| HIGH POINTS |
| Well-balanced response. Excellent imaging. Excellent surround performance on movie soundtracks. Good value. |
| LOW POINTS |
| No-frills subwoofer connections and controls. Surrounds not optimal for some multichannel music recordings. |
The Legend system had no trouble immersing me in DVD-Audio music. The Fleck album is a fine example of a recording where naturally recorded instruments are placed all around you in. And the timbral consistency of this Canadian speaker suite is so good that you'll forget pretty quickly about all the technical wizardry involved in creating a high-resolution multichannel recording and just sit back and listen. The disc's myriad plucked instruments sounded impressively natural and distinct through all five main speakers, and without the crutch of extra high-frequency "zip" that many speakers fall back on.
So Paradigm's Legend v.3 system gets high marks on all the important tests - tonal balance, dynamics, imaging, and coherent surround sound - and costs less than $1,900. No surprise, maybe, but this might be just the kind of "boring" news a lot of speaker buyers will welcome.
