Neutron Five 2.1 system - a stylish 2.1 system with digital, USB and analogue inputs to get the most out of your multimedia

At the heart of the home media center of the future there will be speakers. They will bring the audio from movies, television, and online content like YouTube to life. They will play the AACs, MP3s and ripped CDs on our media servers. They will be at the center of our homes, playing the soundtracks for our lives.

Some think it will be many speakers, a 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound system with speakers and wires (and the necessary installation crew) everywhere, with effects coming from the ceilings and the walls and sneaking up behind us, all driven by monstrously inefficient and expensive surround sound receivers connected to huge nests of wire.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, here at AVI, we tend to think that the “cinematic experience” of surround sound is a bit of a cheap trick. We offer, instead, a bold new solution from the 1950s – stereo.

To put a finer point on it, we offer the Neutron Five 2.1 system. Beautifully compact and marvelously engineered to fill your room with breathtaking music or dramatic cinema sound, all from just 3 attractive black boxes and a minimum of wires. How can this possibly rival surround sound? Are you in your lounge now? Look behind you. Is there a television back there? Imagine yourself at a concert. Is the band behind you? We thought not, so we took a bit of the innovation that went into our flagship ADM 9.1 system, and built a smaller 2.1 (two fronts and a subwoofer) system with the preamp, digital-to-analog converter, and amplifiers (perfectly matched to the speakers they’re meant to drive) packaged in an inconspicuous matte black subwoofer. Then we tied them to a pair of small, lovely piano black speakers. The results are amazing for the price, which is just £900 for the control unit/subwoofer, £399 for the front speakers.

The way it all comes together is nothing short of brilliant: You simply plug all your sources, including your computer if you like, into a choice of digital and analog inputs on the back of the subwoofer, hit play, and control it all from the supplied remote. The stacks of boxes and tangles of wires are gone forever.

What about that center channel speaker? Well, it seems that the inventors of surround sound forgot about one of the best things a good pair of speakers can do – imaging. The little Neutrons will put anything mixed to center right at dead center, where it belongs. They will also create a sound stage that places instruments, voices and effects at many points along a continuum between and even beyond the speakers. This is what stereo was meant to do. A center doesn’t help; it merely gets in the way -- nearly as much as those speakers at the other end of the room from the screen that is supposed to be the source of the sound!

So take a look around your room. When you’ve realized that your telly isn’t behind you, give us a ring.