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MOVIE PERFORMANCE On the DVD of the Pixar feature Cars, the towers had all the guts needed to rev up the big NASCAR race, with tuneful backing score, screaming crowd noise, and zooming vehicles. I was particularly impressed with the center speaker's dialogue intelligibility and natural vocal quality. When the sleepy semi starts swerving, the surrounds (switched back to dipole) neatly handled the high-speed lullaby as well as fast-panning effects, such as the rumble strips and the Doppler-shifted engine revving. Indeed, they delivered a great sense of immersion.

On Superman Returns, I skipped to the "midair emergency" sequence and let the subwoofer sweat it out. The lower octave of the toy model's earthquake rumbled convincingly, and that was only a teaser for the roaring, booming, and crashing of the shuttle and the jet. For its size and power, the sub cranked it all out nicely. I've heard bigger subs do better, but this one is well matched to the rest of the system, providing tight bass with a clean kick.

BOTTOM LINE Aperion makes buying online about as attractive as anyone could make it, down to a 30-day money-back guarantee. But in the end, it's the sound that counts. For movie playback, I give this Aperion Intimus 6 Series home theater speaker system a big thumbs-up: These speakers can really sizzle, kick, and punch on demanding soundtracks. And I was quite pleased with the system's prowess with music, though the towers' somewhat pulled-back, relaxed midrange prevented me from falling completely in love. Still, quibbles aside, Aperion can't be faulted here for delivering very good sound and truly excellent value.

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