[speedsixdave]

Well that is interesting, @Madskp, and I’m sorry I doubted you, @carolpa! It does seem a slightly peculiar state of affairs. Am I going to have to buy an old B&O tv and hide it in a cupboard somewhere to get a Masterlink audio setup to work properly?

Now I’m wondering whether it has to be a genuine video source or whether it’s possible to fool the system with an additional source into the 1611 as in Matador’s illustration?

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[speedsixdave]

speedsixdave wrote:

At the moment I have no genuine junction boxes in ML cables, so there’s no shorting between pin 3 (wh/bl, ‘ML sensor’) and pin 12 (pink, ‘+supply voltage’), as recommended on pages 34 & 35 of this Masterlink handbook. I should be able to do this fairly easily at my distributor but not for a couple of days. Do you have the short circuit in your setups, @madskp? No idea if this is actually relevant or not.

Wrong again, disappointingly. I set out to connect the white/blue and pink on my distribution board but found they were already connected, which of course they have to be in a ML-plug to RJ45-plug cable. So that’s not the answer to the conundrum. FWIW I tried disconnecting the pink cable entirely, but then nothing worked.

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[speedsixdave]

@TK – thanks for all that helpful and interesting information. If I can attempt to boil that down to my own level of understanding. everything is ‘Language A/MCL’ from the invention of the Beolink 1000 and MCL2, up to the invention of Masterlink, which is then a new ‘Language B/ML’, and the IR-eyes are not doing any translating, just passing ‘Language A/MCL’ messages. Newer ML equipment is presumably translating the Language A signals to Language B and in the case of the BL1611, back again:

Beolink 1000 > Language A/MCL > Beolink Passive > Language B/ML > Beolink Converter > Language A/MCL > Beomaster 6500

Possibly I’m wrong and there is no independent Language B, it’s just Language A with a bigger potential set of commands.

Anyway what I still think may be happening is that the short Standby command is being mis-translated or miscommunicated into Language B/ML. I presume this is happening in the Beolink Passive (or Active) but whatever circuitry is doing that mistranslation is bypassed if the Passive is used as an ML/MCL converter. This is definitely making my brain hurt a bit!

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[speedsixdave]

carolpa wrote:

The T1611 was designed to connect a non ML Audio to a ML Video – or – to connect a ML Audio to a non ML Video.

In the proposed settting the Video ML/ Video non ML is missing. Maybe this is the cause of the behaviour.
Note: I have a Beosystem 7000 – T1611 – BLC connected in my Netlink. I have to set the BLC up as VMaster to work correctly if I’m right (note: I have to check this though! Currently the Beosystem 7000/BLC is out of order, starting early next week it is up and running again).

Is that right? The 1997 Masterlink manual has this:

BeoLink Converter is used when audio and video products with Master
Link and Audio Aux Link (datalink) have to be interconnected.
BeoLink Converter can be used in conjunction with both a video and an
audio master. BeoLink Converter features autoconfiguration, meaning
that it is able to detect automatically whether it is installed in a Master
Link audio or in a Master Link video system. Configuration takes place
when it is connected to the mains.
BeoLink Converter can also be used as ML-driver*, which means that it is
possible to connect e.g. a BeoCenter 2300 via the BeoLink Converter to
the Master Link and thereby distribute sound to all link room products
(see page 17).
BeoLink Converter is used in compatibility setups (see the section on
recommended compatibility setups, page 17).
1161166

Which I would interpret as ‘can be used in an audio-only setup’. Frankly I can’t understand why anyone would want to connect their telly to a multiroom setup, but that’s me being out of step I guess!

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[speedsixdave]

Thanks for your interest too, TK. I thought of a thing that might be relevant to our query @madskp, and while looking it up saw a thing that might be relevant to @TK too.

At the moment I have no genuine junction boxes in ML cables, so there’s no shorting between pin 3 (wh/bl, ‘ML sensor’) and pin 12 (pink, ‘+supply voltage’), as recommended on pages 34 & 35 of this Masterlink handbook. I should be able to do this fairly easily at my distributor but not for a couple of days. Do you have the short circuit in your setups, @madskp? No idea if this is actually relevant or not.

Secondly, on that page 35 it mentions ‘Data speed is 19200 bits/second. By comparison, Master Control Link data speed is 160 bits/sec’. I’m well out of my depth here, but does that imply that ML and MCL data signals are a different ‘language’, if you’ll excuse the term? And does that imply that the IR signal from a Beo4 / Beolink 1000 is a different ‘language’ too? Here’s my schematic thinking:

Beo4 / Beolink 1000 – Language A

MCL – Language B

ML – Language C

Beomaster 5500 onwards – Language A

So sending a standby signal to the link room in my most recent experimental setup might do this:

Beo4 > Language A > Rectangular IR Eye translates to Language B > MCL2A > Language B > into Beolink Passive acting as ML/MCL converter, which translates to Language C > Beolink Converter 1611 which translates back into Language A > Beomaster 6500

Without the MCL2A this might go:

Beo4 > Language A > Circular IR Eye translates to Language C > Beolink Passive > Language C > Beolink Converter 1611 which translates back into Language A > Beomaster 6500

In my scenarios here it is the translation of the standby signal from A to C in the Round IR Eye that is going wrong and causing the incorrect standby command to reach the Beomaster.

Of course (a) this might all be rubbish, and (b) it doesn’t explain the ‘correct’ behaviour at times when two ML link products are connected.

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[speedsixdave]

More conflicting madness from today’s brief experiment.

I added an MCL2A to the far side of the Passive:

BM6500 > AAL > 1611 >ML > BL Passive no IR eye> MCL > MCL2A+rectangular IR eye > Beovox 3000s

Success! System works as it should. Short press on the rectangular IR eye puts only the Passive into standby, Long press puts the whole system into standby. With Main and Link rooms on, muting the BM6500 mutes only the main room, not the link room. Volume control independent in both rooms. Huzzah! Interestingly the rectangular IR-eye wakes the Passive and turns the sound on instantly, without the delay of a couple of seconds for the round IR-eye into the Passive.

Everything continues to work fine with the BL3500 back in MCL mode and connected direct to the BM6500, independent control of both link rooms and the main room without conflict.

I tried also plugging the round IR eye into the Passive too at the same time as the MCL2A. In this case the rectangular IR still works but the round IR does not. I guess using the MCL plugs tells the Passive it’s meant to be a ML/MCL converter and disables its IR port.

Still baffled though!

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[speedsixdave]

Madskp wrote:

So I just did some testing with some of my equipment:

Beocenter 9300 – 7 pin datalink cable –  1611 – masterlink cable – Beolab 3500 MK1 both with, and without a powerlink cable between the BC9300 and the 1611.

Beosound Ouverture – Masterlink cable – Beolab 3500 MK1

In bot cases I get the same behaviour as you describe even when I start the music from the master system.

Now what I expected. I will see if I have time to look more into this today

Thanks for trying, and very interesting!

I did wonder if this is how the ML system is meant to work, and rather than pressing Standby in the link room you’re just meant to use the Mute button on a Beo4 or 1000. But I’ve found when trying this that the muted link product then turns itself off after half an hour or so, which in turn puts the whole system into standby. Not great if you’ve moved back from the link room to the main room to watch TV or whatever, and halfway through a show the sound cuts out.

Quite baffling. And not how an MCL system works.

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[speedsixdave]

Madskp wrote:

Just some extra notes to be clear:

Do you start the music from the main system or from one of the link rooms, and do you also have the speakers in the main room in use in these scenarios?

I’ve tried all ways, with the same results as above. Starting the music in the main room and joining the link rooms, or starting and listening from a link room only, or starting from a link room and adding the main room in after. All result in the same behaviour. Agreed that this would be correct behaviour if listening in a link room only.

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[speedsixdave]

Results of today’s experiments!

Firstly I was wrong before about the Beolab 2000 working differently to the Beolink Passive. It doesn’t, the results are exactly the same.

I’ve got a long sheet of permutations and results, but they all correlate so far into two scenarios. Setup is:

BM6500 Aux socket > 7-pin ‘Audio Aux Link’ cable > Beolink 1611 converter > Masterlink to RJ45 distribution board* > BL Active/BL Passive/BL2000/BL3500

Results are:

Any one of BL Active/BL Passive/BL2000/BL3500 connected: Pressing the standby button directly or via Beo 4 / Beolink 1000 on the link product turns the whole system into standby

Any two of BL Active/BL Passive/BL2000/BL3500 connected: If both link products are On, turning either of them Off (into standby) works as it should, with the Beomaster and the other link remaining On. But if the second link product is then turned Off (standby), the whole system turns off. This is the same whichever link products are connected, and whichever order they’re switched on or off in. Putting the first link product into standby works as it should, putting the last link product into standby turns everything off.

I don’t (at the moment) have enough bits of Masterlink cable with the right ends to try more than two link products at once, but I suspect the same result: last one into standby turns everything off. As reported above the same behaviour appears with one product and genuine Masterlink cables so I don’t think it’s my home-made RJ45s at fault.

So I still don’t know if it’s my 1611 or my Beomaster that’s at fault, or something else. I have a bid on another 1611 on eBay as that’s the cheaper experimental option! Would like to try with a different AAL- or Masterlink-enabled Beomaster but I don’t have such a thing. At the moment.

• quite pleased with the RJ45 distributor, a few £ from eBay and easy to attach a Masterlink cable to. All shielded/ grounded too.

 

• This reply was modified 4 days, 20 hours ago by speedsixdave.

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[speedsixdave]

I have been working my way through that thread, there’s lots of good info in there. I’d not really appreciated you could get an output from e.g. the Tape socket on a Beomaster, though I realise now that’s exactly what the Audio Aux Link into a 1611 is all about. There’s a world of non-wife-friendly possibilities with this stuff!

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[speedsixdave]

Well I’d already extracted the BM3300 from the shed by the time I read your sensible comments about Datalink 86 @Madskp, so thought I’d try it anyway. Of course it doesn’t have an Aux port, just CD, Tape and Phono. I connected a 7-pin from the 1611 to the Tape socket and fired up the radio, then turned on the Passive, and there was sound! I could control the volume on the Passive with the IR eye or Beolink 1000, but could not control the BM3300 through the IR eye which confirms your Datalink thoughts.

Interesting, but I’m not sure whether there’s much practical application for this. You could establish a link room with ‘join’ and volume control only I guess. Perhaps running a pair of active powerlink speakers from the BM3300 rather than Beovoxes, but still a bit of a faff.

Experiments currently underway with the Active/Passive/BL2000. Results so far are consistent, but confusing! Will report back later.

Dave

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[speedsixdave]

Hi Madskp,

Thanks for the input. Yes odd indeed. I have now tried (I think) all permutations of turning things on in different orders, and with and without the existing MCL (BL3500) connections to the BM6500 in place, and still no change.

I do have another IR eye and have tried that too, no change. Oddly the standby light on one of the IR eyes does not light up, but it doesn’t seem to make any difference.

Learning from The Princess Bride, I thought it might be helpful to list my relevant assets:

Beosystem 6500

Beomaster 3300, currently in the shed

Beolab 3500, currently wired in via MCL to the BM6500

Beolab 2000, currently doing nothing

Beolink Active 1636 + IR eye, currently doing nothing

Beolink Passive (no idea which version) + IR eye, currently connected via ML+Beolink Converter to the BM6500

MCL2AV, currently not connected

MCL2A, currently not connected

Beolink Converter 1611

Various original and home-made ML cables including an RJ45 distribution panel

Beolab 4000 Mk1s, currently Powerlinked to the BM6500

Beolab 3000s, currently acting as Beovox 3000s and connected to the Passive.

Various passive speakers (inc C75, BV3800)

 

I’ve tried the current setup both with my home-made cables and some ‘genuine’ ML cables with and without junction boxes, and same behaviour. I’ve also tried with and without a fully-wired powerlink cable between the BM6500 and 1611, which doesn’t seem to make any difference at all. Currently running it without. 1611 is connected to the Aux port on the BM6500, it doesn’t seem to work at all in Tape which would have been my preference.

Things I intend to try this weekend:

1. try the Active at the same time as the Passive, possibly with the BL2000 too, all connected through my RJ45 distributor. If I have sufficient bits of cable.
2. get the BM33oo out of the shed and try that connected to the 1611. Not sure if this will work but if it does with the same behaviour it would suggest it’s my 1611 that’s the problem
3. maybe try with the BL3500 via ML, though this might be more destruction than I have time and space for.
4. I might also try the MCL2A or 2AV with their own rectangular IR eye connected on the far side of the Passive, and see how that works. But that might be a step too far.

Any other great ideas? Writing this all down has been quite helpful in itself.

 

• This reply was modified 6 days, 6 hours ago by speedsixdave.

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[speedsixdave]

Lluís Campaner wrote:

(On the extra note the transformer on my beomaster is really loud, is this common? Just tightening or adding some cushions could fix it?)

I’m on my second Beomaster 6500 now as the first one also had a really noisy transformer. I bought them from the brilliant Mark at https://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/vintageandvinylaudio who happily exchanged the noisy first one for a much quieter replacement.

As Guy says the problems are likely (a) the internal support bushings and (b) the surface it sits on. Ours sits on a lovely Nathan Circles sideboard which acts as a massive resonator for the buzzing and vibration. If I put the BM on carpet you couldn’t really hear the transformer buzzing unless you had your ear next to it, but on the sideboard it was really noticeable.

First thing to try though is some better foam or rubber feet for the Beomaster. A set of pads to stop furniture scratching wooden floors is a good starting point for the cost of pence/cents, this is what I’ve done for the second BM6500 and it’s essentially silent now even on the sideboard. Squash balls cut in half are better but more pricey and more obvious. A foam mat might do the trick and be unobtrusive but I’d want to make sure there’s airflow under the Beomaster. Changing the internal bushings is probably the best answer though if you are confident with the mechanics.

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[speedsixdave]

They are, and it’s my fault for heading off-thread by doubting the abilities of the Beoconnect Core. Stan defended it, dueno requested more information. But a diversion from this interesting topic, for which I apologise.

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[speedsixdave]

355f wrote:

In fact using this thought process, there would be no premium brands in any product

I’m not averse to that. Good design and good functionality at a fair price please, which is not to reject the idea of a higher-quality product at a higher price. I’m pretty much with William Morris on this, though who knows what he would have made of a Beoconnect Core. The problem arises when one is being asked to pay lots of additional money just because a product says Louis Vuitton on it, or whatever. A posh name does not make a thing quality.

 

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[speedsixdave]

A Rolex is an interesting comparison – an outdated technology that no-one buys for its superior functionality in the 21st century. A beautiful and intricate item that some adore and some see little point in, owned and used primarily as a status symbol. Is that how we feel about B&O?

One positive about luxury watch ownership is that they might be a reasonable investment and be worth more in fifty years’ time than they are now. Rarely true of consumer electronics although if you’d bought a crate of Beogram 4000s in the 1970s and stored them well you might be on to something!

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[speedsixdave]

sorenfelden wrote:

I guess they highlight why running B&O is very difficult as there are so many different opinions on what the “fix” should be. For me, it is a whole new product range with a design language away from organic forms – for you, it’s something completely different.

Ask a friend, get advice. Ask two friends, get conflicting advice.

I’d like to see a bit more well-designed modular hifi, at more reasonable prices. I don’t believe that premium for premium’s sake is a good business model for either the company or for consumers. When you look at what WiiM can offer for £350 or indeed what Ikea can offer for £80, it does make B&O’s offerings seem very hard to justify. And I realise it’s sacrilegious to compare a £90 WiiM Mini to a £1000 Beoconnect Core but essentially they are the same device with an order-of-magnitude price difference, and nobody’s buying the Core for its exemplary industrial design, they’re buying it because they’re locked into a ‘premium’ ecosystem. Same really for Ikea’s quite good-looking new Solskydd speakers (£29/£50/£80). Obviously they’re not going to sound as good as an A9 (£2800) but the design is pretty attractive and you could have 35(!) of the big ones for the price of an A9.

You might say that there is no overlap between the potential customers of Ikea/Wiim with the potential customers of B&O but I am precisely that customer and I suspect I’m not alone. We’re building an extension at the moment, and I have budget for a Shape if I can justify it to myself and the wife. But the £6k or so is a huge amount of real money. I do love B&O’s industrial design (primarily) and sound quality (secondarily), but there are lot of alternative options for £6k from vintage to modern, and a lot of Other Things to spend £6k on. If four Ikea Solskydds do effectively the same job as one Shape, then the remaining £5680 buys a lot of compromise.

The wider point here beyond my exemplum rant is that I suspect most customers buy B&O for the design primarily and the sound secondarily. There have always been lots of other options at all price points for sound quality, but far fewer for good, stylish, living-room-friendly design. That is less true now, with other companies from Ikea to Ruark realising this is a market space they can exploit. The unique B&O multiroom advantage has also gone, eaten by WiiM, Sonos, Airplay and others. So I can partially understand that decision to target VHNWIs, but I think it’s the wrong one. Do good design with decent sound at an acceptable price point, and people will buy your product. Everything in life is a compromise.

 

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[speedsixdave]

Back on topic re future directions, any (audio) brand sells on three or four things:

Brand desirability

Visual attractiveness

Technical capability (and sound quality)

Price/value

For B&O at the moment, no-one is buying the product because it’s good value. Some people may be buying it because it’s really expensive.

Technical capability is a bit problematic, as folk have noted upthread. Why are £1000 Cores lacking connectivity? Why was the Stage so crippled? Why have BL 17s and 18s not been updated to Mozart? Why am I looking at spending £1000 at Almando to get surround sound on my TV rather than B&O?

Sound quality is a difficult issue, as most punters (myself included) don’t really have the capabilities to assess ‘quality’, but are probably capable of saying ‘I like the sound of that more than that’. Let it be agreed that Beolab 90s sound amazing, but my friends who like hi-fi still think that B&O is not ‘proper’, not like Linn or something. Selling stuff on genuine sound quality is difficult and liable to lead to £1000 speaker cables and the like.

 

Visual Attractiveness has always been the big one for B&O, good design with nice actions that sound fine and have some other unique features like early multiroom. There are still some standout products like the Shape, A9 and BL18 but lots of meh too like the entry level M3/5, Levels, Balances, the late BL9s/20s, and even the mighty BL90. Could you get those past your wife, even if you had £120k spare? And as noted much of the streaming stuff does not look like it’s meant to be on display at all, let alone pride of place in your living room.

 

So Brand Desirability. B&O is still a name, some guys at work were boasting last week about the B&O in their Audis. But Brand Desirability ultimately depends on quality products that people want and are able to buy. Lagonda is probably still a desirable name, but there’s no products, no employees and no cars neither.

 

On that note I fear B&O might become the new Bugatti or similar. Bought out by e.g. LG or some Chinese brand we haven’t heard of yet, one or two unattainable flagship products no humans can afford, no connection to the past, just a name to hang mostly identkit low-end Chinese-built disposables on. Let’s hope not.

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[speedsixdave]

Slightly off-topic, but interesting that the current UK used prices for those 1987 items are pretty much exactly 10% of the ‘equivalent new’ prices, except for the Beograms which are proportionally much more

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[speedsixdave]

Stan wrote:

Challenges that I see:

The kids are not as excited by stuff. They prefer their experiences. Also, since housing prices have gone up possibly more than B&O prices, many want to make moving as easy as possible. Big beautiful speakers don’t fit that model.

Kids do like vinyl, as do lots of people today who wouldn’t describe themselves as audiophiles. Why don’t B&O make lovely record players again? And not 4000c and 3000c renovations for thirty grand. A small range of two or three at ‘affordable’ but aspirational prices of say £700 to £2000. And perhaps some affordable speakers to match. I presume the reason is they couldn’t then justify selling 3000c’s for thirty grand.

In slightly related news, I dug out my dad’s B&O pricelist from 1987 and popped some prices into the Bank of England inflation calculator. At today’s prices:

Beomaster 3300 £1155

Beogram 3300 £805

Beomaster 5500 £2119

Beogram 5500 £1094

Beocenter 7007 £2477

Beocenter 9000 £4649

CX100s £814

Beolab Penta £5218

Aspirational, certainly, but not completely insane. Entry-level system about £2800, top-of-the-range about £10000.

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