Boasting compatibility with Bluetooth Audio, Apple Airplay and the prevalent streaming services, there is no shortage on Yamaha MusicCast on the connection side of things. At the other end of the cable, the system permeates almost the entire audio infrastructure of Yamaha, covering A/V receivers, active network speakers, stereos and soundbars. You can play music from a CD and stream it anywhere, as well as, of course, ubiquitous network stored bits and pieces. It appears to even support Dolby Atmos. Now, that’s a first. Supported file types include Flac, Aiff and DSD (on A/V receivers and audio equipment that can read the discs), in resolutions up to 192KHz/24-bit.
What Hi-fi? just released an almost painfully happy mini review of the system. Do go and have a look. What they zoom in on, are things like being able to not only feed all MusicCast components from a Bluetooth source separately, you can even attach Bluetooth players to them, for instance a pair of Bluetooth headphones.
Finally someone who stands up to B&O and their decades old and wonderfully future proven Beolink. Sonos and their comrades (you know who you are) could definitely learn something here. Definitely.
CD drive
Wifi
Flac audio
Digital IO
Ogg-Vorbis
uPnP support
Video