[Stan]

Why do you say Balances cannot be “very competent speakers in stereo pair”?

I’m very happy with my stereo pair of Balances.

[Stan]

I don’t have an IR eye for my BLC so I don’t know.

[Stan]

I also tested Bluetooth, and it operates the same as Airplay. Send BT to a BS1 casting to ML, and ML device shuts off.

The external streamer solution sounds very reasonable, or you could also switch to Deezer vs Airplay.

 

[Stan]

@BeoMedia,

I borrowed my wife’s iphone and verified that one CANNOT share Airplay from an ASE (BS1) or Mozart (Balance) device to a ML device (BS5) via ML/NL converter.  Some sources, you can switch. If I’m listening to Deezer or B&O Radio, and start my turntable, then the audio sent to the ML device changes to the turntable. However, with Airplay, the ML device switches off as soon as I start playing Airplay on the linked ASE/Mozart device.

Stan

[Stan]

L1no wrote:

Not agreeing on his loathing review of the app, quite questionable response (sponsored?).

I do not understand your loathing comment. I believe he said it’s the “standard by which all apps should be measured”.  I think this comment says more about the generally bad state of most speaker apps vs how great the B&O app is.

[Stan]

You cannot share Spotify with a NL/ML converter because Spotify can only be shared with other speakers licensed Spotify which the NL/ML is not.

Airplay should not be a problem, but I don’t use Airplay so I do not know for sure. I regularly share Deezer from a ASE BS1 and the line-in from an ASE BS2 with my BS9000 via NL/ML converter.

[Stan]

My first vote is that the cable isn’t right. Note that the AUX port supports input and output (back in the day, you’d connect a tape deck and record while you were listening) so if your AUX cable only has 2 RCA leads, it could be an AUX output vs AUX input cable. If it has 4 leads you could potentially be connecting the output leads… or it could just be wired wrong.

On the list of stupid things I’ve done that you can check before ordering a new cable:

1. Make sure you’re plugged into the AUX port, and not one of the PL ports. It’s very tight back there and if you’re doing it “by feel” because it’s too hard to get into a position to see what you’re doing, this can happen (actually, I plugged a PL in to the AUX and then couldn’t figure out why it was so loud and I couldn’t control the volume, but it’s the same concept).
2. Make sure you the DIN is oriented correctly so, for example, pin1 on the connector lines up with hole1 on the BS9000. The Din connectors are not supposed to let you do this, but I have an AUX cable that allows one to plug it in wrong.

I had a Google Chromecast wired to my BS9000 until I gave up on its drop outs so you’re on the right track.

[Stan]

kuyttendaele wrote:

You don’t need to spend additional 10K in order to have surround! You can if you want to… But the crazy thing about BeoLink Surround is that you can now add (your) A5/Level/Emerge/(Balance.. but pricy..) as surrounds. This opens a whole new market for B&O dealers. Bottom ticket for surround was the BL8. Now you can add entry level speakers for your surround experience; speakers that don’t have to be that powerful in order to have descent surround. Karel.

But you still need the +10K theater. I hope it is well received, but that’s a big first step for a “budget” system :D.

[Stan]

I’ll second cklit’s advice.  Buy a 3rd party CD player with optical output and use the rest on a 2nd Emerge.

I don’t have an Emerge, but I know when I stereo paired my Balances, there was no going back. To my ears, the stereo pair sounds more than 2x better.

 

[Stan]

It’s summer so traffic on the site can be slow, but I will give my 2 cents.

Adding speakers will not give you surround sound (different sound coming from front and back).  To get surround sound, you’d need a surround sound processor.

Adding speakers to a bs90000 will just give you more of the right and left channel. In some rooms, it could sound better. In others, it could create interference and maybe sound worse. It all depends on your room and where you place your speakers (and where you sit relative to it all).

If you have the speakers, there’s no reason not to try and see how you like it. I’d recommend connecting them to your BL2 – you’ll need a splitter – and make sure you set the Left / Right switch on each speaker appropriately.

[Stan]

I recently went through a wifi battle brought about from the purchase of a very inexpensive 2nd hand Halo. With my older Orbi mesh, it could not find any of my devices. I guess it’s time to upgrade.  Bought a pair of Amplifi Alien (made by the same company that makes Unifi) and out of the box, everything looked great.  I could initialize my Halo, all my devices were working, “wow, that was easy”… until later in the day when the wifi disappeared. I had issues with the 2nd one, too.  I tried troubleshooting with Amplifi tech support (actually fairly good experience), but no dice, returned them… back to the Orbi, and luckily my Halo stayed configured… However, I was still on the hunt for new wifi equipment.

More research led me to a pair of Asus XT9s. It is tri-band meaning it has 3 radios to support 2.4, 5 and 5.9GHz (wifi6). Out of the box, they worked OK, but I had a lot of problems with devices being dropped. There’s a huge number of Asus router posts in on-line forums so there was a lot of suggestions to be tried, and through various tweaking, I got them to work well (touch wood).  I haven’t had a device disappear in 2+ days (it was 2 days ago that I stopped tweaking).  This is what I did that seemed to work:

1. Fixed IPs for all B&O devices
2. Set fixed channels for 2.4 and 5GHz channels
3. Set 2.4Ghz channel width to 20MHz (40 can theoretically have higher throughput, but it also may cause interference)
4. Turned off 160Mhz channel width for 5GHz channel
5. Turn off all the fancy features, anything with “smart” in the name.
6. Turn off beam forming on everything but the intra-router backhaul channel (5.9Ghz)

So, why buy a fancy router with all these neat features and then turn them all off?  Because I have a lot of older devices on my network (I would consider all pre-Mozart beosounds to be “older”) that seem to get confused by this stuff.  Yes, these features are mostly supposed to be backward compatible, but that is only what the specifications say, not necessarily what gets implemented in products.  Also, these features generally support higher bandwidth and better roaming. I don’t believe my devices need higher bandwidth, and most are fixed in terms of placement. I am seeing better wifi performance with my phone and laptop so there is something to gained (although maybe this is just placebo… I didn’t run any speed tests before/after).

The one thing I haven’t tried is re-setting up my Halo.  On the one hand, my Halo is working fine so why mess with success? Then again, if it doesn’t work, maybe I should look for different routers… however, then I’d be without my Halo until I found some new routers that actually worked which seems much more difficult than it should be. Yes, I like my Halo (not at $900, but at $150 it’s a neat device). Roll the dice…

[Stan]

My old router doesn’t have many options with respect to setting up 2.4 vs 5 Ghz networks. One time during this diagnosis, I tried turning off the 5GHz SSID broadcast, rebooted the devices I wanted to be on 2.4GHz, then turned the 5GHz SSID back on.  The Halo went right back to 5Ghz as did some of the other devices.

The new router, when it worked, worked fine without any of these games.

Right now, the Halo is still working just fine on the old router after doing 1st time initialization on the new router. No reason to mess with success.

[Stan]

Spoke too soon about the Amplifi Alien. It worked wonderfully for all of about 8 hours. Then my wife says “why is the internet so slow?”.  I check my router, and there are only a few devices connected, and my phone is getting very weak coverage standing right next to it.  I do the reboot, factory reset dance with no luck. Let it sit overnight unplugged. This morning still not working well. Support thinks maybe the wifi6 radio has “glitched”.  Fine, every once in a while you get a lemon. Better 1 day into ownership than warranty period + 1 day.

“Luckily”, I have a 2nd one that I was planning to mesh to the first. Let’s give it a try. Fires right up and we’re back in business. I have to change the DHCP address because I forgot one of my devices still has a fixed IP address. Oops. Now, I’m getting crap coverage again. What’s this “additional 5GHz radio” option. I’ll turn that on. Now we’re in business again. Must have gotten switched off somehow. Let’s get these IoT devices into their own sandbox. Oops, where did all my 2.4GHz devices go? Why can’t my wifi analyzer see any 2.4GHz signals? I’ll turn that back off, but still no 2.4GHz network. Now, the wife is complaining again, and I don’t blame her.  She’s on the far side of the house where 2.4GHz kind of works, but there’s no 2.4GHz any more.

Back to the Orbi. All devices are connected and happy again.  Even my Halo!  It must be there’s something about the Halo initialization that was getting stomped on by the router. Now that it’s initialized, no problems so far.

Now, I’m in a quandary. When the Alien worked, it really worked well. Am I just extremely unlucky? Should I have them send me a new one and say 3 strikes and you’re out or is 2 for 2 bad enough to stop wasting my time.  But if not Amplifi, then who? On the internet forums, everybody hates their router 😀 (yes, happy people tend not to post about how happy they are). Oh well.

 

[Stan]

We have a conclusion:

I installed a new router (Amplifi Alien), reset/rebooted the Halo and all my problems went away :D.  I haven’t installed the mesh node yet, but I trust ubiquiti / amplifi to have their internet stuff buttoned down.  You can buy an Alien from the Amplifi website for $199 which is less than 1/2 of what it was selling for a while ago.  Maybe this means it is reaching end of life, but I don’t think I have tremendous network requirements so this should last a while (hopefully).

My other option was to put the Orbi into Access Point mode and see if my Xfinity/Comcast router was any smarter, but I didn’t bother with this because the Amplifi router seems to be working very well.

So far, there doesn’t seem to be any need to segregate devices to different frequency bands. Time will tell.

[Stan]

Are you suggesting removing all of my products from the app, and then re-adding them?  I guess I could try this. I do have 9 products so this will be kind of annoying.

I’m heading down another path at the moment.  I’m using Wireshark to look at the network traffic to maybe see what is or isn’t happening. Learning about mDns.

[Stan]

I am having this same problem with a Halo I just bought 2nd hand.  App talks to remote just fine.  Remote shows up in router just fine.  Upgraded to newest software release just fine. However, remote cannot see any of my devices.

I am curious what you may have done when you say you used “different wifi channels”.

Anyone have any insight here?  Could my Orbi mesh network be the problem (even though all my other devices – BLC, Balance, BS1, BS2, M3 all work fine)?

Halo information on the internet is sparse.

Thanks in advance.

[Stan]

Unfortunately, it appears they are just following the lead of almost all the other home product related apps on my phone.  They all have sections that hawk new and improved products, replacement parts, upgrades, etc.  Some of the worst ones make your scroll through that crap before you actually get to the useful features of the app.  At least B&O has placed this behind an easy to ignore button vs. integrated to the main product operation flow.

[Stan]

Has B&O mgmt actually said they’re trying to be like Rolex/Hermes or is it just commenters on this site? I agree that timeless veblen electronics is wishful thinking.

However, what is their path forward if they don’t go upmarket. HiFi is dead. Long live the bluetooth/ stand alone speaker.

[Stan]

Thanks MM and Carolpa.

In the past, I was able to start the ML source on another device and join the Balance via the app. Yesterday, this wasn’t working.  It would only boop or double boop. If my memory is not too faulty, the app has changed so that instead of it showing the converter linked to the BS1 (for example), it now shows the converter as the “master” link source no matter how the source is started, and all the other devices are linked to it.  Subtle difference and probably makes more sense, but I was afraid they messed up Mozart with this enhancement. Today, it is working again.  Go figure.

This is also how I listen to lossless WMA files from my BeoMaster 5 disk. With the Balance, I can select a song and it plays the song and stops.  With the BS1, it plays the song and the next and the next, etc.  So I start the music on the BS1, mute the volume, join the Balance. Although to be honest, I generally just stream unless I’m feeling “old school”.

I would guess they dropped ML support in Mozart because, in my experience, every manager and software developer hates backward compatibility so they saw their chance with a “next generation” product to drop it, and they did. I mean how far back does backward compatibility need to go?  Customer says “forever”.  Manager says “never”. They fight it out, and we get what we get.

[Stan]

I really don’t know what other choice they have.  The general population doesn’t care about HiFi. I remember when there were hifi stores all over the place.  They’re all gone, except for a handful that mostly do custom installations. How do you do “consumer electronics” when most consumers just don’t care enough to drop big $$$ on it. If you’re going to find a niche, it might as well be VHNWI since that’s where the money is. I’d rather they do this than sell out to Harmon or some other conglomerate (or worse, private equity) who will a) immediate drop support for any old products integration and b) produce watered down badge engineered garbage (like the car audio division). I’m not a VHNWI so I’m not happy about this direction, but again, what choice do they have. I can admire from a far.

Obviously, they should do better with their software, and they’ve probably lost a fair margin of customers who bought a less expensive product and had software issues and cross B&O off their list.  Then again, show me 1 company that does great software. Even Apple is bad now. My wife hates here newer iPhone… glitchy, buggy, etc. Customers have shown companies that they’ll tolerate buggy software by continuing to buy it so software managment say “good enough” far too early. I’d love to stop this, but I don’t know how. If I promised to never buy buggy software, I’d have no software at all!

 

[Author]

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