Linn's successful Classik Music one-box CD-and-amp proved that convenience, style and performance can actually make good bedfellows. The company has now applied this menage a trois of design ideals to home theatre, culminating in the sumptuous Classik Movie and Komponent speaker system.

Okay, deep breath: £6,000 is a big hill of beans for a single DVD/AV receiver unit and a lifestyle speaker package. But from the moment you break the seal on the first Komponent loudspeaker box, you can see where your money is being spent. The design, both aesthetic and industrial, is a league above every other 'lifestyle' system I have looked at and in many respects better than many big-name high-end speakers too.

The main Komponent 110 floor-standers are a tall, elegant extrusion of heavygauge aluminium sculpted to reduce internal standing waves and tuned to get the best from the driver array. This is Linn's famous four-driver line up, with two higher frequency units suspended in front of the midrange to produce and effective point source. If this sounds familiar, it's an arrangement grafted down from the company's flagship speakers like the Komri at 25k per pair.

The driver array makes for an effective four-way design and around the back you have four gold-plated sets of binding posts for quad-wiring. Better still, such extreme cabling shenanigans are not going to look like an incident in a spaghetti restaurant. The speaker has an internal cable channel to the underside of the plinth, and a textured cover keeps the recessed terminals out of sight, too.

Magnetic charm

The grille is elequantly finished and mounted on magnets so there are no unsightly holes or lugs showing on the speaker when removed. Trim detail and terminal covers are in soft-texture paint and the overall build quality is faultless. You even get a heavy multi-spanner - Linn branded of course - that is the only tool required to go from the box to fully set up.

The immaculate design, and many of the features, are repeated in the centre channel and the weighty 104 rear surround speakers. Both are three-way designs (and can be tri-wired) and the 104's dedicated stands replicate the floor-standing 110s, right down to the identical base plinth and cable channel. They even come with heavyweight polythene bags so that if you massload them you don't leave a trail of silver sand all over the living room.