Heco Direkt 800 BT MusicTech Magazine Review

Two is always better than one and while these sound great joined together, they would sound better apart. A great Bluetooth listen, anyway.

Price £599
Contact Heco

Direkt 800 BT key features:

• All-in-one, two-way speaker system, Bluetooth and wired
• Comprises 2x 125mm bass/midrange drivers and 2x 25mm tweeters
• Output power: 2x 45 plus 2x 100 watts
• Frequency range: 35-40kHz
• Dimensions (w x h x d): 480 x 320 x 228mm
• Weight: 8.6kg
• Available in black and white

We review a fair few Bluetooth speakers here, but – and let’s make this clear – not because we believe you should be monitoring with them. Not as you are making your music, anyway. They’ll introduce latency when recording and we’ve yet to find a set that we’d truly recommend for playing back music to pinpoint mix inaccuracies.

However, they’re often pretty cheap, portable, very easy to use and set up, plus they come in all shapes and sizes. They are ideal, then, to add to your ‘multiple listening test device’ list (along with your car stereo, kitchen hi-fi and so on), for when you’re checking your mixes to see how they sound on different systems.

The 800 BTs could be about to challenge us on the quality stakes, as they are made by respected German hi-fi expert Heco Audio, which has been making high-end hi-fi speakers for 70 years.

They also have the specs to deliver. Along with decent power and frequency-range stats, these are also housed in a well-constructed body, with the same high-quality drivers found in Heco’s higher-end systems. As well as Bluetooth input, which is an absolute cinch to set up by way of the supplied remote, you can also run analogue Ins by way of RCA and 3.5mm jack sockets, plus digital optical and coaxial Ins. This means you can have four devices connected at the same time and switch betwixt them via the remote. All good stuff so far…

And the speakers themselves sound very good – as they should for the best part of 600 quid. There’s a nice sense of presence right across the range, with the mids and lower-mid detail shining through and the high frequencies sparkling. Even the lows felt solid; we say ‘even’, as the specs might point to a lighter bass, as does the fact that there’s an output available for optional sub – but we’re not convinced you’ll need that. So do we have a set of Bluetooth speakers accurate and suitable for monitoring?

Sadly not. While these might be some of the best-sounding Bluetooths we’ve heard – and pretty accurate with it – they are two monitors in one enclosure, so you simply don’t get the width you crave in mixing. To be fair, they were never intended as studio monitors, but came so damn close, we nearly got a saw out to split them asunder.