It is a confusing mess, no doubt.

As I have written before numerous times, they made the decision to ditch NL over 2 years ago, and to ask customers to focus on Airplay and CC (and voice).  This was communicated to dealers back then - perhaps without the communication emphasising the decision to ditch NL, and are emphasis placed on the reliance on AP and CC.

I spoke at reasonable length to my dealer recently, who confirmed as much and at the presentation he attended (I think for the Balance, when the absence of NL became obvious), dealers were told, in response to the "where is NL?" question, to educate customers to use AP or CC.

So it is no surprise that the two recent products have had (a) no Touch to Join, (b) no Network Link and (c) no inbuilt sources. All of these absences flow directly from the decision above taken a while back.

Now of course we are assured that NL or something of that ilk will be added in the future, and while I'm sure they are working on it, I have no expectation that this will come soon, or indeed on the Q3/4 timeframe that has been indicated to Henryk and / or others.  My dealer was told little in terms of timeframe, and told also something that adding / building back the capability was "very hard", and that they were working on other things.

I'd think about it as follows : they'd clearly in their minds moved on from NL, so hauling themselves all the way back from that headspace to rebuilding NL (seemingly on the new Mozart platform) will be more of a long slog than we may like.  

If the Balance, Level and soon to be announced third speaker of this type all sell well enough in B&O terms, this won't add to the pressure to restore NL, in my opinion.   The Balance is a year from release, and almost as long since the NL reversal announcement in the launch's aftermath. And we're close to 6 months from the Halo release (different issue I know), but where is the further transformative functionality?   There were those who thought the Halo would receive such updates within a few months! No chance.

It would not shock me at all (not my base case though), if we get towards the year end, we see no NL update, and then get confirmation that NL is being officially discontinued. Again, not my base case, but I'd give it a good 30-40% probability.

Thanks for confirming Stan! I start a stream on my BeoSound 2 (MK1) and hit join on the TV, but your point still stands. They removed native Spotify Connect from BeoSystem 4, hence my slightly clunky workaround. 

Your analysis is absolutely spot on, I hope they’ve recognised the error of their ways and we’ll keep to their NL v2 plans and make sure it remains in house. Software development is no easy undertaking, especially at the current pace of innovation and change in hardware. I get the sense that B&O are working on getting it right this time around, hence the slow roll out on Level and Balance. I just hope they can crack backwards compatibility.  

Sandyb wrote:

If the Balance, Level and soon to be announced third speaker of this type all sell well enough in B&O terms, this won't add to the pressure to restore NL, in my opinion.

I have similar thoughts/concerns; hence, my choice to buy the BS1 now vs. buying the Level and hoping for NL at some point in the future. 

Although, with my luck, this choice probably just guarantees B&O will deliver NL on schedule (according to the rumors).  My poor timing is something of a family joke now.  If a stock my son owns goes down, he'll ask if I bought it, and if it goes up, he'll ask if I sold.  So, to everybody waiting on NL for the Mozart platform, you're welcome 😁😎...  and in the mean time, I'll enjoy my BS1.

And actually we could add the Stage to that list.

So come the release of the Emerge, that'll make 4 recent releases all without NL.

I can just imagine the internal thoughts B&O are having re this : so, Chromecast now allows dynamic adding / removing of speakers to / from groups? Why are we rebuilding NL again?

Dont get me wrong, I use it here and there, and would like it maintained. But its usage isn't as compelling as it once was - wandering up to a product and tapping it to touch to join is very nice, though none of the recent product designs have touch joining as part of their design - AP2 was a huge imrpovement stability wise over AP1, and CC offers plenty of voice control flexbility.  It would be great to have as a third (even if only as a fallback) option, but given the hassle / efforts / dealing with 3rd party services involved, I can see why their minds have turned away from maintaining NL.

So yes, I'm sure they're looking into reintroducing something, but I suspect given their philosophical evolution, I wouldn't hold my breath.

Stan wrote:

Sandyb wrote:

If the Balance, Level and soon to be announced third speaker of this type all sell well enough in B&O terms, this won't add to the pressure to restore NL, in my opinion.

I have similar thoughts/concerns; hence, my choice to buy the BS1 now vs. buying the Level and hoping for NL at some point in the future. 

Although, with my luck, this choice probably just guarantees B&O will deliver NL on schedule (according to the rumors).  My poor timing is something of a family joke now.  If a stock my son owns goes down, he'll ask if I bought it, and if it goes up, he'll ask if I sold.  So, to everybody waiting on NL for the Mozart platform, you're welcome 😁😎...  and in the mean time, I'll enjoy my BS1.

According to the website, the Stage DOES have BeoLink Multiroom, but no Deezer or Spotify, just TuneIn.

There are numerous problems with Chromecast and older beosounds (although the M5 and M3 have been affected so not just discontinued products) right now so I'm hoping they are learning the errors in their ways about relying on a 3rd party for mission critical functionality.