Deezer HiFi for Denon HEOS and Denon / Marantz HEOS built-in devices

I don't want to bring bad news but I got reply form Denon Customer Support

We currently have no plans in place for Deezer HiFi through HEOS app support.

18/11/2020

So I guess it will take much more time than expected.

I bought a DENON AVR-X3600X and subscribed to Deezer two months ago because of the advertised and bigly marketed adverisements of streaming lossless audio possibilities. I used to just play .flac’s from my Synology NAS, but the possibility of discovering new music in HiFi quality, made me decide to replace my perfectly OK AVR-X2300 to enter the streaming world.

However, after reading this two year desperate discussion, I know I have been cheated and mislead by hazy, half-truth marketing lies from DENON HEOS and Deezer. Up to this day the Deezer list of supported devices is of a Kindergarten quality.  A few really big pictures and some generic product families. W.t.f?  Does Deezer think people who buy +€ 1000 amp’s plus highend speakers are toddlers with smart phones?
At least I’m glad I did not pay a cent for a Deezer subscription yet and did not get fooled into a “Hifi”-subscription. I guess, I’ll be going off-line again and download the occasional quality music from Qobuz.

Hi Rudi,
Thx for replying.
I was really disappointed, and surely understand that the effort also has to come from the people at Denon. But a more specific list of supported devices would have helped and maybe I had decided to buy a Network streamer instead of replacing my existing Denon receiver with another one that was supposed to be able to play Deezer HiFi lossless.
In Deezer’s defense: One of the Denon dealers where I inquired before buying it (later at a different one) said that the AVR-X3600 would in fact support the lossless stream,  which appears to be incorrect in hind sight.
I do like the Deezer interface so far and Deezer also works nicely together/within the HEOS app, so not all bad things from my side. I really do hope you and Denon succeed in getting it sorted out.

Hi @UGatDeezer @SevenOf1 

Really appreciate your feedback and patience, guys. Yes, not for Xmas I suppose, but it'll get done at some point, I'm quite positive about this.

I wish I could give you more details but at this stage, I can only ask you to hang in there, tight, and it'll be worth it!

Enjoy a great end of the year!

@Jaco P. we are looking forward to this too and as Rudi mentioned, we hope we can have interesting updates very soon. 

I stuck with Deezer HiFi for a long time whilst not getting HiFi, with constant grain of hope that this would get sorted out, but ultimately also switched to Tidal. 

Just wanted to check here to see how things are progressing, but I see nothing is really happening apart from the same promises as from year ago, which is just another confirmation that switching to Tidal was indeed the best course of action I could possibly take.

I think @Rudy in sincere, but sadly Deezer as a company doesn’t seem to care much about that stuff. There’s no math behind it I suppose. We’re not big enough of a user base for them to take notice.

But there are other options in the market. Tidal is running great. Their library is as good as Deezer’s as far as I can tell. It’s just…. when you pay for HiFi, you actually get HiFi.

I am absoluty consifering to switch to another provider if this does not improve soon.

The integration with Heos is unfortunatly just bad

Well I registered with Deezer HiFi yesterday hopping to stream FLAC through HEOS to my Marantz and I find out I can’t :( Sorry guys, I’ll cancel my subscription right away and I’ll subscribe to Tidal.

Like the others I have the same issue  - play Deezer on my Denon.

Actually there are two issues:

• I’m unable to play CD quality - limited to 320 mp3. Seriously guys, I don’t really care about CD quality on the phone - BT is not capable of reproducing it. But for years having mp3 on multi thousands dollars/euros is an insult. And no, using Chromecast is not an option because it sounds different. I seriously don’t know why since flac → lpcm supposed to be the same as playing flac localy. 
• And then comes the other issue, with Spotify app, I can simply select Heos device as target and just use the app without the need to use Heos app. And then there are all the features and convenient interface. When Deezer will have this? I can’t imagine API integration being that complicated.

Eventually, even though I liked the service features (especially Flow and local radio stations), I ended up canceling subscription because the competition is either can do high quality on devices where it matters for me  (Tidal and  Amazon) or much more convenient (Spotify).

Hopefully, one day @Rudi will post “We fixed it” ;) 

Hey @Rudi ,

Thanks for the response.

Looking forward to try those connect features (I’m on beta channel of Android app).

As for the price, it’s not an issue for me. I select the service based on:

• Does it has the music I want.
• Can it generate decent playlists/radio streams for me.
• Can it play the music where I need (phone, receiver, car, computer)
• How much the service pays the artists.

The last point is exactly why I left Play Music (now Youtube music).

Right now I am transfering my Deezer playlists to Tidal as I saw after the 4 months / 1 euro the subscription for HiFi AND Master is only 1 euro more than Deezer hifi. My mistake was that I read the prices in euro when they in fact were in romanian RON. Even if your curated playlist are better, I mostly made my own lists tht I don't have to rebuild once more. And the lost/missing songs are 50 from 5000. I see no reason to pay twice for the same thing. I will downgrade my subscription from Deezer hifi to free. I hope that my lists will be kept just in case you fix hifi with Heos.

Yes, downgrading to a free Deezer account does not change your saved playlists, only the audio quality is MP3 at 128kbps then, and you cannot download anything for offline mode anymore. Also you will only get 30 seconds excerpts of an on-demand song then.