A little over a week after being acquired by Sound United, the parent company of Polk Audio and Definitive Technology, Denon has introduced its latest AV receiver, dubbed the Denon HEOS AVR.
At a first glance, the Denon HEOS AVR may not look like a standard AV receiver, and that’s because it isn’t. The HEOS name should be the big giveaway as to what Denon intends for this device – a hub for those wanting a complete multi-room audio system.
Of course, Denon isn’t being completely misleading with the ‘AVR’ in the name. It still packs 50W per channel of Class D amplification and standard speaker terminals on the back for wiring up a 5.1 speaker system, but installers are unlikely to use it for those. The 5.1 speaker support does mean that the HEOS AVR is incapable of supporting DTS:X and Dolby Atmos audio formats.
The Denon HEOS AVR has been specifically engineered to work with wireless speakers from the HEOS range. That means installers can work with a completely wireless surround sound system, rather than having to contend with any wiring.
That’s similar to the approach Sonos is making with its speakers, which is unsurprising given HEOS is a direct competitor to Sonos.
As part of Denon’s drive to cut wires, the company has worked tirelessly to add support for pretty much every streaming service and file format that a user could want. This includes WAV, FLAC, ALAC and DSD, as well as streaming services such as Spotify and Deezer.
As this is still an AV receiver, the HEOS AVR provides support for four HDMI devices for connecting devices such as Blu-ray players and set-top boxes. All of the ports also support HDMI 2.0a and HDCP 2.2.
The HEOS AVR is expected to be available in April for $999.
The question still on our minds: What’s next for HEOS and Play-Fi under Sound United?
This story originally appeared on CE Pro Europe.
