Stories by: Martin Bell

"Volvo: Boxy but good" was the slogan created by a wigged-out advertising executive (played by Dudley Moore) in the 1990 film Crazy People, but he could just as easily have been referring to a certain Canadian hi-fi manufacturer. For Paradigm is the Volvo of the loudspeaker world. Dependable. Safe. Well engineered. Boring. Of course, things have moved on a bit since those days. While you wouldn't mistake Volvo's latest sedans for a Ferrari, the cuboid designs of yore have been replaced with something altogether more sleek and alluring, and so it is with Paradigm's new Signature series of loudspeakers.

Forget all the review speak, subjective ratings and technical mumbo-jumbo. The simple fact is that all the hi-fi components I've ever reviewed fall into three broad categories.

While Martin Logan's hybrid electrostatic speakers have long enjoyed a reputation for great sound, they also have a reputation for being somewhat, er, difficult to live with. How so? For starters, electrostatic panels are a dipole design--that is, they radiate sound to the rear as well as the front, necessitating placement farther into the room and away from corners than is the case with most conventional speakers. While that may not be a problem in a larger room, it is generally frowned upon in smaller rooms. What's more, electrostatic speakers tend to have a narrow listening sweet spot: they sound great when you're in "the zone" but their poor off-axis response means that treble output droops noticeably when you move outside the plane of the speakers.

The Exposure line-up features three different ranges: the entry-level 2010 series, the middle ranking 3010 series and the range-topping "New Classics" series which--somewhat confusingly--sport Roman numeral model numbers. As part of this latter series, the XXII CD player is Exposure's premier source component. For all that, the Exposure XXII faces some pretty serious competition in the $3K to $5K price band and models from Meridian, Shanling, Sony, Marantz and Naim (to name just a few) knock the Exposure player into a cocked hat when it comes to looks and build quality.

We live in confusing times and few understand this better than the modern audiophile. Wander into your local specialist hi-fi emporium and you'll be dwarfed by enormous plasma screens, surrounded (quite literally) by boom 'n' tizz home theatre systems, and swamped by a plethora of boxes promising to deliver instant audio visual gratification.