Denon HEOS AVR: No Ordinary AV Receiver

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; sadly, the HEOS AVR is incapable of supporting DTS:X and Dolby Atmos audio formats.

Instead, the Denon HEOS AVR has been specifically engineered to work with wireless speakers from the HEOS range. This means you won’t have to worry about having wiring installed.

That’s similar to the approach Sonos takes 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 you 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. It can be used wirelessly for surrounds with any pair of HEOS speakers or HEOS Amp with passive speakers. Because it uses the 5GHz band, it has no latency and low loss of available zones.

The HEOS AVR is expected to be available in April for $999.

This story originally appeared on CE Pro Europe.