You should check out HEOS by Denon

It almost happened overnight. Remember when we retired our CD collection and crammed all our music onto our shiny new little iPod in MP3 format.

‘Doesn’t skip when you go for a run!!’ We were so caught up in the new technology we barely noticed the sound was average. Maybe we gave it a pass cause it was so convenient. But if you go back to your CD collection and listen to your favourite tunes again through your old floor speakers (that you’re not allowed to have in the lounge room anymore), I swear you will be blown away. It’s just amazing how good CD’s sound! MP3 not so much. It’s an absolute treat to the ears when you  listen to your music again in high quality, not the compressed squished versions we’ve accepted as normal since the digital revolution began.

That’s where I think HEOS by Denon steps up. Yes convenience is great and now we have it, it’s natural to ask why we can’t also have great sound with that?  HEOS is a multi room music system that streams in CD quality. If you subscribe to Tidal (a subscription service similar to Spotify) HEOS can stream hi res CD quality tunes to your home and it sounds awesome.

When I first started using it at home I had heaps of fun doing the double blind AB tests on myself and my wife. So happy I was getting to listen to a heap of albums I hadn’t heard properly in years. I think that’s what most people do when they discover music streaming…they’ll be like a kid again and go through their back catalogue for weeks, pulling up albums they haven’t heard in years.

Just the concept of being able to play any song you like immediately still has me in a daze! I remember (old man story) travelling from Port Macquarie to Sydney for a trip  to Utopia Records on Clarence St to buy a single CD which I would then flog to death for the next 3 months until my whole family knew every note. You had to work for that music!!

To now and I’ve been running HEOS at home for over a year and can confidently install it in my clients home’s and know they’re getting a great product. I use Tidal for my streaming and also I Heart Radio which is a great service that popped up when Pandora disappeared. I think with those 2 and TuneIN Radio I’ve got everything covered. What I also recommend is connecting your CD player up to HEOS. This allows you to pipe your CD’s around the home with no reduction in quality. Effectively giving you the best of both worlds…old school and new. Most multi room music systems cannot do this without compromising the CD quality.

Which brings me to another point I love about HEOS. The app is super easy to use. The ritual we all followed for years when we wanted to listen to tunes was the same…whether it was vinyl or compact disc the process of turning on the stereo and playing the music never changed. The music is the experience not the app!! To wake up one day and find that the act of playing your music has fundamentally changed is absolutely annoying, so while HEOS are making app improvements in the background the actual operation of the app remains consistent and won’t throw you into a spin with each update.

Anyway I’m a fan and have been installing a lot of it lately so give it a go!