Beolab 90 compatibility?

Hi, I was wondering if I could hook up Beolab 90’s and other B&O gear to Roon? I am a total Roon noob and not sure how it would work.

Thanks
Ditlev

I do not own nor do I examine Beolab product manuals. Looking at the specs of the Beolab 90’s the master speaker has SPDIF, USB inputs, as well as ethernet (but that is for future discussion). A roon proof-of-concept as it were would involve buying a Raspi3 , installing some linux OS software like dietPi, then installing the Roon Bridge software on it, and connecting a USB cable from the RasPi to the Beolab speaker.

Then the Roon Core (likely installed on a NUC or beefy workstation) could connect to the RasPi3 and stream music to your Danish speakers!

If you prefer SPDIF to USB, you can buy a hardware adapter for the RasPi3 that outputs the SPDIF audio to the master speaker. I have been running that for a while with my old Meridian DSP5000’s and my new-ish M. AC200.

You need a network -> USB bridge, then hook up the beosounds to that bridge via USB.

there are a bunch of bridges that work well with Roon, and you can build your own using RoonBridge as well.

Tell us about the rest of your hardware setup (computer, tablets, etc…) and we can help formulate a plan…

Thanks for your replies.
I am looking for a multi-room setup.
Main listening room would have the Beolab 90’s. All other rooms would have Beolab shape or Beoplay A9’s.
All active speakers.

I’d like to control everything with iOS devices.

As source I’m using tidal (reading about MQA right now) and vinyl.

Thanks for your help and feedback.

:slight_smile:
Ditlev

If you are capable of DIY: NUC7i3 or NUC7i7 w/ ROCK + RPI3 w/ RoonBridge for each zone

If you are not interested in DIY: Roon Nucleus or Nucleus+ & Auralic Aries Mini or Sonore MicroRendu for each zone.

I have a similar setup. I have some beolab 90s that I want to drive with your new Nucleus+ product. Can I plug the Nucleus straight into the Beolab 90 via USB audio, or do I need the Aries Mini? And if I need the mini - should I connect these to the speakers via the analog output?

Do you believe that the Aries Mini is good enough as a DAC to drive these speakers?

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You can plug it in directly via USB, no need for the mini

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Thanks Danny - that’s great. Seems like an amazing product. For the Beolab 90, DSD and DSD over PCM (DoP) are not
supported, and apparently, in order to play DSD audio files, it is therefore necessary to convert to PCM
in the audio player before sending the signal to the loudspeakers. Can the Nucleus do that?

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Yes. It should find out automatically what the Beolabs can do, and set up automatic translation. It has done that for all my devices.

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