🎵 Audio Hero Documentation

1. Install Audio Hero from the Microsoft Store. Free and Pro are the same app: Pro features unlock via an in-app purchase on the Store.
2. Make sure your HEOS speakers or receivers are powered on and on the same Wi-Fi or wired network as your PC.
3. Launch Audio Hero. On first run the app opens with the Players tab selected and prompts you to start discovery.
4. Click Discover Devices. Audio Hero broadcasts an SSDP discovery probe on every active network adapter and lists every HEOS device that responds.
5. Click a device in the list to connect. The status dot turns green once connected.

• Windows 10 or Windows 11.
• .NET 10 runtime (bundled with the Store install).
• HEOS-compatible Denon or Marantz device on the same local network (HEOS speakers, HEOS soundbars, HEOS amps such as PMA-900HNE and HEOS Link, or HEOS-equipped AVRs).
• SSDP multicast (UDP port 1900) and HEOS CLI (TCP port 1255) reachable on your LAN. Most routers allow this by default.
• For legacy device support: pre-HEOS Denon/Marantz models with HTTP control (CEOL Piccolo, M-CR series, older AVRs).

If discovery cannot find a device (for example across VLANs, or when the router blocks multicast), enter the device IP directly:

1. Open the Players tab.
2. Type the IP address into the Or enter IP address: field.
3. Click Connect IP.

If Include support for legacy devices is enabled in Settings, a second field appears below for adding pre-HEOS Denon/Marantz devices by IP.

• App icon and title. Shows the app name and the active edition (Free or Pro).
• 🛒 Store, 💬 Support, 🌐 Website. Quick links to the Microsoft Store listing, the support subreddit, and bommerts.com/audiohero.
• Update banner. Appears when a new version of Audio Hero is available. Shows three states: Update available, Downloading, and Update installed. See App updates.
• Version label. Shows the running version (for example v4.7.2).
• 🔄 Check for updates. Forces a manual update check.
• 📌 Always on top. Pins the window above other applications. The icon rotates 45 degrees when active.
• 🔽 Compact / 🔼 Full / ⏬ Ultra compact. Switches window layout. Compact and ultra compact are Pro features.
• ⏊ Minimize to tray. Sends Audio Hero to the system tray with a popup mini player. Pro feature.

The sidebar has three tabs:

• Players. Discovery controls, the list of paired devices, and per-device actions (rename, reboot, play an input, send an input elsewhere). Includes a small green or gray status dot showing connection state.
• Groups. Create and manage HEOS speaker groups. Per-member volume sliders are exposed once a group is selected so you can trim individual levels. Pro feature.
• Settings. Every app-wide toggle. See the full Settings reference below.

Hiding inputs you never use. Some devices expose lots of physical inputs (for example a soundbar with four HDMI ports you do not all use). Right-click a player, hover Play input from this device or Send input to another speaker, and click the small hide icon next to any input to remove it from the list. Hidden inputs collapse into a Show hidden inputs (N) submenu at the bottom where you can restore them at any time. The hide list is per-device and saved with your settings.

• Now Playing panel. Album art, title, artist, album, source, station, audio info, and which player the audio is on.
• Track Info panel (Pro). Optional sidebar showing artist biography, song facts, and merged metadata pulled in parallel from TheAudioDB, Deezer, Wikipedia, and MusicBrainz.
• Transport controls. Play, pause, stop, next, previous, repeat, shuffle, thumbs up, thumbs down, and timeline scrubber when the source allows seeking.
• Volume controls. Master volume slider, mute, optional volume cap, three preset slots (Pro), and a zone selector for multi-zone receivers.
• Music Sources panel. A Finder-style column browser for navigating HEOS services, internet radio, local files, and starred favorites.
• Search panel. A unified search across HEOS music services. Show or hide it from the Music Sources header.

Local thumbs-up/thumbs-down votes are stored per track in settings.json using an "artist|title|album" key, capped at 5000 entries with oldest entries removed first.

The timeline area shows one of two layouts depending on the source:

• Seekable tracks. Position and duration appear with a draggable progress bar. Click anywhere on the bar to seek to that point. Audio Hero checks the device or service for seek capability and only shows the bar when seeking is possible. If the device does not advertise it via HEOS, a UPnP AVTransport Seek request is sent as a fallback.
• Live streams. A red dot and a LIVE label show the station name. The scrubber is hidden because live radio has no fixed timeline.

Repeat and shuffle commands are forwarded to the connected HEOS player. Some streaming services (notably radio-style services such as Pandora and SiriusXM) do not support these commands; Audio Hero greys out the relevant buttons when the active source rejects them.

• Slider. Drag from 0 to 100 percent. Changes are debounced to avoid flooding the device with commands.
• Numeric box. Click the % value to type an exact volume (Pro).
• 🔊 / 🔇 Mute. One-click mute and unmute.
• Keyboard. Use ↑ and ↓ arrows to nudge volume.

To prevent accidental ear-splitting jumps, you can cap the slider at any value between 1 and 99 percent.

1. Enable Limit max volume.
2. Click the Max NN% pill that appears.
3. Drag the popup slider to set the ceiling. The main slider can never exceed it.

Three preset slots let you jump to a stored volume with a single click.

• Apply a preset. Left-click the preset button (P1, P2, or P3).
• Save a preset. Right-click a preset, or press and hold a long left-click, then choose the level. The current slider value is captured.
• Clear a preset. Right-click and choose Clear.

Presets are stored in settings.json and persist across launches.

When connected to a Denon or Marantz AVR with multiple zones, an extra control bar appears below the slider:

• All / Z1 / Z2 / Z3. Selects which zone the slider currently controls.
• Your selection persists per-receiver and is restored when you reconnect.
• The volume slider always reflects the selected zone's level.

The Music Sources column shows every source HEOS exposes on the connected device, plus two synthetic sources Audio Hero adds:

• HEOS streaming services. Examples: Spotify, Tidal, Amazon Music, Pandora, SiriusXM, Deezer, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, Soundcloud, Napster, Mood:Mix, JUKE, and more depending on your region and device firmware.
• Aux / physical inputs. Phono, CD, Optical, Coaxial, HDMI, AUX, Bluetooth, USB.
• Local Media. DLNA / UPnP servers on your network.
• HEOS Favorites. The presets you've saved in the official HEOS app.
• ★ Starred favorites. Audio Hero's own cross-service favorites list (see section 7).
• 📻 Internet Radio. Audio Hero's own list of saved stream URLs (see section 8).

Audio Hero uses a Finder-style column view. Click a source to open the first browse column, then keep clicking to drill into folders, playlists, albums, or stations.

• Columns scroll horizontally; the leftmost Sources column is pinned and resizable by dragging its right edge.
• Each opened browse column is also resizable and remembers its width for the session.
• Items load in pages of about 100 at a time. Audio Hero requests more as you scroll.
• Click ✕ Close Browser in the header to return to the now-playing view at any time.
• Audio Hero remembers your last-visited source and restores it when you reconnect.

The sources list defaults to the order returned by HEOS, with the synthetic Starred favorites and Internet Radio pinned near the top.

• Drag the ☰ handle to reorder.
• Right-click a source for Move to Top or Move to Bottom.
• Custom order is persisted to settings.json.

To use services like Spotify or Tidal you must be signed into a HEOS account on your speaker. Audio Hero shows the current account email at the top of the Music Sources panel.

• Click the email to manage credentials. The sign-in dialog accepts your HEOS account email and password.
• Check Remember credentials to store them locally. Passwords are encrypted with Windows DPAPI (per-user) and never sent anywhere except to your HEOS device.
• Sign out from the same menu to clear the active session on the device.

Toggle the search panel with the 🔍 Show Search button in the Music Sources header.

1. Type at least two characters into the search box.
2. Pick a category: Artist, Album, Track, or Station.
3. Press Enter or click Search.

Audio Hero fans the query out to every signed-in HEOS service in parallel. Results are grouped per service and each group can be expanded or collapsed. Click any result to play it on the active player.

The Starred favorites list is your own quick-access library, stored locally and independent of any single music service.

• Add to favorites. Right-click any browse item (station, playlist, album, song) and choose ★ Add to Starred favorites.
• Remove. Right-click a starred item and choose ✕ Remove from Starred favorites.
• Browse. Click the Starred favorites source in the Music Sources column.
• Drill in. Starred playlists, albums, and folders open exactly like the originals; the underlying source ID is preserved so HEOS handles playback the same way.

Favorites are saved to settings.json with just enough HEOS context (source id, parent cid, mid/cid, type, name, image) to replay the same browse or play command later.

Audio Hero adds a synthetic Internet Radio source to your sources list. From it you can manage a personal collection of direct stream URLs that any HEOS device can play.

1. Open the Internet Radio source.
2. Click + Add stream at the top of the column.
3. Fill in:
   • Station name (required, up to 120 characters)
   • Stream URL (required, http:// or https://)
   • Artwork URL (optional)
4. Click Save. The station appears in the list and can be played, edited, or reordered.

Audio Hero ships with a small set of seeded stations (Andon FM AI broadcasts). If you delete one of the defaults it stays deleted.

Click Browse catalog... in the stream editor to open the catalog browser:

• Curated providers. SomaFM (live channel list refreshed from somafm.com), Radio Paradise, FIP / Radio France, KEXP, KCRW, WFMU, WWOZ, NTS Radio, Linn Radio (FLAC), Nightwave Plaza, Jazz 24, Rainwave, and others.
• Browse the web. Searches the live community-curated directory at radio-browser.info by station name or genre. Results are sorted by popularity and can be loaded in batches.
• Double-click a station to add it to your list and start playing immediately, or use Add station to add without playing.

When a stream supports the ICY (Shoutcast / Icecast) metadata standard, Audio Hero polls the stream's inline metadata about every 20 seconds and updates the now-playing display with the current track and artist. If the stream does not advertise ICY metadata, the static station name is shown instead.

Audio Hero can stream audio files from your computer to any HEOS speaker without uploading them anywhere. A tiny embedded HTTP server on your PC serves each file to the speaker over your LAN.

• 📁 Play Files. Opens a file picker so you can choose one or more audio files. The selected files become a play queue.
• 📂 Play Folder. Opens a folder picker and recursively queues every supported audio file inside.
• Supported formats: MP3, FLAC, WAV, AAC, M4A, WMA, OGG, ALAC.
• Queue display. Shows the current track and the upcoming items.
• Next / Previous. Navigates your local queue when active and falls back to HEOS controls otherwise.
• The speaker's internal HEOS queue is cleared when local playback starts to prevent cross-talk with previously queued service tracks.

Audio Hero reads embedded tags from each file:

• Tag systems: ID3v2 (MP3), Vorbis (FLAC, OGG), iTunes atoms (M4A, ALAC), ASF (WMA).
• Album art: Extracted directly from APIC frames (MP3) or Windows Shell thumbnails (other formats), then cached locally in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Audio Hero\art-cache.
• Audio properties: Bitrate, sample rate, bits per sample, channels, and codec are read for the now-playing audio info badge.

If tags are missing, Audio Hero tries to parse the filename (for example "Artist - Title.mp3") and falls back to the parent folder name. If all else fails, the filename itself is shown as the title.

• The server binds to your local LAN IP on a random available port. It starts on demand and stops when the app closes.
• Each file is registered with a random opaque token, not its real path. This prevents anyone on your LAN from probing arbitrary paths on your computer.
• Tokens are reused for the same file so repeated plays do not bloat memory.

Groups link two or more HEOS speakers so they play the same audio in sync. To create one:

1. Open the Groups tab in the sidebar.
2. Pick a leader player in the dropdown at the top.
3. Check the boxes for every additional player you want to add.
4. Click Create group. The new group appears in the groups list.

Selecting a group makes Audio Hero treat the leader as the playback target while still showing per-member volume sliders so you can trim individual levels.

• Per-member volume. Each group member gets its own slider; changes are sent to that speaker only.
• Match volume. Sync all members to the leader's current level in one click.
• Ungroup. Disbands the group and returns each member to standalone playback.
• Refresh groups. Re-queries the device for the current group layout (useful if you've changed groups in another app).

When the selected player is a HEOS-equipped Denon or Marantz AVR (for example AVR-X series, AVR-S series, AVC series, or the Marantz Cinema range), a gear icon ⚙ appears next to that player in the sidebar. Click it to open the inline Device Controls panel.

Audio Hero queries the AVR over a short-lived telnet connection (port 23) to detect which features it supports, then shows only the controls that work for that specific model.

• Rename. The ✎ icon opens a dialog where you set a friendly name (up to 64 characters) that overrides the device's own name throughout the app. Leave blank to revert.
• Reboot. The ⟳ icon power-cycles the device after a confirmation prompt. If you reboot the device Audio Hero is currently connected to, the connection drops automatically and reconnects after about 30 seconds.

For HEOS integrated amps (Denon PMA-900HNE, HEOS Link, HEOS Drive, and similar), Audio Hero offers a simplified control panel:

• Identity. Device name, model, IP address, and a "Volume only" note where applicable.
• Rename. Set a friendly name (local label only).
• Power. Toggle on or standby. Shows the current state.
• Input source. Buttons for every input the amp exposes: Phono, CD, Analog 1/2, Optical 1/2, Coaxial 1/2, Bluetooth, AUX, etc. Audio Hero merges the inputs the firmware reports with a per-model catalog so missing inputs still show up.

Unlike full AVRs, HEOS amps do not expose Audyssey, surround modes, or multi-zone control over the network, and those sections are intentionally absent.

You can send the audio from one HEOS amp's input to another speaker. Right-click any HEOS amp in the Players list and choose Send input to another speaker, then pick the destination. This is useful for routing a turntable to a kitchen speaker, for example.

"Legacy" refers to pre-HEOS Denon and Marantz network devices: CEOL Piccolo, M-CR series, older AVRs that pre-date HEOS firmware, and similar HTTP-controlled receivers. They cannot stream from HEOS music services, but they do accept volume, mute, power, and input commands.

Audio Hero treats these as volume-only companion devices. The main playback stays on your HEOS speaker; the legacy device follows along in volume and power.

1. Open the Settings tab.
2. Enable Include support for legacy devices.
3. Open the Players tab and click Discover Devices. Legacy SSDP discovery probes for MediaRenderer devices, filters to Denon and Marantz, and verifies each one responds to the legacy HTTP API.
4. Or add a device by IP using the Or add a legacy Denon/Marantz device by IP field that appears.

Click the ⚙ gear on a legacy device in the sidebar to open its settings panel:

• Friendly name. Rename for local display.
• Mirror volume from. Pick a HEOS player to follow. Volume, mute, and power changes on that HEOS device are mirrored to the legacy receiver.
• Max volume cap. A per-device safety ceiling from 10 to 100 percent.
• Default input on power-on. The input the device switches to whenever it wakes (Phono, CD, AUX, etc.). Leave blank to keep whatever input was last selected.
• Status. Read-only display of current power, volume, and mute state.

Writes go over HTTP (port 8080 with port 80 as a fallback) so the device does not need telnet enabled. Status polling uses non-waking endpoints so the receiver is not woken from standby just to read its status.

The Track Info panel appears to the right of the now-playing artwork (when the window is wide enough) and displays:

• Track summary / song description.
• Artist biography.
• Facts such as genre, release year, country of origin, and album info.
• A clearly labeled "Data from" line listing every contributing service with a clickable link.
• A "Cover from" line crediting the source of the artwork.

Audio Hero queries four data sources in parallel and merges the best fields from each:

1. TheAudioDB for track descriptions, artist bios, and album art (optional, controlled by a setting).
2. Deezer for genre, release year, fan counts, and high-resolution album art.
3. Wikipedia for biographical and cultural context (truncated to a clean sentence boundary).
4. MusicBrainz for community-tagged genres, recording dates, artist country, and founding year.

Long prose fields pick the richest result; factual fields pick the first non-empty value; cover art prefers track-level art over album art. If a service times out or fails, the others' results are still used. A 15-second watchdog ensures the UI never hangs, with a single retry attempt on stalled requests. A "Try again" link is shown if everything fails.

• Hide the panel. Uncheck Show track info above the now-playing area.
• Disable TheAudioDB. Toggle EnableTheAudioDbMetadata in settings.json if you prefer Deezer/Wikipedia/MusicBrainz only.
• The panel is hidden automatically for local files (which use embedded tags) and for legacy receivers (which are volume-only).

The artwork tile rotates between two faces:

• Front: Album / track artwork.
• Back: Service logo or station / radio image.

Three settings on the Settings tab control the look and feel: motion, page-flip animation, and timing. A fourth setting picks which faces are shown at all.

The default layout. Sidebar on the left, now-playing and transport on the right, sources panel below.

Click the 🔽 button in the header. Compact view collapses to a single panel showing artwork, track info, transport, and volume in a smaller footprint suitable for parking in a corner of your desktop.

Click ⏬ for an even smaller single-row layout that fits in a docked sidebar or above your taskbar. All transport buttons, volume, multi-zone selector, presets, pin-on-top, and minimize controls are still accessible.

Click ⏊ to send Audio Hero to the system tray. Hover the tray icon to see the now-playing title; click it to open a popup with:

• Album art, title, artist, album.
• Previous / Play / Pause / Next buttons.
• Mute and volume slider.
• "Open Audio Hero" link and "Exit" link.

The 📌 pin in the header toggles the window's topmost attribute so it stays above other applications. The icon rotates 45 degrees when pinned. Available in every view including the compact ones.

Enable Remember last view on exit in Settings so Audio Hero reopens in whichever view (full, compact, or ultra-compact) was active when you last closed it. When disabled, the app always opens in full view.

Audio Hero includes a per-device sleep timer:

1. Open the sleep timer popup (clock icon near the transport controls).
2. Pick a duration: 15, 30, 60, or 90 minutes, or any custom value you add. Custom values are persisted to settings.json.
3. Pick an action: Stop play (pauses playback) or Power off (sends a power-off command).
4. Pick a scope: this device only, or all devices.

Pause and resume controls let you halt the countdown without losing the remaining time.

Hidden in shipping builds. Only visible when Audio Hero is built in DEBUG mode.

• Debug - Simulate devices. Injects a fake CEOL Piccolo (legacy volume-only) and a fake PMA-900HNE (full HEOS amp with Phono, CD, and Optical inputs) into the Players list so both UX paths can be exercised without real hardware. All commands stay in memory and are never sent over the network. The toggle is always reset to off at startup.

Audio Hero is distributed exclusively through the Microsoft Store. Updates are delivered as new Store packages. There are three states the update banner can show:

1. Update available. A new version is available. Click Update Now to download it, or ✕ to dismiss until later.
2. Downloading. A progress bar shows the download. Audio Hero stays usable while this runs.
3. Update installed. The update is staged. Close and reopen Audio Hero to apply it; click Close now to do so immediately. After applying, the app auto-relaunches.

You can always force a check with the 🔄 icon in the header. A check is also performed every time the app starts.

When Check for device firmware updates is enabled, Audio Hero asks each connected HEOS device whether a firmware update is available. A small yellow ⬆ FW chip appears next to that player in the sidebar when one is.

Audio Hero only notifies. To install the firmware update, use the official HEOS app on your phone (the HEOS API does not expose firmware install).

• Full HEOS device discovery and connection.
• Play, pause, stop, next, previous, repeat, shuffle.
• Volume slider, mute, basic per-device volume memory.
• Music sources browsing (Spotify, Tidal, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Internet Radio, etc.).
• Search across HEOS services.
• Starred favorites.
• Internet radio (custom streams and catalog browser).
• Sleep timer.
• Thumbs up / thumbs down with optional skip-on-down.
• Album artwork tile with customization.
• Renaming and rebooting devices.
• Sign-in / sign-out for HEOS music services.
• App and firmware update notifications.

• Create and play on HEOS receiver groups (multi-room sync).
• Full receiver controls (AVR power, inputs, surround modes, Audyssey, channel levels, multi-zone, tuner, system settings).
• HEOS amp controls (PMA-900HNE, HEOS Link, etc.) with power and input source switching.
• Compact view and ultra-compact view.
• Minimize to tray with mini player.
• Play local files and folders (MP3, FLAC, WAV, AAC, M4A, WMA, OGG, ALAC).
• Audio input monitoring and detailed audio info badge.
• Precision volume control: type the exact volume value.
• Volume presets (three slots).
• Volume max cap for safety.
• Track info panel with combined data from TheAudioDB, Deezer, Wikipedia, and MusicBrainz.

Upgrade from inside the app on a Store install, or visit the Microsoft Store listing directly.

• HEOS commands go only to your local HEOS devices (TCP port 1255).
• SSDP discovery goes only on your local subnet (UDP 239.255.255.250:1900).
• Legacy device commands (volume / mute / power) go only to your local Denon / Marantz device (HTTP ports 8080 / 80 or telnet 23).
• The embedded local file HTTP server serves only your selected audio files and only to the LAN IP of your HEOS device.
• Track info lookups (Pro) are anonymous HTTPS GET requests to TheAudioDB, Deezer, Wikipedia, and MusicBrainz. No accounts, no personal data, no analytics.
• Internet radio catalog searches go to radio-browser.info (anonymous).
• Update checks go to the Microsoft Store.

Audio Hero collects no telemetry, has no ads, does not require an account, and does not use cookies. Full Privacy Policy.

The HEOS account password is stored locally using Windows DPAPI (CurrentUser scope) so only your Windows account can decrypt it. Older builds stored it as plain text; Audio Hero automatically migrates the plaintext value to the encrypted form on first run after the upgrade.

• Confirm the device is on the same subnet as your PC. SSDP multicast does not cross VLANs by default.
• Some VPN and Hyper-V virtual adapters can capture multicast. Try disabling them temporarily.
• Try entering the device IP directly in the Or enter IP address field.
• Confirm UDP port 1900 and TCP port 1255 are not blocked by your firewall.
• If you have many adapters, Audio Hero broadcasts on every active non-loopback, non-tunnel adapter automatically. Discovery still has a 6-second window.

• HEOS devices accept only one CLI connection at a time. Close other HEOS controller apps and try again.
• Reboot the device using the ⟳ icon in its sidebar entry.
• Try a manual connect by IP. If the IP has changed, run discovery again.

• Shuffle / repeat / thumbs / seek: The current source does not support that operation. Pandora, SiriusXM, and similar radio-style services have limited controls by design.
• Pro features: Free edition. A small lock badge marks Pro controls.
• Receiver / amp panel: The selected player is not a HEOS-equipped AVR or amp.

• Audio Hero waits up to 15 seconds for metadata, retries once more, and then shows "unavailable" if all sources fail.
• Click Try again to retry without changing tracks.
• Tracks with unusual tag spellings sometimes do not match cleanly in any of the four services.
• Local files use embedded tags only; the panel is hidden for them.

• The HEOS device must be able to reach your PC over the LAN. Check that your PC firewall is not blocking the random local port the file server picked.
• If your PC has multiple network adapters and is auto-detecting the wrong one, the URL the speaker receives will be unreachable. Disable unused adapters as a workaround.
• Confirm the file format is in the supported list. Some odd container variants may not stream.

• Updates require Audio Hero to be installed from the Microsoft Store (the portable EXE has been discontinued).
• Make sure Microsoft Store updates are not blocked at the OS level.
• Sometimes a Store cache reset (wsreset.exe) fixes stuck updates.

Email bommerts@outlook.com or post on the r/AudioHero subreddit. Attaching the diagnostics log (see below) is very helpful.

All Audio Hero data lives under %LOCALAPPDATA%\Audio Hero\:

You can safely delete the entire folder to reset Audio Hero to a clean state. The app rebuilds anything it needs on next launch.