Sound United Remains Committed to Play-Fi, Heos, for Now, Says Exec

When Sound United bought D+M Group (see 1703020077), parent of Denon, Marantz and Boston Acoustics, earlier this year, industry watchers wondered what that meant for the various multiroom audio platforms supported by the D+M brands and by Sound United’s Definitive Technology and Polk Audio brands. For now, Sound United remains committed to Play-Fi for Definitive and Polk, to Heos for Denon and Marantz, and to Chromecast built-in for Polk’s MagniFi brand, Brendon Stead, senior vice president-product development, Sound United, told us at the CEDIA show. “We have not made final decisions on how we see the future across all these brands.” Sound United still sees advantages in the Play-Fi ecosystem, and “we’re not prepared to migrate away from that yet,” said Stead. On whether the company might license Heos to other brands to grow that ecosystem, Stead said, “It’s something we’ve talked about but not something we’re actively pursuing right now,” also saying, “we believe it’s an attractive platform that many others would like.” Sound United's future multiroom strategy will become clearer in the next three or four months, when “we turn our attention toward road mapping and how we see the intersection here -- and where we can build momentum off one or the other, or both,” he said.