£649

The best amplifier in the world? Ayre Acoustics’ KX-R Twenty/vx-r Twenty combo costs £54k, so what do you get for your money?

Samsung QE65Q95T

Dali Katch One

winner, this is a tall unit that will benefit from being wall-mounted; otherwise you run the risk of blocking the IR sensor on your TV, so remote controlling it could be tricky. There’s a good reason for that height: Dali has crammed in four 9cm aluminium mid/bass drivers and four 11.5cm steel passive radiators inside the soundbar, alongside two 21mm softdome high-frequency units. Powering all that are four 50W class D amplifiers – and, if that’s not enough for you (it should be), there’s a connection for an external sub-woofer at the rear as well.

The sound from the Dali is suitably impressive. What strikes us first is the superb dynamic variation. This speaker can go from intense quiet to thunderous explosions without breaking sweat. High notes have just a smidge of brightness to them at times, but for the most part, there’s nothing that jars across the frequencies. Dialogue is controlled really well – imperative for a soundbar of course – and the Katch One has great spatial ability. For all the whizz-bangs, then, there’s still great clarity to voices throughout, and the soundtrack never swamps the dialogue. There’s an appealing nuance to vocal timbre too, with translatable emotion coming through the screen.

The best at the price

The benefit of a decent soundbar is only too clear with the Dali. Not only is the crisp, dynamic audio significantly beyond what you’ll get from your flat panel, this device is sonically superior to all of its similarly priced rivals.

We haven’t left too much space for our source – it is, after all, such a well known service that there’s not too much to add. Sky Q was the biggest overhaul Sky had given to its package since it introduced Sky+, aiming to do for television what Sonos did to music – and make it truly multi-room. It’s not a cheap service, inevitably, but if you want a service that pretty much has it all, from 4K, Dolby Digital and Dolby Atmos, to multi-room and a huge back catalogue of films, box-sets and programming, Sky Q is it. And now that it has finally added some HDR content to its service, it’s as complete a package as you can get.

Sky Q feels utterly contemporary, combining almost every way of watching TV and allowing you to access them all over your home (and, to an extent, outside). This is as good as TV gets – if you can bear the not inconsiderable cost. So it’s a no-brainer, really, for this brilliant home cinema package.

Denon AVC-X6500H

For those people with the luxury of space, there’s no doubt that the very best sound you can get for a home cinema is through a proper multi-channel amplifier and speaker package system. A properly set-up package will have you feeling that you’re right in the middle of the movie action – and once you’ve heard a brilliant set-up such as this, you’ll appreciate why we say that sound is such a key part of the movie experience. It’s absolutely vital as far as getting the viewer truly engrossed in the story.

In this system, then, we take an excellent 2020 65in OLED television and marry it with a top notch sound team.

One thing to note with this set-up is that this great Denon amplifier is coming to the end of its life on sale, so you’ll have to be quick if you want to snap one up. Denon’s new range of amps is imminent, but the current global pandemic has delayed a number of products, not surprisingly, so for now we stick with the surround amp that we know and love.

After all, the AVC-X6500H amplifier is our current Award winner at this price. It’s an 11-channel AV amplifier with all the nuts and bolts required for a serious home cinema system. There are eight HDMI 2.2 inputs with EARC and 4K HDR support, compatibility with Dolby Atmos (7.1.4) and DTS:X and the ability to play hi-res music files and share them around the house via HEOS.

The quest for greater power, especially in a product already holding its own in terms of muscle, can sometimes tip the balance towards becoming a fatiguing listen. However, Denon nimbly avoids any such trap.

Instead, the AVC-X6500H’S extra muscle makes it feel simply more authoritative than its predecessor, and it relinquishes none of its subtlety when required to tone down its enthusiasm. It offers the same impressive levels of detail throughout the frequency range. Denon’s amps have become renowned for their full-bodied presentations, but the AVC-X6500H appears to offer further solidity to dialogue without becoming unnaturally bass-heavy.

And the amp marries beautifully with ATC’S lovely speaker package, which comprises four SCM7 standmounters, the C1C centre speaker and the C1 subwoofer.

Given that we have relatively modestly sized standmount speakers rather than big floorstanders here, you might expect the sound to be lacking in weight. Thankfully, it’s not and, in fact, we’re pleasantly surprised by how rich the surround effects are.

ATC says the C1C centre is designed to complement the SCM7S we have in the corners of our room, and it certainly shares their solid, balanced tone. Even in the heat of battle, with a busy score and even busier list of sound effects, their edges are neither sharp nor smoothed: it’s a balance that has us almost forgetting to listen critically and just becoming lost in the film. We suppose the highest praise we can offer ATC here is that the C1 5.1 gives our far more expensive PMC reference system a run for its money.

To give this superb cinema sound the picture it deserves, we have turned to OLED giant LG’S latest 65in set. Comparing the GX’S Dolby Vision delivery to that of last year’s C9, there’s an extra lusciousness and nuance to the colour palette that makes characters, fauna and flora look that bit more organic and true to life. There’s more dark detail, too, without any compromise to the overall depth of the blacks.

LG has clearly also stepped things up in terms of motion handling. With all processing turned off, the GX is notably smoother and steadier in its handling. What’s more, while the C9’s Trumotion processing looked deeply unnatural on all but the most minimal setting, the GX’S Natural option does an impressive job of further sharpening and smoothing motion without introducing the unnerving so-called ‘soap opera effect’.

Effortless naturalism