Jordan O'BrienDenon has made some big upgrades to its Heos line-up of speakers as its war with Sonos heats up. With its latest speakers, dubbed HS2, users will be able to enjoy new ways of connecting their devices, thanks to the inclusion of Bluetooth, while also enjoying a higher quality listening experience through high-res audio.
In terms of high-resolution audio, Denon’s Heos line-up now supports uncompressed WAV (PCM), ALAC (Apple Lossless) and FLAC music files up to 24-bit/192-kHz over network or USB. Denon also plans to support DSD and AIFF tracks, but the company has not yet signalled when this will be available.
Denon says that the high-res audio upgrade is made possible by a 1.25GHz ARM A9 processor alongside 512MB of flash memory and 256MB of RAM. The HS2 upgrade is not worth going out and buying a new set of Denon Heos speakers though, but thankfully that’s not needed at all. That’s because Denon has made it possible to add any of the new HS2 gear to first-gen Heos speakers, without having to worry about compatibility issues.
All Heos speakers will receive the upgrade, but pricing will remain the same – meaning users will now get more for the same amount of money they otherwise would have paid anyway. Unfortunately, that’s only the case in the US thus far, with UK availability yet to be revealed.