hi,

I have read most of the posts but not been able to find a complete answer to a question on streaming high res audio to my b&o system.

I am using a b&O sound theatre with the beolab 18 (For rear) & 19 connected to a 77” G2.  The screen and BST are mounted on a motorized future automation mount negating the option of using a line out with a wire to my ipad (or other).

I have an apple tv connected to it using a balun hdmi extender which terminates in  my networking cabinet.

I am a new to my current b&o setup but not high res audio and would like to see if i can get the full benefit of using qobuz, amazon unlimited and tidal (does b&O handle mqa?). on my bang and olufsen system.  The apple tv is limited in the high-res output and I am interested in feeding a 24bit/192khz signal or if not that then a 24/96

1. Is this possible and how do I do it?

2. Does the BST have a built in DAC ?

3. Can i use a DAP or should I use a network streamer?

4. would a Core be of any help in sending a high res audio signal?

5. can i substitute the apple tv for another device which can stream hi-res audio at levels better than apple tv?

6. if anyone has successfully done got high res music to a system like mine how did it sound?

It’s been a few days i’d poring thru the forum pages. thanks so much for your help.  please feel free to add more information than asked for as i’m a bit lost on this.

 

 

As someone who had for a long time BL18s and a BL19, I would respectfully say that you really won't hear much/any difference with hi-res music on these speakers.

Otherwise, the Theatre (as I'm sure you know) doesn't have a separate digital input which you could use for a network streamer, so you have the option of using the analogue input (USB-C input with the correct dongle), and connect a streamer/DAC to send the Theatre an analogue (hi-res) source.

 

That extra D-to-A plus A-to-D resampling round-trip seems anathema, in the high-res world.  Might one solution be acquiring an "old" Oppo UDP-205 for its jitter-eliminating secondary HDMI Audio-only port, and using it as the streamer, thus preserving the signal digitally, into one of the Theatre's HDMI inputs?  I don't remember the issues vs. Roon-ready after all this time, but I thought this allowed hi-res all the way until the final renderer's (Theatre's) D-to-A?

link

Could It be possible to connect a Bluesound Node and use the hdmi output on that and connect to the Theater?

Nope, sorry.  Node's HDMI connector is for input only, from the eARC out of a TV.

Maybe a little off topic:

To my knowledge the easiest and highest signal input is to listen through a recent Apple TV supporting the mid tier lossless (24-bit/48kHz) over hdmi. indeed the BS TH will modify the signal so much with listening positions but you have a decent digital signal directly to the TH.

its just a hassle to navigate on screen instead of browsing computer or phone with Apple Music.

Hi Syrianos82,

Thank you for the reply.  that is quite helpful.

I will try out the apps on LG.  When playing thru Tidal, I presume I will only get 44.1 unless the BST does full MQA uncoding (?).  anyone know the specs of it's DAC?

Has anyone used the LG apps to get 192kHz?

@trackBeo, I believe the AppleTV limits audio to 24-bit/48KHz.

I wish B&O just supported some of the more high-res streaming apps than ones limited to decent quality MP3's. Deezer is better than Spotify for sure but a far cry from Qobuz.

looking on the web I found, HALL AUDIO WiFi Streamer with HDMI ARC -has anyone tried this?  looks to be made for B&O users in mind.

possible solution:  This Denon - DNP-2000NE - came out earlier in the week.  It has an HDMI ARC out and is a network streamer and Roon Ready.  If I were to connect this directly to the BST using HDMI would it solve the problem?  I would have to then buy a HDMI switch or figure out how to use the Pulse-Eight to do this.

Most welcome,

I was also a bit on this research in the beginning when I first purchased my BL 28.

When you look at the specs B&O actually downgraded the WISA KHz from 24-bit/96 (BL 17/18/19) to 24-bit/48KHz, so I kind let it go since we actually upgraded from 16-bit cd's anyways and I only stream digitally.

Knowing that if you do not hard wire the speakers but send digital audio over WISA the Apple TV as a media player will get you highest quality possible, airplay downsamples the signal to 16-bit. So using BS TH as an airplay device would mean compromising.

I must say I'm very happy with the capability of the BS TH and flexibility to integrate the BL 28 and the BL19&17 into various listening modes. knowing that the signal is a clean digital input that is converted by each speaker seems good enough for my ears ;)

So unless you use the TH to use WISA to speakers, there is little use to look into 24-bit/192HZ...

Found this info on the web:

It turns out that there’s a nuance to the HomePod’s use of AirPlay. It remains true that when you stream from a device like an iPhone to an AirPlay speaker, the stream is limited to 16-bit/44.1kHz. However, when a HomePod grabs a stream natively from Apple Music, it can share that stream with one or more additional HomePods (for the purposes of multiroom or stereo-pairing). It does this using AirPlay and can do so at up to 24-bit/48kHz.

 

PS,

don't forget to set the sound quality to lossless alas in Apple TV. Standard it's set on 256 AAC