B&O newbie: understanding cables on BeoLab 2500

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roscola Posted: Mon, Oct 3 2016 1:34 PM

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Hi

I've recently been blessed with my first ever piece of B&O kit. I'm so excited, I never thought I would own any in my life!

Someone kindly passed on a pair of active speakers. On the back they seem to say they are model 6202 (from 1991) but looking around the internet I think they're more commonly called BeoLab 2500. I think they probably originally came with a CD player that sits in the middle of them (a Beocenter?) but that's not there and neither are any cables.

I want to hook them up to my computer (via 3.5mm jack) and I've so far worked out that the 8-pin DIN plug on the back of each speaker is the line in. I'm fairly comfortable that I can construct a cable with a 3.5mm jack and two DIN plugs for L and R channels.

But I don't understand the power cable situation. Each speaker has both male and female 'figure of 8' style plug sockets, which I've never seen before. How do they work? Does each speaker need its own mains supply or do you plug one in and use the second sockets to share the power using a male-female figure of 8 cable?

Many thanks in advance

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Steve at Sounds Heavenly replied on Mon, Oct 3 2016 2:46 PM

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Hi roscola,

Welcome to Beoworld!

Your Beolab 2500 speakers are mains powered, so each speaker needs a mains power cable (when they were new, B&O offered male to female "link" leads for the mains power, but as far as I'm aware these link leads don't meet current EU safety standards), this is why you will only see separate mains leads offered for sale nowadays:-

http://soundsheavenly.com/search?controller=search&orderby=position&orderway=desc&search_query=mains&submit_search=

As your Beolab 2500 speakers don't have a "Line In" mode like most other Beolab speakers, if you want to use them with a computer you will need a special powered cable to generate the trigger signals that would normally be sent from a B&O audio system:-

http://soundsheavenly.com/line-in-connection/102--trigger-trs-.html 

This will connect from your computer into the nearest speaker.  To connect the second speaker, you then need a Powerlink Splitter ( http://soundsheavenly.com/bang-olufsen/26--pl-splitter-.html ) and a Powerlink mk.3 cable ( http://soundsheavenly.com/powerlink-8-pin-din-connection/20-pl3.html ).

Kind regards, Steve.

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roscola replied on Mon, Oct 3 2016 2:58 PM

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Oh wow, thank you for the quick reply, Steve.

Sounds like these things aren't as simple as I first thought! There I was thinking I'd gotten a B&O system for free but I do need to spend a bit of money on cables. Still a huge bargain :)

Thank you very much.