Marshall Heddon Makes Old Speakers a Multi-Room System

The usual answer to wanting music in more than one room is to buy speakers that support it. Marshall's answer, launched 21 January 2026, is a 440-gram box that upgrades the ones already on your shelf.

Heddon is a multi-room audio hub measuring 120.5mm square and 42mm tall. It connects to a home network over Wi-Fi or Ethernet, pulls in music from Spotify Connect, TIDAL, AirPlay or Google Cast, then broadcasts that audio to several Marshall speakers simultaneously using Auracast.

Why Auracast Changes the Arrangement

Ordinary Bluetooth is a one-to-one link. Your phone connects to one speaker, and that phone has to stay in range.

Auracast, an extension of the Bluetooth standard, broadcasts to multiple receivers at once. Heddon uses it to separate the source from the controller — you start playback from your phone, but the hub handles the broadcast from there. Walk out of the house and the music keeps going.

Full Auracast support currently covers the Acton III, Stanmore III and Woburn III.

The Part About Older Speakers

This is where the brief needs a caveat.

Heddon does extend to earlier Marshall models through RCA, letting an Acton II or Stanmore II join the setup. But the hub has a single stereo RCA output, which means one legacy speaker at a time via an RCA-to-aux or RCA-to-RCA cable — not several.

The remaining RCA ports are line inputs, and that's the feature people seem most drawn to: plug in a turntable and the record plays across every connected speaker in the house. A turntable to Bluetooth speakers setup, without a receiver.

What Marshall Admits It Can't Do

Worth knowing before anyone frames this as an audiophile product.

Heddon has a 24-bit/192kHz DAC, but Marshall confirmed to What Hi-Fi that the LC3 codec used for the Auracast broadcast is not lossless. The broadcast doesn't meet Spotify Lossless or TIDAL Max requirements. Marshall's own framing is that it's an improvement on standard Bluetooth, not a replacement for a wired hi-fi chain.

That's a fair description, and a more useful one than most product pages offer.

Where It Sits Against the Alternatives

Sonos already covers this ground with the Port and Amp, and WiiM's hubs offer broader flexibility at similar prices. Both do more.

Heddon does less, deliberately. It exists to keep a specific set of speakers relevant rather than to compete on feature count — which is why Marshall bundles it aggressively, discounting the hub by half with one eligible speaker and giving it away with two.

The interesting part isn't the technology. It's a hardware company selling something whose purpose is to stop you buying more hardware.