SYSTEMS &
SOLUTIONSelsewhere in the home for music at other times.
It’s similarly easy to add the $999 HEOS wireless
subwoofer to deliver the deep bass that can make
movies come alive.
If you don’t fancy all those speakers, you can
go for the soundbar solution; the $1199 HEOS
Home Cinema is a 2.1-channel soundbar that
comes with a wireless subwoofer (and, of course,
all the HEOS streaming and multiroom abilities),
while the $1299 HEOS Bar is another example of
high flexibility, able to play
3.0-channel TV and movie
sound alone, easily paired
with the HEOS wireless
subwoofer for 3.1, and
with a pair of any HEOS
wireless speakers to take
it up to full 5.1-channel
surround as either a
permanent or temporary
‘movie night’ sound
solution.DENON &
MARANTZ
Here’s where HEOS
gets a major lift. While
some multiroom systems
have their ecosystem of
speakers, components and
soundbar, that’s it; there’s
a limit to what you can
do. But HEOS came from
Denon, and Denon is part
of Sound United, which
also owns Marantz. Both
brands have installed the HEOS platform inside
their component hi-fi, in their AV receivers, and
in lifestyle systems like the Marantz M-CR
pictured above, so that these hi-fi and AV products
work seamlessly with all the other HEOS products
within a connected home.
This can be powerful stuff. Take the AV pream-
plifier pictured below, the state-of-the-art Marantz
AV8805, with 13 channels of amplification, eight
HDMI inputs, 13 other audio inputs — we could
fill this whole article telling you everything it can
do. And inside is HEOS, giving it all the HEOS
streaming abilities, and linking it with all
other HEOS products,
so thatevery input, every music source connected to the
AV8805 can be accessed even through a humble
HEOS 1 speaker up on the bathroom wall.
With Sound United recently increasing its
rafts of brands, now including Pioneer, Onkyo,
Definitive Technology, Polk Audio and others, we
may well see the HEOS ecosystem expanding still
further in the future.VOICE CONTROL & THE APP
There’s one final element to HEOS control,
and that’s using spoken commands to get music
playing and control volume. This has been
available for a while using Alexa devices such as
the Dot, and more recently also Google Assistant.
All ‘HS2’ HEOS models can be controlled from
Alexa and Google Assistant devices, while the
Home Cinema HS2 also works with Siri, as it has
Apple’s AirPlay 2 on-board.
Your main control, however, is likely to be
through the HEOS app, which is one of the
clearest we’ve encountered for quickly accessing
your source of choice and playing it to your room
of choice. All the streaming sources, all your
available inputs, your on-device music, Bluetooth
— everything is given its own selector key, while
three ‘buttons’ at the bottom of the screen link
to ‘Now Playing’ for music information, ‘Music’
for browsing, and ‘Rooms’ where you can easily
group different areas of the home together simply
by dragging the rooms together in the app. Presto,
music everywhere!CONCLUSION
With the HS2 second generation of HEOS, new
abilities have been added, including high-res
audio playback, and built-in Bluetooth. But the
impressive thing about HEOS is how much has
stayed the same; they got it right first time, and
ongoing developments have built on that solid
foundation, while the platform has spread beyond
the traditional wireless multiroom system into hi-fi
and AV equipment up to the highest levels, so that
whatever your level of system, HEOS can deliver
high-quality streaming and multiroom results.16
HEOS wireless multiroom
- Massive ecosystem of products from
high-end hi-fi to portable speakers - HS2 editions bring high-res audio
and built-in Bluetooth - Effective and easy-to-use app
- Voice control available
Contact: QualiFi
Telephone: 03 8542 1111
Web: http://www.heos.com.au◀ Marantz has HEOS too – LEFT: the new $1320 M-CR612 compact network CD
receiver has HEOS onboard, providing streaming sources and multiroom integrated
to this all-in-one just-add-speakers solution; BELOW LEFT: HEOS goes all the way
to the top, bringing streaming to the $6960 AV8805 13.2-channel AV preamplifier,
making this high-end unit a hub for a whole home of HEOS multiroom audio.