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If you are actually looking at the speaker it is much easier to determine 8002 vs. 8000 by the new LED “teardrop” molded at the bottom of the 8002 speaker grille, rather than by its serial number, viz:
The website today says, “Beosound A9: Don’t mess with the classics. Unless it’s to bring them bang up to date. Beosound A9 is now available with stereo pairing, smoother in-app setup, and improved Wi-Fi performance. ” But it lists the same Wi-Fi specs as before (2.4/5GHz, ac support). Does anybody know what is improved? Was the old SoC/antenna combo sub-par? One other thing I noticed about the Gen.5 is that the USB C Aux Input is apparently only analog? Whereas Gen.4 spec lists a 3.5mm jack that was “combi”, i.e. supported optical too? I don’t have one to test… does anybody know if that was true?
Thanks, I recall that in the manual but I always thought that MK2 was compatible with everything and being the thicker type was less susceptible to noise.
You would think so, but alas, not: Either the “spare” wires in the Mk.2 cables are picking up the noise, or else the Mk.3 cable is adding a ground. (Not specific to BL3; e.g. BV10->BL18 requires Mk.3 (4-wire) because Mk.2 (8-wire) makes that “data” chirp on volume up/dn.)
I had the same issue taking a regular CAT7 (flat cable), connecting my Beolab3s (with RJ45 to PL connector) and the issue was bad. I could clearly hear an impulse when pressing vol +/-.
Using an 8-wire RJ45-connector Cat.8 (has both pair shield & connector ground) patch cord drove BL18 without noise, ***provided a 4-wire Mk.3 PowerLink cable was used from the BV first***, before the PL-RJ converter dongle. Both flat cable & round worked; shouldn’t matter if the pair twist is to spec. Also Cat.7 should be OK if it’s SFTP (shield&foil-twisted-pair) with the grounded metallic connector head. I chose Cat.8 for the “safety” guarantee (higher data rates = better shielding), but that shouldn’t have mattered. BTW, a (so-called) “Cat.8” female-to-female connector worked OK in that chain, too.
I don’t know if my pl cables are mk2 or mk3, but they are pretty thick and have the litte triangle…
I believe that triangle on the DIN plug was just a B&O convention to help keep track. Third parties, like the folks who made my Mk.3 cable, don’t necessarily follow that convention. (One unverified source claims that generally, the triangle merely points to the positive lead, or to pin 1.)
Does anyone know if there’s anything new in the BS2 edition 3 versus the current edition?
The board supporting Mozart has Bluetooth 5.3, uses a USB-C for Aux input, and a microphone for “Active Room Compensation”.
No idea what the issue can be, but… suggestions?… Ennh, only bad ones… (1) As @MM says above, just wire the suckers. Or at least two of them, WAG-ing that reducing the overall address count or frequency usage might avoid some bug. In the same vein, wire or turn off the one principally drop-out speaker “permanently” to see if that fixes it forever, or sooner or later just moves the problem. (2) Crazy DIY experiment: Buy a WiSA SoundSend ($179) and connect it with some other TV, and let that link to all the speakers to see if they stay connected. If not, return it and try #1 above. But if the SoundSend amazingly works, blame B&O and start wasting time with their “professional” tech support. (3) Experiment #2: Switch your network to 2.4GHz only, for all devices. Truly, unless you are a massive data consumer with many, many devices competing, or have an old 802.11b device bleating on, you won’t even notice. Well, except reception will improve everywhere! (Unless you have neighbors competing for the 2.4GHz channels, of course.)
20% off Beolab 18s *IF* you buy a Theatre at full price. USA & Canada only, in store only, March 1 thru April 30.
Seeing as they raised the price of the Theatre by $500 on March 1, and the “excess discount” of 5% over the previous sale (15%) on the Beolab 18s amounts to $500, the left hand giveth and the right hand taketh away. But if you were already planning to buy this particular combo before the price increase, now’s the time!
Also a 25% discount offered on Beolab 18s when full-price Theatre is bought, if you also buy *TWO* Beolab 19s (also discounted the 25%). Some marketing person made the margins work out right, but it undercuts the notion that one sub with a pair of 18s was the proper bundle.
+1 on all of @Sretam’s points. I have not yet purchased anything myself, so anybody else, actual personal experience please! But if nobody else follows up, here’s what I learned so far:
• Getting the speakers to sync (latency) so there isn’t reinforcement or cancellation at certain frequencies is a solved problem: Beolab 18 is 4.4msec per Geoff Martin (https://www.tonmeister.ca/wordpress/2017/12/06/bo-tech-beolab-loudspeakers-and-third-party-systems/) and SVS SB-1000 PRO is 6 msec per “Jack Gilvey” at SVS (https://forums.audioholics.com/forums/threads/latency-on-svs-sb-1000-pro.124469/) so putting the subwoofer 38cm further forward seems about right. Maybe at those low frequencies it doesn’t matter; you often see instructions to move a subwoofer around to cancel the room dimensions reinforcing certain frequencies (modes), and rarely does anybody say it ruined the frequency response of their main speakers. But because crossover filters aren’t perfect, unless you set the SVS super-low, it’s guaranteed to overlap with the BLs.
• Because Powerlink splitters work, and because the Beolab 18 speakers were intended to be daisy-chained to each other and thence to a Beolab 19, it seems highly likely that both RJ45 jacks inside the Beolab 18 are always active, simply wired together. So you would buy an RJ45-to-DIN8 dongle, part # 6271237, from a B&O dealer and a Powerlink-to-2xRCA cable from wherever.
• In order to match the subwoofer level and crossover for even frequency response, plus of course room modes (no matter whose sub you buy!), I would get a copy of Room EQ Wizard (free) and a UMIK-1 (cheap) to look at the output of your new setup and tweak it using the SVS App. Especially because you are using it for music and not as a movie boom-box, this will repay your effort. But maybe you could do it by-ear if you have enough time or are both gifted and lucky (or not too persnickety).
Please report back with your results. There are plenty of posts on integrating (e.g.) KEF LS50s and an SVS sub, but I have not yet seen a single post about Beolab 18s!
Block diagram shows the two Powerlink outputs are simply wired in parallel on the BS9000. So noise generated by a faulty speaker *might* propagate to the other cable, regardless of whether they are daisy-chained or not — it’s just a dumb bus, not separate output drivers. Start by disconnecting the aftermarket MK.2 (thick, 8-wire) cable and set it aside. Then test: Run the BS9000 with just one BL3 at a time, and use the MK.3 (thin, 4-wire incl. ground/shield) cable for that single speaker. You’ll quickly discover if one speaker is whining, or the BS9000 is. Don’t forget to try both channels with each single speaker, using the L/R switch.
(N.B. I have never personally experienced a high-pitched whine, only the well-known click&buzz when the volume control was pressed, from using 8-wire cables.)
[Edit: You might also try plugging in headphones and see if your whine sounds on them. Not sure what that result would mean, but someone else will know.]
Since this question has sat for a week without answers,… Because I run an old Denon AVR-4310CI and various B&O equipment, but not mixed(*), I don’t strictly qualify to answer you. Nevertheless:
1) You should read Geoff Martin’s blog post on this topic, particularly latency when mixing speakers, if you haven’t already: https://www.tonmeister.ca/wordpress/2017/12/06/bo-tech-beolab-loudspeakers-and-third-party-systems/
His comment about the impossibility of setting speaker distance to a very large number in the AVR *probably* (but not certainly) also applies to Audyssey and Dirac measuring a distance and then deciding “that can’t be right”. If B&O ever get the Mozart platform speakers to work with the Theatre, they will have to implement a lower-latency set of filters than they now have — or, more likely, a mode that turns their own DSP off entirely and lets the Theatre supply an appropriately delayed & EQ’ed signal. So for now, I wouldn’t use Mozart platform speakers with AVRs. (No personal experience; maybe Audyssey and Dirac have been designed to support abritrary delays, but buffering many channels of audio must have *some* practical limit.)
2) I’ve seen multiple AVR reviews say things like “beware line-level out vs. speaker out is all or nothing”, i.e. you can switch all of the outputs to use the RCA jacks or none of them — except for the fancier models. So test your AVR if you plan to mix BeoVox (or any passive) speakers with BeoLab (self-amplified) ones. That said, my 4310CI “External Power Amplifier” option does not seem to have any menu setting to choose, and the manual merely warns not to use both outputs at the same time — which implies that they are all always active. (I’m sorry I don’t have the oomph to set everything up to see if Audyssey applies to the line-outs or only the speaker-outs, but except for annoying license restrictions I see no reason why it would not: the line-out is merely a feed from the wires to that channel’s amplifier board.)
Good luck, and please post (& photo!-) what you end up using for the AVR & the various channels.
(*) I have run them combined but only in the simplest way: using a Beovision 10 as a monitor from the AVR, with 5.1 Definitive Technology Mythos speakers. But that doesn’t take any great leap of tech support, being all old-fashioned HD & Dolby Digital, not 4K & Atmos.
Nice! I believe you could remove the 4 black rubber bumpers from the corners of the Level — they were intended for shipping, although they do fit very sleekly! Underneath are tiny rubber dots & ells which hold the Level away just far enough from scratching the windowsill (or vice versa!-). See close-up of @MBee’s unit at the top of this page, fully disrobed.
I paid membership fee once just to get a service manual. I felt prize drawing was worthless in the USA because shipping would cost more than the value of the item, and it was likely to arrive as scraps of metal and shards of glass anyway. So I stopped paying after getting the manual and just “donated” time, giving answers to newbies that the old-guard — who had true technical knowledge — couldn’t be bothered typing for the Nth time over&over again (which seems entirely appropriate).
Mybe you could change Gold to paywall manuals, and make Silver paywall the Archives? See americastestkitchen.com for an example of how Cooks Illustrated made “freely available” recipes that aren’t really freely available except to subscribers, yet have google hits that somehow show excerpts with the hit text un-ellided. The archives would otherwise show up as 3-line “abstracts” with blurred-out long text. (Yikes, sorry for more work, Keith!)
Or maybe you could blast-mail B&O dealerships, who are theoretically independent, asking each for a modest donation as a public service? Renew annually, asking again. The value of keeping even a few customers out of their hair is a couple hundred or so per dealer, without even thinking about it.
Free ideas, worth every penny. Not free to make happen, alas. But some management consultant would say you should capitalize on your existing relationships: You already know a great many people, and making that pay off is easier (in theory) than striking new deals. Another idea is harder to implement but I’ll throw it out just in case it triggers something: “Form a partnership with youth.” How that applies here I have no idea, but it’s axiomatic in some circles.
Aha, of course! As with the Edge, my personal “hidden surface algorithm” failed to parse the rest of the box behind the tabletop. Thank you.
OK, here is another “hard-by” setup of Beolab 18s flanking a TV whose speakers are sub-par:
(Setup is “Speakers 2”, i.e. no center.) To my eternal cabling shame, note the diagonal Powerlink from the BV10 to the BL18. But it was temporary: the speakers are going elsewhere, leaving the TV as a “utility” set in the office. Now having fulfilled the purpose of this thread, ta-ta from yr servant, sincerely, etc. etc.
If similar would be the case for ’B&O drivers’, the company would soon be bankrupt.
Absolute LoL @MM! “You have a good sense of humor… for a foreigner, Monsieur Frank — like the French, sly wit: Just the right amount of flavor.” — Inspector Tarconi, “The Transporter”
From the picture, also a Beosound Edge behind the red guitar ? I, personally don’t see the point of the TV with the two 18’s so close and the sub underneath. … … … In this picture I can see feti[s]hism … … …
I missed the Edge! Must take exception to your swipe, though: The Edge has a purpose, being used as the beautiful guitar amp! And placing the 18s hard-by the TV is because its own speakers stink, therefore off/muted and localization of sound & dialogue demands such placement of Front L/R given phantom CC. The reverse shot shows another piece of equipment I don’t recognize, underneath the Cedric Hartman lamp (which I do recognize: oooh, lamps!-). (“View Image” in your browser to see full-size.) Maybe a mixer, thus this is the mansion’s “music room”?
Yes, sorry to post a video screencap here in a thread that ought to be pictures of our own setups! But this thread is moribund, and the photos immediately above came from the same YouTube channel, which doesn’t rise to the level of Movies, nor even TV (IMO:-).
That same YouTube channel (Enes Yilmazer) just posted the Wallace Cunningham “Cascade” 2012 house in Park City, Utah with Beolab 18 & 19:
Oddly, it does not have speakers in the ceiling of every room, unlike most contemporary American mansions. (Maybe they’re all hidden mud-in speakers, but with sloped ceilings and glass and Serpentine Verde stone walls, it must be an audio echo nightmare.) A small theater room has a Beosound Stage. No B&O televisions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6JI1rmvqdU
Alas, a few of @matador’s additional photos didn’t survive in the archived forum, but here is a second thread, which describes the process:
https://archivedforum2.beoworld.co.uk/forums/p/42927/311741.aspx
(Note if you try it yourself: Avery # 8960 sheets have the smaller die-cut center circle.)
I don’t remember whether BS3000 is the male or female jack, but beoparts-shop.com has both antennas: EP-096 and EP-097. Click on the photos of the end connectors, to choose the plug opposite sex to what you see on your BS3000. (They are even reasonably-priced, about the same as the ones you find on eBay or amazon.com.)
Correct, phones & PCs only support the 38kHz IR frequency everybody(!) else uses. A (used, now discontinued) Logitech “Harmony Hub”, using the old Harmony app, can shoot 455kHz by configuring it for whichever Beovision MX Logitech’s website supports. I used it with an MX5000. It’s annoying tapping on-screen buttons to change channels & volume, but they are there at least. But the MX5000 had a round red button on the lower right corner, which would power the TV on as well as off — provided you were satisfied to watch whatever it was last tuned to! Not on the MX1500?
I think you’re better off buying a used BeoLink 1000, than a Harmony Hub — or a Beo4, or even a new Beoremote 1 BT, though that’s awfully pricey just to save an old TV that will soon need power supply repairs.
30% off Beoplay A9, both website & dealers, thru 2/20/2023. Brings the price back to its 2012 release: USD2450 black / white, $2660 gold-tone. Presumably this signals that a Mozart’ed version is ready to ship! (Thanks to BeoBoston for doing the e-mail blast notice. Coyly, they also hint they may have leftover stock in some previous colors.)
