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Just wanted to update everyone on a recent question I asked as to whether I could make a "home brew" BeoLab 5 sync cable using a series of cables I already had lying around at home and *without* any soldering. And I am happy to report that my theory worked!
So here are the three items required to perform this task, I will include photos at the bottom of the post:
(2) Stereo Left/Right RCA to 1/8in Stereo Minijack cables (these are the ones that most people use to connect say, your ipod, to a home stereo with RCA input jacks).
(2) Female to Female RCA interconnect barrels. These are typically used to join two shorter RCA cables and extend their length, but they actually serve a different purpose here, unless of course you NEED more length between your Beolabs than the two cables above would provide you in which case you can simply add a standard RCA cable of whatever additional length you want and two more barrel connectors.
From an earlier post by user "carlito" on here (thank you), I found out that the B&O sync cable is simply a stereo minijack cable that is "crossed over". When carlito made his cable, he performed the crossover at the connector end by manually soldering the leads in reverse on the connector end. I didn't want to bother with this so I just did it a different way, by performing the crossover INLINE with the barrel connectors.
It's actually very simple. You connect the inline barrel connectors to your first rca to minijack cable however you want, as long as you have one barrel connector on each L/R RCA male connector (of course). The trick is simply that when you connect the OTHER cable to the barrel connectors, you must purposefully REVERSE L and R channels so you will plug the L channel of the second cable into the R barrel connector of the first cable, and the R channel of the second cable to L barrel connector of the first cable. Essentially making a literal crossover of the Left and Right audio channels. Though this cable carries no audio, it is simply electrical impulses.
You may be asking yourself "well why don't I just get a long minijack to minijack cable?". And the answer is that unless you take it apart and re-solder the end yourself, or have it specially made, most of these cables will simply be stereo straight through, with no crossover. The barrel connectors allow you to cross the signal over in the middle of the connection path. A simple stereo mini to mini cable will NOT work, and this uses simple off the shelf parts, some of which you may already have and no waiting on shipping, no waiting for someone to make you a cable, and no soldering yourself.
Below are the parts you need:
TWO of these:
And TWO of these:
In my case, this little project cost me absolutely zero dollars, since pretty much ALL of us by now probably have a handful of those cables lying around, and I also had some of the barrel connectors already. If you don't have any of the cables, you're probably looking at 5 or 10.00 US at most. Again, this cable doesn't carry audio signals, so quality is really not of great importance here, as long as the minijacks stay nice and secure in the speaker end.
Quite ingenious approach, congrats!
Well done.... enjoy the power of the biest's