Beosound Essence MkII - almost a full NL product? So happy!

Prior to purchasing the Beosound Essence MkII, I considered long and hard for a Beosound Moment, posting question after question on these forums to the annoyance of some members *wink wink*.

Due to music listening habits and aesthetics, I settled on the Essence MkII (for the sake of this post, I'll merely refer to the Essence MkII as "Essence" from this point on). I knew the Essence was "less than" the Moment in many respects, including the fact that it didn't have pattern play / moodwheel, but also in that it was dubbed not to be a "full NL product."

Now, this behavior I am about to report may be normal and obvious to the experts on this forum, but to me it was new and refreshing and almost brings the Essence into it's own as a 99% full NL product. What I mean by "full NL" is akin to the following: A Moment can be standalone and can use whatever speakers are mapped to it. A la a master linked Beosound 9000 that uses the TV’s speakers to play music. A Moment does this through NL seamlessly for all of the sources you have set up. 

First, here's my setup: Beosound Essence connected to BL20 in one room ("Listening Room" is the name I've given the Essence in the BeoMusic App). BV11 connected to BL9 in another room. I've mapped three of the sources of the Essence to the BV11 (one of which is TuneIn Radio to the RADIO button of a Beo4 remote for the BV11).

Here's where (again, this may only be novel to me) the fun begins: If I press RADIO on the Beo4, it uses the Essence as the source to play TuneIn content through the BL9 speakers without activating the BL20 connected directly to the Essence. (I've set the “TuneIn (Listening Room)” source on the BV11 Source Menu to activate only the BL9 for stereo sound only.). 

Now, for those who are curious, some behavior questions and answers:

If I use the Beomusic App to, say change the station, what would happen? Simple: the station changes and the BL20 connected to the Essence remain off.

What happens if I click the left / right buttons on the Beo4? The previous / next station play and the BL20 connected to the Essence remain off.

What happens if I want to change the source I'm listening to from TuneIn to my Music Server? Well, here’s where it gets interesting:

If I used the Beomusic App to change the source which is currently only playing through the BV11 connected BL9, then the Essence gets activated and the BL20 start to play as well as the BL9s, but I can easily turn the BL20 off by clicking the X in the Multiroom view horizontally on the iPhone.

If I change the source using the Beo4, by pressing, say CD to change the source from Tune In to “Music” (or Music stream, see other post)… the Essence connected BL20 remain off, and Music from my Server begins playing through the BV11 connected BL9 only. And I can continue using the BeoMusic App to select songs, etc, without activating the Essence connected BL20 speakers.

The Bottom line is that as long as the BV11 is sending the initial source commands to the Essence, the speakers connected to the Essence remain off.

This flexibility in use case was not what I was expecting with the Essence, in fact, this behavior may have always been the case, but my understanding was that somehow the Essence is a "crippled" less than full NL product. To me, this is no longer the case and I'm surprised and extremely happy with my decision to go with an Essence.