What is multi-room audio?

Obviously, it is about listening to music in multiple rooms of the house, but the buzzword incorporates other things. When we talk about multi-room audio, most the discussion will be about the quality of the platform or App. Radio Parts also recommends HEOS, MusicCast, Earthquake and BlueSound. There are a number of other options also like Sonos and Bose.

Why did we pick HEOS, MusicCast and BlueSound?

First, it’s all about audio. HEOS and MusicCast are [or will] be natively built into Denon, Marantz and Yamaha amplifiers. We love these 3 brands for their amazing Home Theatre and stereo products. We needed a third offering to cover Cambridge and all the other audiophile brands. Something that would deliver the highest quality audio streaming. This is what BlueSound does best.

Why HEOS now and not earlier?

HEOS was immediately successful in 2015, winning awards from Sound + Image magazine, WhatHiFi and the top rating from Choice for their amazing products. Now HEOS also have Bluetooth within their ecosystem. Bluetooth is so universal and convenient. Second, only now have Denon and Marantz started including HEOS within their AV receivers. So there are initially 2 Marantz and 2 Denon receivers that will include HEOS. The big seller should be the Denon AVRX4300.

I wasn’t paying attention, can you summarise the above?

Oversimplifying the Radio Parts view on Multi-Room Audio:

HEOS	MusicCast	Cambridge	Mass market appeal
Denon + Marantz	Yamaha	Bluesound	Earthquake AR300

 

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This write-up first appeared in our October 2016 newsletter.