Don’t take that name too seriously — Paradigm may change it before the product ships this summer — but you should take this new soundbar very seriously. Almost every other soundbar on the market is made from flimsy, resonant plastic, but the $799 Shift 2.1 is molded from a super-inert composite material that sounds almost completely dead when you rap a knuckle on it. The solid cabinets of the soundbar and accompanying 8-inch woofer should give this product a real edge in sound quality. The bar itself incorporates two active 4-inch drivers, two 4-inch passive radiators, and the same excellent S-PAL dome tweeters used in some of Paradigm’s conventional speakers.
