[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.

 

Location: UK

Favourite Product: Beolab 3000

My B&O Icons:

[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!

Location: UK

Favourite Product: Beolab 3000

My B&O Icons:

[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

Location: UK

Favourite Product: Beolab 3000

My B&O Icons:

[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.

 

Location: UK

Favourite Product: Beolab 3000

My B&O Icons:

[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.

Location: UK

Favourite Product: Beolab 3000

My B&O Icons:

[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.

Location: UK

Favourite Product: Beolab 3000

My B&O Icons:

[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.

 

Location: UK

Favourite Product: Beolab 3000

My B&O Icons:

[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!

Location: UK

Favourite Product: Beolab 3000

My B&O Icons:

[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.

 

Location: UK

Favourite Product: Beolab 3000

My B&O Icons:

[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.

Location: UK

Favourite Product: Beolab 3000

My B&O Icons:

[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

Location: UK

Favourite Product: Beolab 3000

My B&O Icons:

[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.

Location: UK

Favourite Product: Beolab 3000

My B&O Icons:

[speedsixdave]

AdamS wrote:

That’s it?

Completely agree with this. I was expecting the Big 100 product for the birthday, and very disappointed to find that the teaser products appear to be all that’s coming. Special edition things don’t count so it’s just the Premiere, and nobody’s going to be excitedly hunting for one of those in mint condition in 50 years’ time.

Location: UK

Favourite Product: Beolab 3000

My B&O Icons:

[speedsixdave]

Nope, spoke too soon. Both BL3000s switch on and off when connected independently and directly by Powerlink. Direct to the Beomaster, via a Beolink Active or via an MCL2AV. Various different cables. They didn’t do this a month ago so I can only conclude I’ve fried something inside each of them. God knows why they work for a bit and then start the switching. Capacitors? I don’t know enough about electronics to form a useful opinion.

Location: UK

Favourite Product: Beolab 3000

My B&O Icons:

[speedsixdave]

Hi Peter,

 

Thanks for the reply and suggestion. Foolishly I had not thought of trying just the powerlink connection direct, but it is now the weekend so I have had chance to try. I have a 15 or 20m fully-wired PL cable from Steve that will reach (just) from the BM6500 to either of the BL3000s so I’ve tried that. So far:

BM6500 >PL> furthest BL3000 = switching on and off after twenty minutes or so

BM6500 >PL> nearest BL3000 = appears to be fine, though I’ve only run it for about four hours. Will try again today.

This makes me think that perhaps only the furthest BL3000 is problematic, and perhaps its switching on and off was affecting the nearer one too when they were daisychained together. Promising.

I also tried Extra Thing One last weekend, running ‘Speakerlink’ into the Beolab amps. This resulted in a loud buzzing sound when no source was playing, at least with the furthest BL3000. So I think there’s definitely a problem there. Will try more things with the nearest BL3000 and see if it behaves well.

Thanks again for the input. Most helpful as a sounding board.

Incidentally I’ve been running the BL3000s as BV3000s all week, bypassing the amps. To my untrained ears the sound is pretty similar, perhaps a bit less bass-rich.

Location: UK

Favourite Product: Beolab 3000

My B&O Icons:

[speedsixdave]

Hi Marcus,

I have a Beogram 1902 which is very similar and have had precisely the same issue – lots of classic 12″ singles that are not easy to play with the automatic control. The only way I found to play them is to hit 45, wait for the tonearm to swing across to the 7″ position, then very gently grab the arm, pull it back to the 12″ position, and lower it as gently as possible back on to the record. Not ideal! Easier with the 1200 series which have a little handle on the arm to assist. By the 1700 series B&O had realised the error of their ways and separated out the speed control so you could launch a 12″ disc and then change the speed to 45rpm.

Ultimately this annoyed me so much I bought a Beosystem 6500 with the tangential Beogram 6500. There’s a lot to like about the 6500 but I do find the the extremely expensive stylus is quite vulnerable to knocks while putting records on late at night after a few beers. Which is generally the time I want to get the old 12″ singles out…

 

No help there, sorry!

 

Dave

Location: UK

Favourite Product: Beolab 3000

My B&O Icons:

[speedsixdave]

Hi Martin,

 

I’ve had both a 1202 and 1203 over the years. Both work and sound great as long as the main bearing is running freely and the belt’s not stretched or knackered. I’d be genuinely surprised if anyone can really tell the difference between the two in perfect condition and with the same cartridge. As noted upthread though these are 50-year-old turntables now and the state of preservation is likely to have a much bigger impact on the sound than how they left the factory – a well-maintained 1203 is likely to sound better than a neglected 1202.

Cartridge is important too – the SP series are reputed to be fairly robust but diamonds do wear out. Replacements are not cheap! Again a 1203 with a pristine cartridge will sound better than a 1202 with a knackered cartridge.

Good luck with it,

Dave

Location: UK

Favourite Product: Beolab 3000

My B&O Icons:

[speedsixdave]

Thanks Madskp, that’s really helpful and interesting. I had not considered the NL/ML converter before, will have a good read up on it. It does start to become a complex (and expensive) system but I do like the idea!

Location: UK

Favourite Product: Beolab 3000

My B&O Icons:

[speedsixdave]

Thanks Madskp, that’s very helpful. And good to know too that the Wireless One can be problematic. I’ve read about the importance of having the same software version on both units. Foolishly I passed up buying a pair quite cheap a year or so ago but might give them a go if I see another pair equally cheap one day. I was also sorry to see the demise of Hall Audio as I had great intentions for their ML to RJ45 converters.

Can I ask another Masterlink question I’ve never quite understood? Greedy man that I am, I’d quite like a Beosound 9000 one day in addition to the Beosystem 6500. Is it possible to have two audio masters in different rooms on the same Masterlink setup? All the manuals I’ve seen talk about an audio master and a video master in one Masterlink system but I’m not bothered about having a connected TV anywhere. Ideally I’d like to be able to play records from the Beogram 6500 either through the BM6500 in the living room or the future BS9000 in the kitchen diner, or CDs from the BS9000 through the BM6500. Even better would be to access any of the sources connected to either master from any connected room. Is that asking too much of a Beo4?

Thanks from the UK!

Location: UK

Favourite Product: Beolab 3000

My B&O Icons:

[speedsixdave]

Morning gents,

 

Thanks very much for those useful replies. Food for thought. I did not know about the OneRemote radios etc and there are some other interesting options on there like the the powerlink switches too.

The DAB/DAB+ thing I knew about, hard to know how much of an issue this will be down the line. I would hope the BBC would keep broadcasting on DAB for a while yet but I might be buying a white elephant with the BS4.

Useful to know that one can put two audio sources into the same system though.

All this would be easier (maybe) if the Panasonic had any kind of output options, but there’s not even a headphones socket on it. Ah well, you live and learn.

Location: UK

Favourite Product: Beolab 3000

My B&O Icons:

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