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On CharlieWednesday saidI would like the same or similar for my BC8500, and I think the MCL2A is the right thing for that, but before I go buying one on eBay, can anyone tell me if I am right!?
Thats right. The MCL2A is very similar to the MCL30 with a IR eye and a relay box in the link room.
On CharlieWednesday saidAlso the MCL2a would allow me to have passive speakers connected and I do have 3 pairs of Beovox passives to choose from, but is there a similar option to connect Beolab actives in a second room, and control them in that room?
The MCL2AV can do that. Where as the MCL2A is just a “simple” relay for turning on or off the speakers and a link eye for controlling the main room system the MCL2AV is far more advanced.
The MCL2AV has powerlink outputs that can be volumen controlled individually from the other rooms (the MCL2A just follows the volume in the main room). Also the MCL2AV has local inputs, so it is possible to connect a B&O CD player and a Tape recorder and control them in the link room, but also have acces to the sources in the main room. A Beovision TV with datalink (only CRT TV’S) or Masterlink via a Beolink converter 1611 can also be connected to the MCL2AV and the speakers in the TV can be used instead of powerlink speakers. The MCL2AV has also been sold under names like X-tra active speaker kit and X-tra TV kit where the latter did not have an IR eye. The IR eye used by the MCL2A and MCL2AV is BTW the same.
If you choose to go this route you are not locked by using old technology. If you choose at one point to replace the Beocenter 8500 with something newer you can do that with a ML/MCL converter.
I can highly recommend looking at the Masterlink Control Handbook that should be available via Google search (Beoworld also has a lot of documentation about the MCL2 system, but it is not available at this time because of the upgrade of the site)
Hope this help you. Feel free to ask more questions, I have been spending a lot of time in the MCL2 rabbit hole 🙂
