HEY, DENON!

You can control the Denon AVR-X3500H home theatre receiver by voice if you have either Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa up and running in your home. I went with the former since Google is taking over my life anyway. Of course, you will need the appropriate Google or Alexa device in your room too. I used a Google Home Mini.

Setting up, as with anything to do with Google Assistant, requires using the Google Home app on a phone. And, yes, you can get the app for the iPhone in addition to Android phones. You also need to sign up for a free HEOS account. These systems work by you talking to your Assistant. It passes on things to the Google servers. They contact the HEOS servers. And the HEOS servers send commands back to your Denon receiver (or other HEOS device).

It isn’t particularly hard to set up, and once set up it’s fairly easy to use. You say things like, ‘Hey Google, pause music on ... [the name of the device]’. Why the hesitation? Well, the default network name of this receiver is Denon AVRX3500H. That’s bit of a mouthful. I’d suggest first using the Network settings in the receiver, or