archie wrote:

hello

i saw the BEOLAB 18 have a PL and a line conectors.

but dont have a selector to choose beetwen the 2 input.

if the speaker is connected by PL with bo product AND line with no beo product, as the swith is automatic beetwen the sources like almando switch when the signal arrive ?

thank you.

tradingman wrote:

Hello,

No that's not possible. You have to go via for example an essence or a beolab transmitter.

Regards

You should be able to do what you suggest - the powerline and line inputs are handled separately within the speaker and B&O has provided the following information in one of their 'tips'...

Connect several sources to the speaker at the same time

Information valid for: BeoLab 17, BeoLab 17 MK II, BeoLab 18, BeoLab Transmitter 1, BeoLab 20, BeoLab 20 MK II

When connecting sources via POWER LINK, TOSLINK and Line-in at the same time. Priority of sources is: 1. POWER LINK 2. TOSLINK 3. Line-in (L INPUT R)

Note that starting a source with higher priority will always interrupt a source with lower priority. A source with higher priority must be stopped to start a source with lower priority.

Hope this helps...

Martin.

On a sidenote:

Why offer a Toslink connection on these speakers???

It is - in reality - hardly possible to control the volume on these speaker (as it is with the BL5's).

MM

There are essence like pre-amplifiers that are quite able to volume control toslink Signals. http://m.usa.yamaha.com/products/audio-visual/wireless_streaming_amplifiers/wxc-50.html

@L1NO

The question however, is: how do they do it?

Reducing the bitdepth of the files is one way, but certainly not the best.

Mostly the dig-outs of these 'cheap' devices are used for connecting some knd of preamp, which might be able to do the job.

You could use a computer with a software capable of using 32-bit floating point processing.

But - I just can't imagine that a 'audiophile geek' or a studio guy would buy the BL18's.

This is of course offtopic here - but it would be nice to know, if there is any reason for adding the dig-in....

...other than that it is the connection the guys in the acoustic department used for tuning the speaker/s.

MM

@MM

Spot on,- sort of like running BL5 from an analog output like PL....?  😎

Still off-topic, but anyway.

The difference is, that you can control the volumen of the BL5's, even if it is connected via spdif/coax.

You can't control the output of a BL18 - unless you use the PL or Line-in connection.

MM

Millemissen wrote:

The question however, is: how do they do it?

Reducing the bitdepth of the files is one way, but certainly not the best.

This is true, although in any active speaker with a DSP the first thing that will need to occur internally (for an analogue input) is conversion to digital.

Given the full bit-depth output of the speakers internal ADC will need to correlate with whatever maximum peak to peak line level the speaker is designed to accept, even a reduced volume analogue signal will likely suffer the same reduction in bit depth once sampled as a volume controlled digital input would inherently have, so there is still a potential benefit to scaling the digital levels, as opposed to converting to analogue externally and then back to digital again inside the speaker, as it removes these two stages from the process.

The BL5 method of accepting the full, unmodified, digital input, carrying out the DSP processing, converting the result to analogue with a DAC, and then adjusting these analogue levels is of course a better option though as already mentioned.

Martin.