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We began our listening with internet radio, which uses the excellent TuneIn platform, which in the UK has been hobbled by record company legal action so that it can’t play anything other than UK stations, but which is, as yet, free of such interference here in Australia. Indeed it is our favourite radio platform, the only one to offer our local community radio station along with quite a few others – 100,000 stations, says TuneIn, along with 5.7 million podcasts, so if it’s your first time playing with internet radio, this should keep you busy for a while. We nearly forgot the CD player, so sidelined has this format become in our lives today. But those with silver to spin can be assured that this source was a highlight in terms of clarity and dynamics. The Painted Ladies’ version of Vic Simms’ Poor Folks Happiness drove forth with a full bassline, vocals and guitars well defined.
There are a good many other settings, some of them available only by crouching next to your CEOL and using the full-sized physical remote or front panel buttons to investigate. Under the ‘Audio’ section, for example, you can tweak the level of the headphone output, and switch off ‘Speaker Optimisation’, which is the adjustment Denon has made to match the amplifier to the speakers. It works well – leave it on! But should you ever switch out the speakers as an upgrade or for other reasons, you should remember this option and turn it off, or at least try the sound without it. There are various ways to tweak the sound quality, most easily accessed from the HEOS ‘now playing’ screen. This has a left-right balance control, plus EQ offering treble and bass sliders, and a ‘Super Dynamic Bass’ option, which certainly thumps up the low end, at the expense of a slight softening of higher frequencies; this was too much for us with internet radio, indeed it’s a sign of good sonic design that we spent nearly all of our CEOL listening with the ‘Source Direct’ option engaged, thereby hopefully getting the cleanest path to music. Enjoy exceptional sound in a minimalist style. The Denon CEOL N11DAB Hi-Fi-Network CD Receiver with HEOS Built-in music streaming, Bluetooth® and voice control is the perfect compact stereo for all your musical desires. THE ONE. FOR ALL. CEOL N11DAB is fast and intuitive to set up, taking just minutes from unboxing to filling your home with beautiful music. Just follow the simple instructions and connect to your favourite streaming services with ease. Or just pop in a CD. The choice is yours. STREAM YOUR SOUND FROM ANY SERVICE. Japanese manufacturer Denon launches its first fully wireless Bluetooth in-ear headphones, the AH-C630W and AH-C830NCW with noise cancellation.As for more traditional sources there are screw-in antennas for the twin radio tuners onboard the Denon, delivering FM and digital DAB+ radio in addition to the internet radio delivered by HEOS. There’s no AM here, but all AM stations are almost certainly available at better quality via internet or DAB+ radio. CEOL-N11DAB is built for optimum sound performance with a custom-made two-way speaker configuration that improves clarity and musical accuracy. You will hear every instrument clearly with enthusiast quality. INTUITIVE TOUCH PANEL.
HEOS also delivers multiroom operation. Put another HEOS-compatible player elsewhere in your home and the ‘Rooms’ section of the HEOS app makes it ever so simple to have the same music playing to several or to all HEOS devices at once, whether they be HEOS-equipped soundbars, wireless speakers, even monumental AV receivers. You can also play the inputs of one device over the network to other HEOS devices, but – importantly – only the analogue inputs, not digital ones. A key design element are the touch keys on the top of the CEOL N11DAB. They give an immediate response – by light. This Network-Receiver also has a double-layered scratch-resistant surface which provides a distinct and satisfying feel. SEAMLESS CONNECTIVITY. A frequency sweep indicated that (in our listening room) the system was reproducing tones down into the 30s of hertz, finding its full strength in the 60s and 70s and rising impressively smoothly from there. Since the speakers are rear-ported, positioning will affect this somewhat, but can also be usefully employed to tweak it.
With HEOS Built-in, every room in your home can have its own sound. Or, group additional HEOS enabled devices like wireless speakers, soundbars, or AV receivers to fill the house with the same song, using your home network. With HEOS Built-in, multi-room means multiple options. ELEGANT MINIMALISM. The High End also revealed that there will be a "1700" series from Denon, featuring at least an integrated amplifier with a price of around 2,000 euros. It's freedom of music. It's part of the HEOS multi-room family. It's improved TV-Sound. It's a great CD-Player. For everybody CEOL is something different. Find out what it is for you. ALL YOU NEED IS HEOS.
Not only can you select an input from the HEOS app’s ‘Denon CEOL’ pane, there’s a separate ‘inputs’ option. This duplicates the CEOL’s inputs, but if you have other HEOS products around the house, you will also see their inputs here, as additional functionality to the platform’s multiroom operation. Play your personal music collection – even in high-resolution. The CEOL N11DAB Network-Receiver supports all major streaming formats. All the great music services are fully integrated. Or listen to high-quality DAB+ radio stations. Set the mood that's just right for the moment. We continued to some Tidal streaming; there’s no unfolding of MQA Masters here for high-res streaming (as rival streaming system BluOS offers), but it’s arguable whether high-res is going to improve the excellent sound we enjoyed, whether punching up some bouncy REM or delivering the drifting flow of Philip Glass’s Closing. There was a limit to the size of bass the speakers could deliver, but the deep underlying organ note under Closing was certainly present, if not fully resonant. Denon presents two brand new headphons at the IFA 2023: the new True Wireless In-Ears under the names "PerL" and "PerL Pro" are said to impress especially with elaborate sound personalization using "Masimo Adaptive Acoustic Technology".This system has external inputs, though not a vast number – just one analogue RCA pair at line level (no phono input/stage for a turntable), though two useful optical digital inputs, one of which might be used for sound from your TV. (We are great fans of having stereo speakers like those of the N11 combo either side of your TV, or under it, as in the image overleaf, in preference to an often intrusive soundbar in front of it.) We very much appreciate that HEOS is properly localised and doesn’t show services which aren’t available to Australia (as do most rivals, to the ongoing irritation of users). The CEOL N11DAB does so very much that it might be easier to describe what it doesn’t do. So – it doesn’t play vinyl. Or cassettes. Or AM radio. Linn has redesigned its best-selling product of the last ten years – the Majik DSM streaming amplifier – visually, technically and featurewise.
With the DCD-1700NE, Denon expands its portfolio of high-quality CD players, with this model also being capable of playing SACDs.
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Everything else is pretty much covered, a great deal of it by the inclusion of the Denon/Marantz wireless multiroom platform HEOS. This you’ll control via the HEOS app on your phone or tablet, and it is one of the best and simplest control apps for such platforms. All of your music at your fingertips. Connect to your favourite music sources via Wi-Fi with HEOS Built-in, AirPlay2 or via Bluetooth®. With a 110-year legacy of audio mastery, the Denon CEOL N11DAB delivers high quality sound, no matter how you listen. IMPROVE YOUR TV-SOUND. We couldn’t, among the various HEOS menus, find any way to change what the display shows when the unit is playing, though you can choose whether and how it shows the time when it’s off. You can set a time for it to turn on automatically, and the source it should play.
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