CEDIA 2015

The Denon HEOS Drive and new AVRs were among the highlights at the D+M booth.

Denon has extended its HEOS wireless system to include the HEOS Drive. Daisychain eight of these four-zone units together and you can have up to 32 zones of joy, with each one getting 70 watts times two, stable at four ohms, and compatible with six control systems including all the usual suspects. HEOS transmits up to 24-bit signals, so theoretically it is high-resolution audio friendly.

Denon's nine-member AVR line is admittedly similar feature-wise to the previous year's. However, it now has HDMI 2.0a, adding the metadata necessary for HDR video, a crucial emerging piece of the Ultra HD puzzle. And it supports HDCP 2.2 anti-copying technology which you definitely want to have if you want your UHD signal sources to pass signals through the receiver to your UHDTV. Dolby Atmos is supported in all new models. All are also DTS:X ready, supporting the other flavor of height enhanced, object oriented surround when the software update arrives early next year.