Detailed home theater sound from Denon

Denon’s striking DHT-S517 sound bar gives you an easy way to enjoy premium TV sound. It’s a great alternative for rooms where you can’t — or just don’t want to — install a traditional home theater system with receiver and separate speakers.

This bar uses a powerful front-firing driver array, upward-firing speakers, and a punchy powered subwoofer to deliver a pure home theater experience. As an added bonus, it even has built-in Bluetooth for streaming your favorite music tracks, podcasts, and more.

Stout drivers that bring your flicks to life

On either side of the DHT-S517’s front panel, there’s a 1″ tweeter and unique 4.7″ x 1.6″  racetrack-shaped driver. Together, those drivers provide engaging front left- and right-channel sound effects. In the middle of the sound bar is a 1″ full-range driver that acts as your center channel speaker to bring dialogue and on-screen effects to life.

There are two 2-1/2″ upward-firing height channel speakers on top that reflect sound off your ceiling and down onto your listening position. That means atmospheric sounds like thunder and rain, and overhead effects like  jets and helicopters, will create a 3D soundstage in your room to enhance your cinematic immersion.

Rounding things out, the included subwoofer connects wirelessly to the sound bar through a simple pairing process. It uses a 5-1/4″ woofer powered by a 100-watt internal amplifier to deliver tight, detailed bass.

Enhanced dialogue and unique listening modes

There are several audio adjustment features built into the DHT-S517 that help you tailor its sound to your own liking. If you’re like me and have trouble discerning voices above the bangs and booms of an action sequence, this bar has you covered with Denon’s Dialogue Enhancer feature. It cleans up dialogue, even during loud scenes, and makes voices more prevalent in the mix. There are three levels of dialogue enhancement to choose from. The sound bar even lets you turn the dialogue volume up without raising the overall volume of the rest of the speakers.

There are also three sound modes to select from — “Movie”, “Night”, and “Music” — to help you get the right sound for the occasion. Speaking of music, Denon also included a “Pure Mode” specifically for your tunes. It eliminates any surround sound processing and other sound tweaks, which results in your music being heard without coloration or processing.

Simple connections

Denon designed this sound bar to be super-easy to set up. After connecting it to your TV via an HDMI cable, there’s not much else to do. The DHT-S517’s HDMI port supports eARC and HDMI-CEC, so you can control the sound bar’s volume with your TV remote. The rear panel also sports an HDMI, optical digital, and 3.5mm auxiliary input for hardwiring other sources, like your computer, Blu-ray player, CD player, or smartphone.

The sound bar can be placed neatly beneath your TV if you’ve got the space. Or you can use the rear keyhole slots for easy wall-mounting.

Product highlights:

System specs:

• 3.1.2-channel powered sound bar and wireless subwoofer system
• built-in Bluetooth for music streaming from compatible devices
• built-in decoding for Dolby® Digital, Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Digital Plus, and Dolby Atmos

Sound bar specs:

• seven-driver array delivers powerful home theater sound
  • two 4.7″ x 1.6″ racetrack-shaped midrange drivers
  • two 1″ tweeters
  • one 1″ full-range center channel driver
  • two 2-1/2″ upward-firing Atmos-channel speakers
• built-in 50-watt amplifier
• Movie, Night, and Music listening modes
• Dialogue Enhancer raises volume of voices to make them more intelligible
  • dialogue volume can be raised independently from the rest of the drivers
• remote control included
• rear keyhole brackets for easy wall-mounting
• dimensions (measured by Crutchfield): 41-5/16″W x 2-5/16″H x 3-13/16″D
• weight: 5.5 lbs.

Wireless subwoofer specs:

• 5-1/4″ woofer powered by 100-watt amplifier
• connects wirelessly to sound bar for flexible placement
• dimensions (measured by Crutchfield): 6-3/4″W x 14-9/16″H x 12-15/16″D
• weight: 9.5 lbs.

Connections and other info:

• 1 HDMI input, 1 HDMI output (one cable included)
  • supports both ARC (Audio Return Channel) and eARC (enhanced Audio Return Channel)
• optical digital input (cable included)
• 3.5mm auxiliary input for connecting external analog sources
• auto power off feature turns system off after a period of no signal
• TV remote can be used to control volume
• warranty: 1 years