What company makes the best top of the range surround sound system?

This all depends on your personal budget you want to spend. I would recommend you pick up a copy of Home Theater Magazine and close to the back of the magazine will list just about everything you want to know for the home theater. To have surround sound you need a set of speakers, receiver or processor, a blu ray disc player or dvd along with a disc. Surround sound are mostly in blu ray disc movies and some selected cd that are encoded with the Dolby Digital, and tv program in HD with the Dolby Digital. If I had the money to spend I could buy a pair of speakers for $170,000 (Wilson Audio) and speaker cable that cost $24,000. Those very high end system are only available at certain retail store and are special order item. Hope this will help you out.

Speakers: B&W for the LR-RR-RL-Center (depends if you wanted a 5.1, 6.1. or 7.1 set-up. Subwoofer- Velodyne Audio/Video Receiver: HDMI inputs & outputs, surround calibration, DTS-MA/ Dolby tru HD, 7.1 Rotel, Onkyo, Yamaha, Denon Sony bluray player, NMT(media player) Popcorn hour, mede8er The models all depends on the size of the room. Speakers should sound better not only on a surround set-up but also for stereo listening.

Its endless what you can spend and the best systems will all be custom designed for the room and for the clients listening taste. Here is a link to one of the nicer systems out there but this is still far from what you can spend and achieve. The only place you can purchase the best system are at your independent high end audio video stores, as they carry the better equipment and the salesmen usually have many years experience designing these systems. Kevin 40 years high end audio video specialist

your receiver needs to be high end. Denon, Yamaha, Harmon Kardon. DO NOT buy sony, pioneer, jvc or any others of the regular name brands. Go Paradigm speakers. I run a Denon receiver with Paradigm speakers, been running that for 7 years, still going strong have never been disappointed

I've been a fan (and owner) of McIntosh equipment for years. Excellent sound, totally reliable, and VERY long-lived. As an example, my main music source, with countless hours of use, is an MCD-7005 CD player that I've been using since 1988.