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The newest from Denon is a budget-friendly Dolby Atmos wi-fi subwoofer and soundbar combo

Denon has introduced a Dolby Atmos soundbar that aims to bring Dolby technology to a wider audience. The DHT-S517 has a wireless subwoofer and costs £379. It should be an excellent upgrade for those of us who have TVs that produce great pictures but not necessarily great sound.

The new Denon bar houses a whopping seven drivers with left and right tweeters, midrange drivers, a dedicated center channel, as well as two upward-firing speakers to deliver that all-important Atmos 3D surround sound. There’s also an additional 4K Ultra HD-compatible HDMI input should you want to connect another source directly to the soundbar setup.

An included HDMI cable allows you to connect the DHT-S517 to any TV via a compatible HDMI eARC socket, but you can also connect your TV via the venerable optical input if it’s an older model.

Of course, there’s also Bluetooth connectivity for music playback from any smart device, although there’s no Wi-Fi on board for connecting directly to music services.

Multiple sound modes are available: Movie mode, Music mode, Pure mode and Night mode. Pure mode removes all surround sound processing and, in particular, allows you to hear music as it was originally intended, rather than an enhanced version.

As with many other newer soundbars, there is a mode to improve speech intelligibility (here called Dialogue Enhancer). For this there is a special control that allows you to increase the volume of the voice if you wish. This is independent of the soundbar’s overall volume controls.

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