Guy, answers to your questions:

1. the IR Eye only seems to work with the PC switched on
2. I don't seem to get a delay with BBC radio stations but do get a short delay with the first station. I have a new behavior though, changing station mutes the playback and I have to open the volume mixer to unmute, will investigate further.
3. I have the audio socket connected to the sound card input on the PC so that I can play Masterlink sources on the PC.

Paul

Thanks again Paul.

link

I don’t seem to get a delay with BBC radio stations but do get a short delay with the first station. I have a new behavior though, changing station mutes the playback and I have to open the volume mixer to unmute, will investigate further.

I have just realised that's what mine is doing too. When it burst into life previously I must have done something else to trigger the unmute. Will investigate!

link

I have a new behavior though, changing station mutes the playback and I have to open the volume mixer to unmute, will investigate further.

I tried BeoPlayer on an old Vista laptop and it didn't exhibit this muting problem. I then tried a Win7 SP1 Virtual Machine (running on QNAP NAS) and found that changing radio stations again caused playback to be muted.  I don't understand enough about VMs to work out if this could be related to a separate windows update! Login to view image Edit:  I also just tried a Win10 (64 bit) VM, and it exhibited the muting problem before installing any 2022 windows updates. (As an aside, the 64-bit VM also installed the newer 4.0.0.0 Beoport driver, so it looks like that is only used by 64-bit versions)

So today out of interest I tried running Beoport/Beoplayer on a Windows 11 Virtual Machine.  Beoport installed fine (including prompting to connect the Beoport's USB), but I had to run the .reg file to get the radio stations to download.

However, Win11 exhibited the same muting problem when changing radio station, as shown below:

Login to view imageI have never used VMs much before, but they look to be a very useful tool to check the compatibility of various older PC programs before moving to Win11 on my main PC.

I have a BL2000 connected to my Win10 PC by using a PC2.

I will investigate tomorrow if it still works

Big, big thanks to Guy for his persistence and for pointing the way.

I had a BeoPort in a box (stored away for 8 years!) and just took it out this afternoon and without Guy's findings it might as well have been a useless curio.

How about that curve ball, the BeoPlayer and BeoPort programs having the exact same versions to 4 decimals, and being different software applications?  I too, had the wrong sw until I downloaded Guy's version, which uninstalled BeoPlayer.

Mine runs flawlessly on 64 bit Windows on Bootcamp on a MacBook.

So, why did I unearth my old BeoPort?  We are at a new house which is probably temporary for just a very few years and I don't feel like running Master Link cables all over the place again, yet I wanted to use an old BL 2000 in the library.   Steve from Sounds Heavenly advised me he doesn't have any solutions for a BL 2000.

I am using cheap $80 Wiim streamers as receivers for multiroom audio.  In the library/BeoPort case, I Master Linked the BeoPort to the BL2000, ran the Wiim output as input to the BeoPort, hooked the USB to the Mac, got the BeoPort to transmit PC audio to the BL, and took away the Mac.  Until someone mistakenly turns off the BL2000 or commands some other source, or the electric supply goes down, the BL2000 is happy to play any audio the Wiim sends to it.

But I wonder if the BeoPort could be persuaded to play "headless" without the Mac across power-downs.  I already figured out that connecting a USB charger to the BP's USB port doesn't work.

link

I am using cheap $80 Wiim streamers

It's great to hear that my Beoport/Beoplayer investigations have been useful!  Apologies also to the OP, but he hasn't been seen since 2 Oct so I hope I haven't frightened him off with all my ramblings.  To be honest much of my input has been to preserve the 'knowledge base' as some of these devices get older, and it's great to see that XavierItzmann is looking at novel ways to use the Beoport to solve a particular problem - namely providing an ML audiomaster.  Please keep posting back with your findings and suggestions.

My Beoport is back in the cupboard for the time being.  Today's task is to dismantle (and hopefully fix) my 16-year-old Brother printer that is malfunctioning - typically I am too tight to buy a new one!!