The Denon Home Line is not new. The company already has the Home 150, Home 250 and Home 350 speakers in its lineup, in addition to the Home 550 soundbar and Home Subwoofer. In other words, the company is not known for many audio devices. To control all of those speakers, and the three new models, you use the HEOS app that works with compatible products from both Denon and Marantz (both companies are owned by Samsung subsidiary Harman).
Like the Sonos app, the HEOS app is where you do the initial setup and connection of your home speakers. Once you’ve synced your music streaming services, you can connect songs to any of your home speakers. The app also includes free local radio via TuneIn, so I was able to stream my local NPR station with one tap. The HEOS app will let you access any connected media servers and wired audio sources via USB and 3.5mm aux. Of course, there’s also Bluetooth and AirPlay support if you want to bypass the app altogether.
From the Rooms menu in the HEOS app, you have the option to play music everywhere with a single tap of the “All Rooms” button. To remove one or more rooms from a group, simply remove them from the list. You can create a group reset with any commonly used configuration as well. In addition, you have the option to control each room here as selecting a room will give you its own media player and controls under the UI.
The HEOS app doesn’t offer a room calibration tool like Sonos’ Trueplay, but the software accounts for speaker placement before adjusting the sound. During initial setup, the app will ask if the speaker is placed “away from walls,” “near one wall” or “near two walls.” Based on your feedback, the audio is optimized for “accurate, balanced sound.” And yes, you can fix this if you move the home speakers later.
The app will let you choose multiroom audio quality as well, with Standard and High options for more reliability and increased fidelity (16-bit/44.1kHz) respectively. The latter setting is only recommended if your Home devices are connected via an Ethernet cable or when they all have excellent Wi-Fi signals. Multiroom connections between home speakers are reliable and provide seamless playback as I move from room to room. Sometimes using multiple speakers in my house produces a slight distortion that comes off as a bit of a slog. With the Home 600, 400 and 200, I honestly couldn’t tell there were three different speakers playing music as I moved from my office to the kitchen and bedroom.
All three of these Denon Home speakers can be used in stereo pairs, although the smaller size of the Home 200 makes it worth it. You may need more shelf space to run two Home 400s or 600s like this one. Three programmable Quick Select buttons on their control panels, putting frequently used content and settings with just one press. These work like car stereo buttons: Press and hold to save the current playback source, audio mode and audio settings. There is also an Action Button on all three that calls the connected voice assistant without touching your phone.
