Looking for another way to access your music? Denon Electronics is about to give that to you -- or at least to those of you with any of the products in the HEOS lineup.
The company just announced plans to add Bluetooth support to the popular HEOS wireless multi-room sound system. The upgrade is taking place today, April 19, 2016.
This means that HEOS users can now call up music on a phone or tablet and stream it to any HEOS product using Bluetooth wireless technology. From there, you can send that same music throughout the entire HEOS network. No Wi-Fi is needed! Of course, Wi-Fi is definitely an option. All HEOS speakers, the pre-amp, and the amp can now stream music all over the house wirelessly using both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
It's important to note that this is an upgrade for new HEOS products only. Still, it's a nice nice little perk. It's also worth mentioning that Bluetooth support is a feature that's not available on Sonos (not yet anyway).
According to Denon, HEOS users can also stream Bluetooth content from one speaker to other speakers over the Wi-Fi network and add one new HEOS HS2 device to an existing HEOS product, all without concern of compatibility issues.
Denon is even adding the option to play high-resolution audio files. Listeners can check out uncompressed WAV (PCM), ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec), and FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) music files up to 24-bit/192kHz over a network or USB. DSD (DSD is the audio coding format of SACD) and AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format) support is expected to follow soon. The new platform includes an ARM A9 1.25GHz processor with 512MB of flash memory combined with 256MB of RAM.
HEOS works with stored and networked audio files, as well as streaming services like Spotify, Pandora, TuneIn, Rhapsody, iHeart Radio, TIDAL, SiriusXM, Soundcloud, and Amazon Music. (FYI: Subscriptions and/or fees may apply.) It also features the ability to group several rooms together for playing the same music, as well as the option to play a different song in every room.
"We are pleased to introduce this new upgrade to our HEOS platform that brings high-resolution audio playback, built-in Bluetooth, and a significant increase in processing power that will intensify performance and support new features that we can't wait to bring to the HEOS family," said Brendon Stead, SVP product development at Denon. "Consumers are embracing our HEOS line of products, and we are looking forward to making the platform even better with new software features."
Denon originally launched the HEOS lineup with three speakers and the HEOS Wi-Fi extender back in 2014. Since then, the company has filled out the series with an indoor/outdoor speaker, a soundbar with a subwoofer, a pre-amp, an amp, and a whole-home multi-zone amplifier. Everything in the lineup works with the HEOS app, which is available for iOS, Android, and Fire devices.
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