I seem to recall that there was a recent thread that suggested this as a solution for allowing both masterlink and local audio sources in a room. If both are active it probably picks one - or once it "sees" audio on one of pl ports, it stops looking. Generally, modern beolabs have many safeguards so they are difficult to break just by hooking them up wrong. 

Stan

Stan wrote:

If both are active it probably picks one - or once it "sees" audio on one of pl ports, it stops looking.

They aren't that clever. There is only one Powerlink connection to the speaker electronics. If the speaker has two PL sockets, they are simply connected in parallel (nothing more than a PL 'Y cable', or PL splitter, built into the speaker).

If you connect a source to both of them, all kinds of funny things can happen depeding on how the sources are implemented internally. The speaker probably won't care, but when one of the sources is on and the other off (or muted), the former will be forcing PL control signals into the latter. I don't think anything will be damaged, but it's not something I would try myself.

Some time ago I had two sources connected to BL1s. But sound quality was rather bad, especially bass was almost completely lost. My experiences are that it does not work for ICE based speakers.

hfat

I still have local and ML sources connected to Beolab 1's. I used to have a manual powerlink switch to manage the change over (now I change the cable and rarely at that).  For a time a BS9000 connected direct to the Beolab1's sounded better than when it ran through a BV7 sound processor. Also useful for testing other B&O equipment.

As was mentioned above the Powerlink sockets are in parallel.

beoaus.

beoaus wrote:

I still have local and ML sources connected to Beolab 1's. I used to have a manual powerlink switch to manage the change over (now I change the cable and rarely at that).  For a time a BS9000 connected direct to the Beolab1's sounded better than when it ran through a BV7 sound processor. Also useful for testing other B&O equipment.

As was mentioned above the Powerlink sockets are in parallel.

beoaus.

@beoaus: that's exactly the reason why I would like to give it a try.

I'm just curious for the difference in sound quality directly from the beosound vs beosound through the surround processor.

But I'm not sure if I would like to send a left right signal and 5v input into the other source.