Deezer Elite brought high-quality music streaming to Sonos speakers back in 2014, but until now, the service wasn’t available on audio gear from other companies. Starting today, you can access the renamed Deezer HiFi tier from Chromecast Audio or any speaker that has Chromecast built-in. That opens up the options to devices from the likes of Sony, Samsung, Bang & Olufsen, Onkyo and Pioneer — just to name a few.
If you’re not familiar, Deezer Elite, er… HiFi offers lossless audio (FLAC) with original analog quality for $ 20 a month or twice as much as the normal subscription. Of course, Deezer’s library includes more than just music. It also features podcasts, live sports events audiobooks and more, similar to what Spotify and other services showcase in addition to their music collections.
Deezer says if a speaker maker opts to include Google Assistant voice features, you’ll be able to control the HiFi service just by speaking. In fact, the company claims this is the first high-resolution audio streaming option to enable voice control. Sure, the number of speakers that employ Google Assistant is limited to Google Home, but Google paved the way for more voice-controlled gear back at I/O when it released an SDK for developers. With IFA just getting started, perhaps we’re going to see a lot of new devices powered by Google’s virtual assistant this week.
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