It's an AV Receiver, But Not As We Know It...

Denon and Marantz unveil radical new home cinema and multiroom hardware at their annual trade preview. Steve May reports from the show floor.

- Steve May

DENON WANTS TO reinvent the home cinema AV receiver.

It's an ambition that is particularly well timed. Talk to any industry insider and they’ll tell you fewer people than ever are buying old-school AVRs. Not because they’ve necessarily fallen out of love with multichannel surround sound (that would, after all, be madness), but because the sheer size and legacy ballast of the average home cinema amp seems somewhat… unnecessary.

So there’s been a rethink. Out goes the intimidating burly fascia that has epitomised the traditional home cinema receiver for decades, and in comes a product altogether more oblique and contemporary. Denon calls it a HEOS AVR,the first AV receiver to be formerly inducted as part of Denon’s wireless multiroom audio ecosystem.

This new-look component was the headline grabber at this year’s Denon and Marantz dealer conference. The annual confab, which took place in Malta, is a platform for the D+M Group (the parent company of Denon, Marantz and speaker brand Boston Acoustics) to showcase upcoming hardware. It’s the first chance to lust over new products and get a sneaky glimpse of what’s around the corner.

In many ways, the appearance of a dedicated HEOS AV receiver was a surprise, particularly given that Terrie O'Connell, D+M’s President of Sales and Marketing for Europe, announced during her keynote that HEOS, launched squarely as a competitor for Sonos last year, is ‘transitioning from a brand to an ingredient.’

Indeed, multiroom wireless HEOS interoperability was announced as a key feature of several new AV receivers to be launched under the Denon and Marantz labels.

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