Geoff Martin wrote:

You obviously didn't chew on it enough. ;-)

Cheers

-geoff

Geoff Martin wrote:

js wrote:

Geoff, could you relay these questions within B&O? Please...

Already done. :-)

Many thanks, very much appreciated 🙂

Geoff Martin wrote:

I don't know if there is a big "winner" in the market between the Toslink vs. S/P-DIF Coax. I see both roughly equally on various levels of equipment. [...] Many (but by no means all) devices have a Toslink output. Many (but by no means all) of those are volume controlled. [...] Currently, I believe you are correct in saying that no B&O Player has a Toslink output. I would disagree with you regarding the third-party devices. I have one on my desk right now that has a disable-able volume control that works quite well.

Fair comments and I am happy to have been corrected. I suppose I have not got a broad enough view on the market and I will do more research.

Geoff Martin wrote:

It's interesting to me that this is an issue for the digital input, but not the line input. Perhaps it's because, typically, the gain control of a line-level signal is typically implemented better in a hardware device (like a stereo preamp, for example) than what we would typically see in free software like iTunes. Another good reason why I should dig into the behaviour of the "high end" SW players like the ones listed in your posting.

It is indeed more an issue for the digital input for the reason you mention (and I am happy that you are interested in testing the abovementioned SW players, thanks for this). In my case there is also another reason: I believe analog solutions are still more widespread and straightforward (but again I should probably do more research): I know I can add a monitor attenuator or a stereo pre-amp between a DAC with fixed line and the BL20 analog input. But except for a Mac with a high end SW player, I still don't know what to do between a HiFi player with a digital output without volume control and the BL20 Toslink input.

All in all I agree with you that there are always solutions both for analog and digital. Bottom line the only thing that I mean here is that a Beolab with integrated volume control is a much more elegant and convenient solution (in other words: a more B&O solution). This would facilitate the integration of Beolab speakers into a wider variety of setups (which some reviews also mentioned is currently cumbersome except for BL5). For customers like me this (or a B&O pre-amp) would add very much value to the new Beolab speakers and this would potentially result in higher sales for B&O.

Again, many thanks for having taken the time to listen and for having provided extensive replies in this thread. 🙂

Sebastian

Same here. I really hoped that I could connect an Auralic Aries with Beolab 20 through Toslink without having to use an extra DAC (with an extra control, and so on..). I assumed the sound to be wonderful, coming from Tidal for example. Unfortunately, it does not appear to be that easy. 

Thanks for reactivating this thread.

These questions now come up again, when 'the new big' speaker is mentioned.

Of course people - used to the digital connection of the BL5 - want to know if the connections can be done the same with an improved new speaker.

Which connections this coming speaker will feature, is still unknown - surely there will be PL (analog) WiSA (digital). And we don't know, if the 'big one' will have the built-in volumen control like the BL5.

Some people will certainly want to use it without a B&O setup.

So the question remains:

Will there be a (official) recommendation on how to use the digital (S/PDIF) input (supposedly there will be one) with 3rd party hard- or software-players?

I guess this then would be similar for the BL20 and the other new speakers.

MM

at least a studio quality desktop solution exists from TC Electronic:

BMC-2

StUrrock wrote:

I have a pair of BeoLab 18s connected in daisy chain fashion to an Autonomics Mirage MMS2A media server and they do sound brilliant.

However every 3 days like clockwork they start making a crackling noise

Hi,

Of course, it's impossible to say for sure, but I have experienced some audio errors that you might describe as "crackling" as a result of too much attenuation of the light level on the Toslink cable.

In my case, the problem was some combination of:

• a cheap Toslink cable (I've learned that low-quality plastic in the fibre optics attenuates the light over distance)
• a long Toslink cable (see above...)
• a poorly-made termination (I just cut the end of the cable with a pair of wire cutters and didn't flatten/polish it - my fault)

This caused the Toslink receiver hardware on the BeoLab 18 to get enough light to think it had a signal (so it played something...) - but not enough light to actually get a clean signal.

So, I would say that one possible thing to try to fix your problem would be to swap your toslink cable. If you have the problem on both speakers, then swap the one feeding from the source. If you have the problem on the "downstream" speaker only, then swap the one connecting the two loudspeakers.

Then again, this might not be your problem - but it's the first thing I would check.

Cheers

-geoff

I have a pair of bola 20's for sale

They proved too small for my application, is anyone interested?

JR8080 wrote:

I have a pair of bola 20's for sale

They proved too small for my application, is anyone interested?