But the really low stuff—Queen Amidala’s ship passing over in the opening of Star Wars, Episode II: Attack of the Clones or the deep synthesized bass that dwells underneath dance music—overwhelms the Monitor 5. It starts to distort and lose control. (And the CC-370 and the Mini Monitor aren’t big enough to help.) Which is to say, the Monitor 5 is no more or less competent in the bass than a typical speaker of its size—and probably more robust than most plasma speakers. If you want to watch Chapter 3 of Attack of the Clones over and over again, though, you’ll be needing that subwoofer.

What’s surprising about the On-Wall Series isn’t the bass, though. It’s that you so quickly forget you’re listening to speakers bolted to the wall. Whatever Paradigm did to change the sound for on-wall use, they nailed it. I noticed little coloration when listening to this system. Even with stereo music from CDs, the voices and instruments sounded shockingly natural. I did notice a slight lack of upper bass in the OW-CC-370 center speaker, which makes voices sound a tad thin, but in every movie I played in about a month’s time of using the On-Wall Series, the dialogue sounded extremely clear. And that’s a real compliment, considering that the On-Wall Series costs a fifth as much as a typical speaker that might inhabit my listening room.

On-wall speakers never produce the deep, enveloping sound that audio enthusiasts crave, but the On-Wall Series does create a reasonable sense of stereo soundstaging. When I played my best-sounding CDs through the Monitor 5s, the sound actually seemed to come from about five feet behind the wall, and it wrapped around me to create a surprising sense of ambience. Don’t get too excited—any good stand-mounted stereo speaker, even Paradigm’s bottom-of-the-line Micro, can do better. But Monitor 5’s stereo imaging is as good as I’ve heard from any on-wall speaker. And no, it’s not the first one I’ve tested—I’ve re viewed at least eight. So there.