This is a review and detailed measurements of the Denon HEOS Link HS2 DAC and streamer. It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $349.
The HS2 is chunky and heavy for its size. Its real differentiation from many of its competitors is extensive connectivity:
It is very nice to see so many inputs and outputs together with trigger and IR support.
Setup was messy though. The app was not user friendly. When I went to add the HS2, it was not under the listed options for Denon or HEOS devices. I randomly selected a HEOS speaker. That prompted me to push the connect button. From then though, the app was constantly confused, not able to connect. Right when I was going to give up it prompted me to update its firmware! That was excruciatingly slow. But once finished, I was able to interact with it. I put the unit in fixed volume and ran my tests below.
Sadly for people like me, Roon is not supported. I also didn't see Airplay show up which is really strange. Maybe it has to be enabled some place.
Denon HS2 Streamer Measurements
To get a baseline for performance, I fed it Toslink input and measured pre-out:
This is pretty disappointing. Both noise and distortion are high, delivering SINAD that is 10 dB worse than what 16-bit audio is capable of delivering! Strangely streaming from the App generated slightly better results:
I don't understand why the distortion profile is different.
Much bigger difference showed up in jitter test:
Toslink in blue shows strong data-dependent jitter whereas the streaming (red) is mostly free of that. Both have high noise floor though.
Going back to Toslink input, I measured the output without dither using digital Coax out:
We are getting the theoretical maximum performance indicating the pipeline is "bit exact." Consequently, you can use an External DAC to sharply improve the performance of the HS2.
Its app doesn't have the ability to turn off dither so results are a bit worth but the above flexibility as far as external DAC remains:
Finally, I measured jitter using Coax out:
It is pretty bad but good DACs should be able to filter much of it.
Conclusions
I really like the functionality/connectivity of the HS2. I think it is one of the most complete streamers I have tested. App usability remains low but you can get through it. As expected, internal DAC performance is sub-par. I hope we get to a point one day when companies pay modicum of attention to DACs even in this class of product. Fortunately digital output is bit perfect giving you the ability to pair the HS2 with an external DAC and get superb performance.
I can't recommend the Denon HEOS Link HS2 as is. I am not happy with the DAC performance and lack of Roon support.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
The HS2 is chunky and heavy for its size. Its real differentiation from many of its competitors is extensive connectivity:
It is very nice to see so many inputs and outputs together with trigger and IR support.
Setup was messy though. The app was not user friendly. When I went to add the HS2, it was not under the listed options for Denon or HEOS devices. I randomly selected a HEOS speaker. That prompted me to push the connect button. From then though, the app was constantly confused, not able to connect. Right when I was going to give up it prompted me to update its firmware! That was excruciatingly slow. But once finished, I was able to interact with it. I put the unit in fixed volume and ran my tests below.
Sadly for people like me, Roon is not supported. I also didn't see Airplay show up which is really strange. Maybe it has to be enabled some place.
Denon HS2 Streamer Measurements
To get a baseline for performance, I fed it Toslink input and measured pre-out:
This is pretty disappointing. Both noise and distortion are high, delivering SINAD that is 10 dB worse than what 16-bit audio is capable of delivering! Strangely streaming from the App generated slightly better results:
I don't understand why the distortion profile is different.
Much bigger difference showed up in jitter test:
Toslink in blue shows strong data-dependent jitter whereas the streaming (red) is mostly free of that. Both have high noise floor though.
Going back to Toslink input, I measured the output without dither using digital Coax out:
We are getting the theoretical maximum performance indicating the pipeline is "bit exact." Consequently, you can use an External DAC to sharply improve the performance of the HS2.
Its app doesn't have the ability to turn off dither so results are a bit worth but the above flexibility as far as external DAC remains:
Finally, I measured jitter using Coax out:
It is pretty bad but good DACs should be able to filter much of it.
Conclusions
I really like the functionality/connectivity of the HS2. I think it is one of the most complete streamers I have tested. App usability remains low but you can get through it. As expected, internal DAC performance is sub-par. I hope we get to a point one day when companies pay modicum of attention to DACs even in this class of product. Fortunately digital output is bit perfect giving you the ability to pair the HS2 with an external DAC and get superb performance.
I can't recommend the Denon HEOS Link HS2 as is. I am not happy with the DAC performance and lack of Roon support.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
