If you repost your question in the Mac section, then I can give you a good answer without inducing heart attacks in Apple-averse members.

Yes, I know your question relates to getting the best out of B&O speakers, exploiting the fact that they are active and that B&O could have sold mountains of them if they had provided what you need in the dealerships. Which leads one to believe it's a question that belongs in the General Forum. But let's not tempt fate.

I will let you in on the simple secrets over at the Mac-section of BeoWorld. See you there!

Quick answer: Maybe.

You need a cable from 3,5mm minijack to Powerlink. My dealer once made such a cable for me - worked well with my BL3 (which do have a LINE input). 

Even quicker answer: Yes!

These are one of my most popular cables, so I keep them in stock for all Beolab speakers that need the Powerlink sockets for line inputs, including Beolabs 3, 9, 4000 (mk.2), 6002 and 8002.  Please see my sponsor link below for more details.

Kind regards,

Steve.

My brother has exactly this setup in his house.  Demonstrated in store by the dealer,  sold by, and setup by the dealer.

He has 1 (MK1) Apple TV, and the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad use the remote app to distribute and control the music and volume.

I don't know which cables they used, but there are BeoLab 4 PC in a study, 4000s in a dining room, and a pair of 8000s in the living area.

If the active Speakers are connected to an audio-source via 3,5mm - how is the power of the speaker managed (read: will they turn off, when there is no music played?).

That would be a nice solution actually

I would strongly advice against connecting BL-speakers directly to the analog out from a computer or airport device. The DAC in the computer is low-grade, impedance induced noise when attaching and removing the connection can damage your tweeters, and usually the speakers never go into standby because of random noise going down the wires. Get a DAC, it will protect your speakers, provide better sound and ensure that the speakers go into standby when not in use.

I put a post on the Mac-page concerning this.

soundproof wrote:

I would strongly advice against connecting BL-speakers directly to the analog out from a computer or airport device. The DAC in the computer is low-grade, impedance induced noise when attaching and removing the connection can damage your tweeters, and usually the speakers never go into standby because of random noise going down the wires. Get a DAC, it will protect your speakers, provide better sound and ensure that the speakers go into standby when not in use.

I put a post on the Mac-page concerning this.

I am not sure if I understood it correct: Your Idea is, to put an Digital-Analog-Converter between the AE and the BL? I was not aware, that the AE had an Digital output - but that is a nice touch :-)

What DAC do you think is good choice?

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This thread continues: here!

Depends on your budget. If it is rather low, i'd try a

Musical Fidelity V-DAC.

Best regards

Tom

Yes - the minijack out on the AE has the same dual-function as the minijack out on a MacMini or Macbook - you can take an analog signal out, as you do when you use the earbuds-connector; or you can take an optical Toslink s/pdif signal from them.

Then you just port that to a DAC that accepts an optical Toslink s/pdif, and which has RCA LINE OUT for connection to the speakers. If the DAC has volume control then you get a good way of setting a master level for the speakers. As the DAC will not send anything to the speakers unless it receives a signal from your computer, the speakers will go into standby-mode as they should, when not being used.

If the DAC in addition has Headphone jacks OUT, then you can use that as well.

A good DAC will run you from a couple of hundred Euros to about 1.400. I linked to the Impact Twin from tc electronics on the Mac page. That is about USD 400, and is what I have connected to my BeoLab 5s.

 

If B&O had put a nice B&O skin around a proper DAC, their stores would the thronging with people looking to buy their cool speakers for use with their computers.

I've heard good things about this one: http://www.headfonia.com/matrix-mini-i-balanced-dac/

Emotiva has a nice unit, the one mentioned by Rookie is good.

I'm also using a Grace m902 (now there's an m903 model). It is connected to an Airport Express, as described above, and the RCA Line Out goes to my Beolab 5000 amplifier.

With respect, to the people answering "Yes" above, including Steve at Sounds Heavenly - "No," you're not getting the best your active BeoLabs can do if you are connecting them directly to the analog out on an AE or laptop. In addition there's risk of damaging your speakers when you connect and disconnect them, unless you always switch them off when doing so.

Steve could probably do a nice business selling a proper DAC with the Toslink minijack>Toslink and RCA>Powerlink cables required to connect to the speakers.