That’s probably not a biggie for the intended (mainstream) market but also not a deal-breaker for this audiophile. Like the Connect, the Link won’t do hi-res audio. Talking to Australian HEOS brand manager Joe Salamanca at Olympic Park, I wanted to learn of the differences and similarities between the Sonos Connect and the HEOS Link (AU$599). Proceedings are ongoing but you can up on developments here. To wit, Denon’s strategy in coming to market with an extremely similar range of products netted them legal action from Sonos not two months after launch. Let’s not beat about the bush: comparisons between HEOS and Sonos are inevitable. Best of all, the Wyred4Sound device brings the Connect up to AURALiC Aries levels of digital audio performance with the latter maintaining an edge in two key functional areas: 1) hi-res PCM and DSD compatibility 2) direct USB storage attachment (that obviates the need for networked storage). Having recently pimped a Sonos Connect’s digital output with the Wyred4Sound Remedy S/PDIF reclocker, I’m a fresh convert to having several streaming services housed under one (app) roof: Sonos’ search probes Pandora, Spotify, Tidal as well as locally-hosted content and returns results to the same screen.

Seeing it for a second time at New Tech ’15 last weekend piqued my interest still further. Whilst attending the North Sydney-side launch event last August I singled out the HEOS Link as of most interest to DAR readers. HEOS by Denon celebrates its first Australian birthday this month.

Is there a windows desktop heos app