Digital Trends

In a perfect world, I'd always recommend full-range loudspeakers—and plenty of ‘em—for a home theater and audio system. More air makes better sound. But the world wasn't built around the needs of audio/video equipment. You'll get a better picture from a CRT rear-projection TV than you will from a glitzy plasma or LCD, but the people have spoken and the winner is style over substance. TVs have slimmed down and the audio systems flanking them have to carry a trimmer profile too.

I'm living proof. My secondary “theater system” is a plasma TV in the basement. I wouldn't mind thin tower speakers to go along with it, but there's no way I'm going to run speaker wire across the floor for surround speakers. If I want better sound than what's built into the TV, I need a neat, clever, compact solution.

Denon designed the S-301 speaker system for people like me. The S-301 stuffs surround circuitry, an AM/FM tuner and DVD player into a mid-size chassis. Two liter-size speakers flank the TV and a 9 ¼ x 14 ½ x 18-inch powered subwoofer—packed with amplifiers—completes the package. There are no rear speakers--that's the clever part. The S-301 packs Dolby Virtual Speaker technology which simulates center and surround channels from a pair of left and right front speakers.

*Edit 12/27/05 - In the conclusion the writer mentions that the S-101 does not support the Apple iPod. This is incorrect as it does.We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. Please visit the conclusion for a list of differences between the two units.