I have more or less the same question. My point of view is that one of the attractive sides of B&O is that it is simple to use and only few devices and a minimum of cables is needed next to the absolutely beautiful design.
I am rather hooked up on Roon because of the ease of use to select tracks/albums as well as the extreme quality. Additionally, I like to have the option for MQA.
Having to fiddle around with a DIY Raspberry pi feels like taking away much of the high end luxury experience. Integration would be much more preferred.
Also, this would be rather complicated:
I am considering Beolab 28 or 50 speakers in a 4.0 or 4.1 configuration (so 4x the active).
I do not necessarily have a B&O TV: don’t have it yet.
Can someone confirm if it would even work for multichannel? When using a S/PDIF input on a master Beolab, there is only 1 digital power link output. I am not sure if the save can be daisy chained to a further set to have a fully digital audio distribution to each Beolab.
By the way, I found that Airplay is audibly less than having a HDMI connection between my Roon core (NUC) and streamer. (I can’t test this for Airplay 2). Similarly, playing the same albums/tracks from Qobuz in 44.1/16 bit or any higher res (for instance 44.1/24 or 96/24) is audibly different (this is when playing over the HDMI connection from the NUC). So, I very much want a solution that supports high res multichannel.
Is there any info on B&O coming with some kind of central device that can distribute the digital info per channel via Digital Power Link to a multichannel setup?