5F model, which is the middle-child in the Persona line-up, but the middle speaker of a series like Persona is still a very high-end speaker, priced at $17,000 a pair. So what kind of speaker is Paradigm selling for the cost of a small car? Let's take a look.

Appearance

The Persona speakers look unique and are quite attractive for floor-standing speakers. They have a very modern feel with clean lines and curved cabinetry. The silver metallic gloss finish of my review model 5F speakers reminded me of an automotive aesthetic; more specifically like that of a Porsche. The automotive analogue of Porsche would seem to be apt, considering the pricing. The tweeter and midwoofer have in-built grilles that have a mesmerizing fractal swirl pattern. Supposedly this pattern serves a functional purpose, but we will discuss that in the design overview. The clean styling, smooth silver satin cones, and ornate grilles set the Persona speakers apart from any others. The grilles are bound to make the Persona speakers instantly recognizable among audio enthusiasts, so these speakers are certainly not going to be mistaken for another line or another manufacturer.

   

The Personas are boldly styled, so they will not easily disappear into a room, especially in homes with more traditional decor. Guests will notice them. Certainly, those interested buyers are aware of that, and their appearance is likely a draw for their targeted customer market. There will be those who instantly rule out owning speakers of such an audacious appearance, but I personally think they are quite fetching.

Design Overview

From a design perspective, the most striking feature of the Persona 5F is the use of beryllium for the tweeter diaphragm and especially for the mid-woofer cone. Beryllium is an expensive metal used in high-end speakers but mostly just for tweeters. It is rarely used as a cone diaphragm mainly due to the prohibitive cost. However, a relatively large speaker manufacturer like Paradigm can bring down the cost by producing much larger quantities of beryllium cones than what is normally made using this material.

 

Persona tweeter and mid-woofer 

A great explanation of the reason why beryllium is such a desirous material for driver diaphragms is found in this Audioholics article: Identifying Legitimately High Fidelity Loudspeakers: Speaker Diaphragm Material. For a brief and basic explanation, beryllium is a very light metal (30% lighter than Aluminum) and extremely stiff (4 times stiffer than Aluminum) with great damping. Other metals such as aluminum and titanium being heavier and less stiff bend and flex in rapid motions more easily than beryllium. This means that cones made out of aluminum and titanium lose their uniform motion at lower frequency oscillations than beryllium, or, to put it another way, aluminum and titanium cones will start to bend and flex at frequencies that beryllium is able to maintain its shape.

Beryllium’s ability to hold its shape for a greater frequency band is a big advantage for driver performance. When cones start to flex, this is called cone break-up, and it can have serious negative consequences for sound reproduction. What is normally seen when cones begin to breakup is a very erratic frequency response; large spikes of upper-frequency resonance that can sound pretty bad. For soft cones such as paper or polypropylene, the breakup resonances can be mild, but as a result of that material’s softness, they do not play high frequencies nearly as well as stiffer metal cones. What can be had with a beryllium cone is a driver that can play to relatively high frequencies without the intrusion of breakup. This is true for both the tweeter diaphragm as well as mid-woofer cone.  

The special design features of the Persona 5F do not stop at beryllium diaphragms. While those might be the crown jewels of the Persona line, these speakers have a list of features and innovations. Paradigm has employed a patented ribbed surround that they call Active Ridge Technology (A.R.T.), which supposedly allows for more headroom than conventional half-roll designs. When typical surrounds are stretched at high excursions, particularly in the inward-stroke, deformations can occur from the high tension, and these deformations can cause distortion or even tears in the surround. This ridged surround design by Paradigm supposedly reduces these deformations by directing material stress to points that can better cope with it due to the shape of the surround. Paradigm claims that A.R.T allows 1.5 times the excursion for the same surround roll that results in a 3 dB increase in headroom. While I find Paradigm’s claims of a 3 dB increase in headroom from this technology rather optimistic, the idea is still interesting and could plausibly offer improvements over conventional surround design.

 

Manufacture of the Persona cabinet: layers of HDF being pressed into shape with adhesive 

Paradigm has gone to great lengths in engineering a top-notch cabinet as well. The cabinet is essentially a rounded shell that attaches to the front baffle. The ‘shell’ is made from seven layers of high-density fiberboard glued together with a viscoelastic adhesive. Viscoelastic material is ideal for damping resonances and isolating vibration, so a cabinet design like the Personas should be very well protected against acoustic resonances. The cabinet is heavily braced as well. The rounded construction and sloping top and bottom pieces assure no parallel surfaces, which will help to reduce internal cabinet standing waves. Rapping on the enclosure sides does not produce any lingering hollow decays, so the Persona 5F passes the elementary knock test quite well.

The Persona 5F is a ported speaker, and the port is cleverly hidden on the angled bottom of the cabinet. This does away with the need for a curved and therefore more turbulent and noisier port in order to achieve a lower tuning point, since the port runs along the length of the cabinet where there is more distance. The cabinet stands on a platform that the feet are attached to. The Persona 5F comes with rubber discs and spiked feet, so the user has a choice in style of feet.

The 5F speakers have some slick-looking binding posts with a carbon-fiber weave on them. There are two sets of binding posts that can be connected using a nickel plate. The Persona 5F speakers are bi-amplifiable, so you can drive the bass section with a different amplifier than the mid-woofer and tweeter. In theory, this will help reduce intermodulation distortion.

Paradigm claims the nifty-looking grilles that cover the mid-woofer and tweeter, which they call ‘Perforated Phase-Aligning Driver Lenses’, also serves a function similar to phase plugs, in that they prevent frequencies generated by different areas of the cones from conflicting with each other which can happen at frequencies with a shorter wavelength than the diameter of the cone. In the pattern cut into these ‘driver lenses,’ we can see the larger holes start from the outer rim and become smaller as we move inward toward the center. Higher frequencies will be more affected by regions of the grille with smaller perforations, so they will be more greatly hindered by the central region of the driver lens. This means that the higher frequencies generated by the more recessed center of the cone will be blocked from interacting with those same frequencies that are generated by the more forward edges of the cone. Theoretically, this will help to keep all the sound generated by the cone to keep better phase-coherence which will make for a smoother frequency response.

The bass drivers are crossed over low enough that they would not benefit from this type of device. To handle the bass, the Persona 5F uses three 7” drivers with anodized aluminum cones that Paradigm calls ‘X-PAL’ woofers. That should enable it to move quite a bit of air, although it won’t compete with a beefy subwoofer for deep bass output. For music frequencies of 40 Hz and above, it should be able to get very loud with enough amplification. The bass drivers hand over the frequency spectrum to the midwoofer at 450 Hz at a 3^rd-order slope, and the mid-woofer takes over up to 2.4 kHz where it crosses over to the tweeter at another 3^rd-order slope. In their promotional material for the Persona speakers, Paradigm boasts the use of large polypropylene capacitors in their crossover circuit which would be good for higher voltage allowance and a longer life than typical capacitors.

Paradigm Persona 5F Loudspeaker Listening Tests

In my approximately 24’ by 13’ listening room, I set up the speakers with stand-off distances between the backwall and sidewall, and equal distance between speakers and listening position, with speakers toed-in toward the listening position but not directly facing the listening position. Listening distance from the speakers was about 10 feet. Paradigm recommends the Persona 5F to be listened to with a moderate toe-in, and with the tweeters at ear level, and a 3-meter distance from the speaker. Equipment used was an Anthem MCA225 amplifier (named for its 225 watts per channel at 8 ohms) and Anthem AVM 60 processor. The Persona 5Fs were used in direct mode and also with Anthem’s ARC equalization. A Hsu Research VTF-15h mk2 subwoofer with an 80 Hz crossover frequency was used to supplement the bass on a few occasions, but the Persona 5F speakers are capable enough in bass reproduction that subwoofers are not at all required.

Music Listening

One recording that I found which would seem to be a good match for the capability of the 5F speakers is ‘Mozart Requiem Realizations’ as performed by The Choir of King’s College at Cambridge and a host of highly-regarded soloists. Mozart’s monumental but unfinished work gets a royal treatment by the Choir of King’s College which performs the popular Sussmayr version of Requiem along with some other realizations that take this music in different directions. This SACD recording is exquisite and fitting of these sublime pieces of music.

The Persona speakers gave this beautiful music and superb recording its deserved reception. The speakers were like transporter devices from Star Trek; it was as if they beamed me to the Chapel Of King’s Choir where this work was recorded. The vocals of the choir and soloists were crystal clear as was the orchestral accompaniment. This is not a recording where the choir gets washed out in a blur of reverb. The Persona speakers keep their fidelity intact, despite the many vocals which occur simultaneously. Mid-range fidelity is crucial to this recording, and Persona 5F speakers proved to be a perfect match. I can find nothing to fault in the Persona 5F’s execution of ‘Mozart Requiem Realizations.’ They were lucid, precise, dynamic, and well-balanced.

The Persona 5Fs can do a large recording, but how about something more intimate and focused on a single instrument? A single instrumental can be a good demonstration of a speaker’s fidelity since a large ensemble may be able to hide imperfect reproductions of a single instrument. For this reason, a simpler recording can sometimes be more revealing of a speaker’s shortcomings. I selected the disc ‘One Piano Four Hands’ by the Piano Duo Schnabel, which is the team of world class pianists Karl Ulrich Schnabel and Joan Rowland. The compositions are an assortment of duets for piano by Franz Schubert. The recording is from the esteemed recording label Sheffield as a part of their ‘Audiophile Reference Series,’ and, as one would expect from Sheffield, the sound quality is outstanding.

The Persona 5F reproduced ‘One Piano Four Hands’ with utmost clarity, and it had the impact that a true piano reproduction should have. A live piano performance can have a startling dynamic range at times, but those who only hear the piano in smooth jazz or new age recordings would never know this. ‘One Piano Four Hands’ as played on the Persona 5F speakers and Anthem MCA225 amplifier did not miss the lifelike punch and power of the expressive performance of the Piano Duo Schnabel on a mighty Hamburg Steinway Grand Piano. Accented notes had pop, but soft notes were not at all lost, so nuance was as clear as the visceral force of the performance. A lesser speaker system might have blended the notation of these complex performances, but none of the dense chords or intricate harmonies were lost in the presentation by the Persona speakers. I spoke of the Persona speakers acting as a transporter device which brought me to the King’s College Chapel for the recordings of Mozart’s Requiem, but now they have transported the performers and Steinway piano into my home theater room. For this type of recording, they have brought the performance to me rather than delivered me to the performance.

An unexpected delight came late last year with the release of ‘Rosetta’, the first studio album by Vangelis in a long time. ‘Rosetta’ is an album that celebrates the Rosetta Space Probe which landed on a comet in 2014. The music itself is made using an array of synthesizers. It has the expansive, cinematic sweep of Vangelis’ operatic film scores but also the playful use of synths that were a mark of his studio albums from the 70’s and 80’s. The soundstage is enormous and all-enveloping at times, with some instrument sections getting a grand-scale treatment as though they occupied all of the heavens where others have a well-defined position. This is an album that does not shy away from deep bass or very high treble as well; the bass can be thunderous at times and the bells can hit some startlingly high pitches.

The Persona 5F speakers ably conveyed the cosmic scope of ‘Rosetta’ without any compromise that I could hear. Low frequencies were not absent and high frequencies were not dulled. The sound seemed to emanate anywhere from a 180-degree angle in front of me which I would attribute to the wide dispersion of the speaker design. These speakers can sound big and were a fitting match for a larger-than-life composition such as ‘Rosetta.’ Vangelis’s synths soared and his percussion rumbled with an astonishing veracity. It was a pure pleasure to listen to ‘Rosetta’ on the Persona 5F speakers, and I hope that this is not the last new studio album from Vangelis that I get to hear on such a fine set of speakers.  

I wanted to see how the Persona 5F speakers would do for a singular vocal, so I queued up Diana Krall’s latest release which would surely be a good example of that. ‘Turn Up the Quiet’ is the smoothest album of blues and jazz that I have heard in a long time, and Krall’s rich voice takes center stage. Some people describe Krall’s voice as ‘smokey’, but it is too smooth for that adjective. It is mellow, perhaps a bit earthy, and a perfect match for the classic jazz compositions selected for performance on ‘Turn Up the Quiet.’ The recording of the vocals and instrumentals were exemplary, as is usual for productions with Mrs. Krall.

The Persona 5F speakers recreated Mrs. Krall’s voice with meticulous clarity. Imaging was superb, not just with Krall’s voice anchoring the music with a strong center image but with well-defined instrument positions of her backup players flanking her voice at various distances. The Persona 5F speakers gave the presentation a palpable sense of depth as well as breadth. At times, the album shifted focus to the instruments, which had the vibrancy and detail of Diana’s voice, and the speakers gave them a sonic replica as vivid as I would imagine that any speaker would be capable of. It was a top-notch reproduction, and I believe anyone interested in high-fidelity sound would be pleased with the sound of these speakers.

Movie Watching

For movie watching, I used the Persona pair as the front left and right speakers in a 7.1 system. One movie I viewed with the Persona 5F speakers was the new science-fiction film ‘Life.’ I was hoping for a sound mix similar to that of the film ‘Gravity,’ and it did convey those effects in moments, but it was a more conventional sound mix for the most part. ‘Life’ is about scientists examining some micro-organisms from the Martian soil aboard the International Space Station. Since this is a movie, and since movies need drama, bad things end up occurring. There was quite a bit of expository dialogue, and the Persona 5F speakers had no trouble with intelligibility, even on scenes where dialogue occurred in the midst of a lot of action. I cranked the movie at moments to hear the dynamic range of the speakers, and the Persona 5Fs proved to be very capable, especially during the tumultuous climax. ‘Life’ has a good sound mix but not extraordinary one, and the Persona 5F speakers showed themselves to be as able at film sound mixes as they were with music. As an aside, I am really hoping for a sequel to this movie!

      

Another new release that I watched using the Persona 5F speakers was the fantasy epic ‘Kong: Skull Island.’ I figured that a big-budget film about giant monsters would have a heavy-duty sound mix, and I was correct. There are a variety of large-scale action set pieces, and the sound mix appropriately reflected the magnitude of the on-screen events, whether it’s King Kong versus the U.S. military, or King Kong versus some other gigantic monster, or the U.S. military versus some other gigantic monster. The action was supported by Henry Jackman’s grand orchestral score. The Persona speakers were able to convey the enormity of the havoc depicted in ‘Kong: Skull Island.’  Monstrous footsteps and the creature’s deafening roars were belted out with verve. It was in this movie that the addition of a subwoofer was used to reinforce the lowest frequency content. The Persona 5F speakers are very capable down to 30 Hz, but ‘Kong’ had passages where they just are not able to match the output of a beefy subwoofer. Still, if you want to surpass the bass performance of the 5F speakers, you will need a serious subwoofer. An entry level subwoofer is not going to be a match for them. While the Persona speakers couldn’t quite catch the deepest registers of the ‘Kong’ sound mix, they were a great match for the tremendous dynamic range of this massive romp. It should be noted that full-range speakers that do have strong bass in the deeper frequency spectrum of 25 Hz and below would have to be much larger than the Persona 5F speakers by physical necessity.

Paradigm Persona 5F Loudspeaker Measurements and Analysis

The Paradigm Persona 5F makes this section of my review a bit difficult. I normally do free-air testing of review units, but that means taking them out to my test site, propping them up on some kind of platform where I can get enough of a distance from the ground to be able to measure the frequency response without too much interference from acoustic reflections from the ground. It is not without risk to the review units. Since the review units I normally test are not terribly expensive, it is worth the risk to bring the reader a comprehensive report on the loudspeaker’s performance. The Persona 5F speakers are quite expensive and not easily manageable since they are somewhat large and almost 100 lbs. each. I decided to forgo regular free-air testing since there was a real chance of having the speaker sustain serious damage.

In lieu of my regular measurements, I have asked Paradigm if they could provide me with a frequency response from their own testing. Paradigm has the largest anechoic chamber in North America, and their measurements are bound to be extremely good. I then set out to confirm their response shape with close mic measurements of the Persona 5F drivers. Close mic measuring the drivers is not a great way to establish the overall response of a speaker like the Persona 5F, but it can give us a peek at the response of the individual drivers.

 

Paradigm Persona 5F frequency response 

The above chart exhibits the frequency response of the Persona 5F as measured by Paradigm. They are windows of both horizontal and vertical response measurements taken at a two-meter distance in 15-degree increments and then averaged. We see the direct axis to 15-degree angle measures extraordinarily flat up to 5 kHz where we see a slight rise in treble centered around 10 kHz. The 30 degree to 45-degree window is still very flat with a slight drop around 2 kHz and a more significant drop after 5 kHz. This angle should provide a ‘warm’ sound, as opposed to a potentially brighter sound found around the direct axis. If you like a bright sound, these should be listened to facing the listener directly. If you prefer a more laid back sound, simply position them facing straight forward at a parallel angle, so that if the listening position forms a triangle with the speaker, the listener will be roughly 30 to 40 degrees off of the direct axis.

We can see from the frequency response windows that the Persona 5F speakers have a very wide dispersion. They will be able to cover a large listening area with a smooth, even sound.

The engineering in this speaker is serious: the Persona 5F responses are a demonstration of Paradigm’s extensive expertise and resources leveraged to produce a truly high-fidelity loudspeaker.

 

Paradigm Persona 5F frequency response averaged from close-mic measurements

The above graph depicts my own measurements of the Persona 5F. It is an average of close-microphone measurements. I set the microphone one inch away from the tweeter, mid-woofer, and a bass driver, and measured sweep tones of the same voltage level. This measuring technique captures the response from the individual drivers. I then averaged the responses for the overall response. This is an imperfect measurement method and will miss significant aspects of the sound such as how well the drivers integrate into the far-field, phase issues, diffraction behavior, and so on. It can also exaggerate the low-frequency response, as it is doing on this graph. However, it can show driver misbehavior and reveal problems of that nature. No such problems were found in my measurements, and the dip around 16 kHz is probably just a phase cancellation due to the shape of the waveguide versus the distance of the microphone. If we pull the mic back a bit more, it disappears. The takeaway of this graph is that at the attractively flat response of Paradigm’s own measurements are certainly plausible and even probable were I to measure at a greater distance in more favorable conditions.

Paradigm Persona 5F impedance and phase measurements 

The above graph shows the electrical impedance and phase of the Persona 5F speakers. This is not the most benign load on amplifiers, but it is not bad either. In the Persona 5F spec sheet, next to impedance, Paradigm simply lists it as being ‘compatible with 8 ohms.’ To put it bluntly, this is not an 8-ohm speaker. A large swath of most of the heavily used range in music and speech hovers around 5 ohms. That being said, most amplifiers should be able to tackle this load, although I would not want to try to drive these things with a cheap AVR (not that anyone who can afford these is going to drive them with one). Owners will want an amplifier rated for 4-ohm impedance loads to drive these speakers. The good news is there are no severe dips, and most of the steep phase angles occur at high impedance frequency bands. Again, we see the superb engineering that went into these speakers for having such a consistent electrical load; there are no nasty or heavily-taxing extremes shown here. 

We can tell from the low-frequency saddle in this impedance graph that the port tuning of these speakers is in the mid 20’s Hz region. The bass from the Persona 5F drivers is real. Most people will be able to get by pretty easily without a subwoofer with these speakers.

Paradigm Persona 5F Loudspeaker Conclusion

I really like the Persona 5F speaker, and that may be obvious to anyone who has read the review up to this point. It is an outstanding floorstanding speaker: It sounds great, it is built well, it measures superbly, and it looks terrific. However, for the asking price, it had better tick all those checkboxes, because it is not an inexpensive speaker. ‘Expensive’ is, of course, relative; there are those for whom a pair of these would not be a considerable expense. But for most people, $17k is not a sum that can be spent on a whim. Furthermore, there is no shortage of solid loudspeakers around this price range: Monitor Audio, Revel, Kef, Focal, Bowers & Wilkins, Dali, Dynaudio, to name just a few. This naturally leads to the question: what does Paradigm bring to the game to distinguish themselves in this crowded market with these Persona 5F speakers?      

One thing that sets them apart is that there are virtually no missteps in terms of sound. The upper treble is a tad hotter than perfectly neutral, but that can easily be equalized. This is not to say that the Persona 5F speakers are particularly forward or bright, which is not the case. They have a very good spectral balance and are simply a bit brighter than what might be termed a ‘warm’ sound signature. The midrange frequencies of the 5F speakers are easily the best of any speaker I have had in my home thus far. I cannot imagine a loudspeaker with more midrange clarity; in this range the Persona 5F were superb. The bass felt natural and not boosted or otherwise disconnected from the rest of the sound. It was powerful when it needed to be and extended quite deeply for a tower speaker of its size. The dispersion is wide and uniform, so they will have very good coverage across a large listening area instead of a single ‘sweet spot.’ The Persona 5F speakers have enough dynamic range to handle a good sized room too. They can get loud and have no problems doing so, and their imaging and soundstage is also terrific.

Their build quality and appearance are excellent, as one would expect at this price point. As I noted before, their styling is reminiscent of a high-end luxury car. The designs of the grilles on the mid-woofer and tweeter are distinctive and very telegenic. Aesthetics are a very subjective matter, however, and those looking for speakers that will fit in a traditional decor will be looking for wood finishes or at least muted color schemes, will not find the Persona speakers to be aesthetically compatible with their decor. But I do think most people will find them to be very appealing to look at.

Bottom Line

If you are in the market for a $17k speaker set, there are lots of great choices, but I would say that the Persona 5F speakers have qualities that make them a very viable choice at this price. For me, their strongest quality is their midrange clarity. I ran A/B comparisons with some other speakers I had on hand, and that was the Persona’s standout feature. Nothing could touch them on that point. One example was the chorus in the ‘Mozart Requim Realization’ album. Other speakers sounded good, but the differentiability on the individual voices of the chorus on the Persona speakers was very much on another level. Of course, the other speakers used were not near the same price range as the Persona 5Fs, but I don’t normally have a lot of five-figure speakers kicking around. Regardless, the detail and clarity of the Persona 5F midrange was eye-opening. I am not certain to what extent the beryllium cone of the midrange driver is the cause of the terrific midrange sound, and I am more inclined to believe that it is the overall construction and design of the speaker rather than exotic diaphragm material.

To bring this review to a close, I would say that the Paradigm Persona 5F speakers deserve strong consideration for those shopping for tower speakers in this price range. Paradigm has entered the high-end market with a very strong product. Those shopping for high-end loudspeakers would be remiss not to give the Persona speaker line an audition. I believe those who do listen to them will be as impressed as I was, and if that is the case, Paradigm is sure to have great success with the Persona product line.

The Score Card

The scoring below is based on each piece of equipment doing the duty it is designed for. The numbers are weighed heavily with respect to the individual cost of each unit, thus giving a rating roughly equal to:

Performance × Price Factor/Value = Rating

Audioholics.com note: The ratings indicated below are based on subjective listening and objective testing of the product in question. The rating scale is based on performance/value ratio. If you notice better performing products in future reviews that have lower numbers in certain areas, be aware that the value factor is most likely the culprit. Other Audioholics reviewers may rate products solely based on performance, and each reviewer has his/her own system for ratings.

Audioholics Rating Scale

• — Excellent
• — Very Good
• — Good
• — Fair
• — Poor

Metric	Rating
Build Quality
Appearance
Treble Extension
Treble Smoothness
Midrange Accuracy
Bass Extension
Bass Accuracy
Imaging
Dynamic Range
Fit and Finish
Performance
Value