Legacy
has been in business since 1983, bringing reference level performance to home
theater and audiophile settings.  They
bring this quality standard throughout their entire line of products from their
$52,800/pr Legacy Helix floorstanding loudspeakers to the $1,795/pr Studio HD
bookshelf loudspeakers.  They also used
this reference quality manufacturing in their Wavelet Preamp, Wavelaunch
Processor, and their Powerbloc2 stereo amplifier.  With this in mind and using this as a standard,
Legacy has released the Calibre compact speaker.  Legacy’s Chief Engineer, Bill Dudleston
stated that his plan was to build the highest resolution compact speaker
available.

A past favorite speaker series for Audioholics was EMPtek’s acclaimed Impression speaker line because of its good performance and tasteful appearance and for its amazingly low pricing. In our reviews of the E5TiR and E55Ti, we noted their “stunning appearance” and “detailed and lifelike” sound. The Impression series went on to become a 9 year success for EMPtek and later, RBH Sound. RBH discontinued the original Impression series in order to revamp the production process for better manufacturing consistency and have now brought the Impression speakers back with a new design and new look but still at a very affordable price.

Here at Audioholics, we recently completed a string of reviews of loudspeakers in an unusually low price-range:$45 to $100 a pair. This was done with two thoughts in mind; first, that there may be some folks who want a good sounding system but who might be on a very tight budget, and second, that there may be some low-budget gems out there that can really compete with more expensive speakers in some fashion. So we surveyed the market and choose a handful of speakers that we felt had potential to exceed their modest price points.

The Dayton Audio B452-AIR bookshelf speaker and C452-AIR center speaker are an expansion of the Dayton Audio B562-AIR, which itself was an offshoot of Dayton Audio’s classic original B562. What has made these series of speakers notable is the extremely low pricing for full-sized bookshelf speakers. At the time of this writing, a pair of B452-AIR speakers can be had for one penny short of $45, which makes them the least expensive speakers ever reviewed at Audioholics (Monoprice MP-65RT on sale still cost $0.11 more/pair).