Denon revamps HEOS for High-Res Audio, new HS2 line railroads better functionality

Denon has upgraded its HEOS wireless music system to support High-Res Audio and Bluetooth streaming. The amusingly named HS2 line (not the high-speed railway line) brings updates to HEOS 1, HEOS 3, HEOS 5 and HEOS 7 speakers as well as the HEOS Amp amplifier and HEOS Link pre-amplifier.

The headline news is the addition of High Res Audio support across the board. HEOS now allows the playback of uncompressed WAV, ALAC and FLAC music files up to 24-bit/192-kHz over a network or from USB. The company says that DSD and AIFF compatibility is also just a firmware upgrade away. 

New this time around is built-in Bluetooth. The updated HEOS app allows any Bluetooth source to play to any HEOS speaker, or group of speakers. The ecosystem is now also compatible with Windows Phone, PC and Mac (in addition to iOS, Android and Amazon Fire).

“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 improve performance and support new features that we cant wait to bring to the HEOS family,”declared Brendon Stead, SVP product development at Denon. He adds that Denon is looking to make the platform “even better with new software features.”

HEOS is distributed by AWE. For more news about AWE’s product portfolio and services, visit our partner page here.