Leon's Horizon: One Hulking Hi-Fi

The Horizon premium speaker system offers soundstage-quality sound for your high-end home theater

By Cliff Edwards

Editor's Rating:

The Good: Excellent range of sound

The Bad: Large main speakers overpower a smaller room; bulky external subwoofer amplifier

The Bottom Line: Custom-built speakers to match your home theater setup with great sound and looks

Reader Reviews

For more than a year, I've been looking for a great set of compact home theater speakers to complement my living room setup. Giant standing speakers seemed too ostentatious for my taste, so I initially rejected the idea of reviewing the hefty-looking Horizon premium speaker system designed by a small Michigan company called Leon Speaker Corp.

After using the $6,000 Horizon speaker system to listen to music and movies in all their high-fidelity glory, though, I'm glad I changed my mind. The speakers handled audio and video with aplomb, offering rich bass and clarity of sound.

The disadvantage to the Horizon system is that the main speakers and subwoofer can overpower a smaller room. These speakers are meant to be seen as well as heard, so anyone looking for unobtrusive satellite speakers may want to shop elsewhere. The center speaker and two front surrounds are custom-designed to match the size of your big screen television.

A Gadget-Lover's Dream

I tested the system with a Pioneer Kuro 50-inch plasma I had on loan for a separate product review. The company also offers custom finishing on the cabinetry; the system I reviewed offered a stylish gray coat on the main speakers and white satellite speakers.

The center sound bar, which can be installed directly onto the wall, is one long and heavy slab of workmanship. Underneath the grille cloth are two soft-dome tweeters for higher sound frequencies; dual, low-sound woofers; and one woofer-tweeter-woofer combination for the center. On the back are three sets of binding posts for speakers.

The front surround speakers, also intended for wall mounting, each offer a woofer-tweeter combination. There are two smaller bookshelf satellites and a unique-looking subwoofer, a svelte 4-inch front-driving model that stands on a silver post with a separate amplifier attached to it.

At 35 pounds, the amplifier is by no means light—but it's made to perform. It offers front-panel controls for variable phase, cutoff frequency (30 to 200 Hz), and gain. It also sports a parametric equalizer with controls for frequency, bandwidth, and level. Around back are line-level inputs, a selector for on/auto/12-volt trigger, a trigger input, and a pair of speaker binding posts to connect the sub. In short, it's a gadget-lover's dream, offering many options for adjusting to subwoofer to capture high and low frequency ranges while searching for optimal sound.

With the exception of the subwoofer, the Leon speakers are nothing special to look at. Other models I've tested have been shiny, cone-shaped, or spherical. The Horizon speakers are boxy rectangles, but they do deliver where it counts. Attached to my mid-range Pioneer receiver, the Horizon speakers offered great performance, delivering a better sense of range and depth than I've heard on other test systems.

Peak Performance

I spent most of my time testing the speakers against Blu-ray high-definition movies, since the Horizon series is marketed more toward home theater rooms. While watching action-packed movies such as The Incredible Hulk and The Dark Knight, I actually was surprised a couple of times that I noticed the separation of sound through the Dolby 5.1 and DTS system enough to make me glance around the room to pinpoint the source. It's the mark of pretty good speakers, since the goal is to convey soundstage depth in any size room. Despite my initial skepticism that the subwoofer might offer more style than substance, it packed enough of a punch in some scenes to make me wonder whether the neighbors might complain about the noise.

And while I don't consider the Horizon system worth buying for music lovers alone, audiophiles will certainly be happy with what they hear. I dusted off an old Depeche Mode CD and loved how the system seemed to perfectly reproduce the range of musical instruments in "A Question of Lust," along with the haunting, slightly echoed vocals. And classical music played through my Sonos wireless music system packed a nice punch.

The system must be ordered directly from Leon, which promises a three- to five-day turnaround. If you're looking for a heavyweight system to match a heavyweight home theater setup, Leon's Horizon makes a good fit.

Edwards is a correspondent in BusinessWeek's Silicon Valley bureau.

Business Exchange

Track and share business topics across the Web.