ARCHIVED FORUM -- March 2012 to February 2022READ ONLY FORUM
This is the second Archived Forum which was active between 1st March 2012 and 23rd February 2022
Hello to all of you :-)
my name is Tasos and this is my first post in beoworld despite the fact that I have been reading this forum for more than 3 years.
Three years ago I found a beomaster 5000, beogram 5000, beocord 5000 and beogram cd50 in the basement of my house. None of them was working properly so I decided to restore them to their old glory (I remember my father on sunday mornings listening to an LP of Dave Brubeck and advising me that the way to enjoy good music is a nice cup of coffee and a Bang&Olufsen music system). Many people from this site (although some might not know it) helped me a lot with the restoratino and today I have a fully working 5000 system!
Times change and as a result I have a Beosound Moment to listen to my "soft copy" music. What I am thinking of doing and I am in need of advice is the following:
Beomaster 5000 (1984) has two pair of speaker outputs, one of them is used for the MasterControLink2. Beosound Moment is a NetworkLink product. Has anybody tried to connect a MCL2 product to a NL product before? Did it work? How would someone control this new system? Do you keep all the functions from the telecommander (stop/play, source change, FF/REW, etc)?
I am thinking of connecting the beomaster 5000 to an MCL/ML converter and then the MCL/ML converter to a NL/ML converter and then to my house netwrok. I would like to clarify that what I am looking for is to listen and control all sound sources (on both products) from whichever room I am (source change, volume, play, stop,etc). Preferably using any "controlling" device available. What I mean is that I always keep my mobile phone in the office, so it would be easier for me to use my mobile (beomusic app) to control the system whilst in my office but in the living room I prefer to use my beo6 since it is where I keep its charger.
As far as the infrastructure of the house is concerned in every room there are at least:
> two rj45 sockets
> two electrical plugs
> one sat plug
> one terrestrial plug
> All plugs end in the room where the electricity board is, along with the rack where I have a 24-port gigabit switch installed. On the switch I have connected my NAS, an Intel NUC, and all the cables coming from all the rj45 plugs around the house.
Thank you in advance for your responses
Tasos
Good morning and welcome (back!) to Beoworld!
One potential problem: Beomaster 5000 has MCL82 and not MCL2. There may be ways of interconnecting, but I have no experience of this. There may be something on the forum, or archived forum, such as this: http://archivedarchivedforum2.beoworld.org/forums/p/42707/354056.aspx#354056
You may also need and B&O Code Converter, in order to allow the BM5000 to be controlled by the newer (BL1000 onwards) B&O remotes.
Hello Guy
you are totally right!!!!! MCL82 is the correct "protocol". I remember that the infrastructure in my old house was MCL82 but when Ouverture was introduced we were able to keep the infrastructure and switch to an Ouverture by using the MCL/ML converters.
In view of the fact that it is MCL82 you may have to be less ambitious in your interconnection.
You could make use of the line-out from your BM5000 and feed that to the line-in of the Moment. If in separate rooms you could make use of the RJ45 cables to carry this line signal. Of course you would be unable to control the BM5000 from other rooms, but could at least use its sources throughout an NL system.
As far as I know the Moment does not have a line-out socket, hence getting its signal to the BM5000 will be difficult. Perhaps consider getting hold of a second hand Playmaker or equivalent and use this with the line-in socket of the BM, so that you have access to digital sources in this room?
Given the fact that a MasterLink product (the Ouverture) was able to be fully functinal on an MCL82 infrastructure with the use of a MCL/ML converter I suppose that the MCL/ML converter "translates" all commands from MCL to ML and vice versa. Is the NL/ML converter able to "translate" 100% from NL to ML and ML to NL? And if so...."cascading" to converters will it work?
As you mentioned, on the setup you are suggesting there will be no possibility to control the source of the beomaster 5000 and this is not a good solution since I will have to move around the house to change sources.
As far as the idea of the playmaker is concerned, I had a similar idea of a beosound essence mk2 (multilink) but then I believe it would be a much better idea to use the 5000 and the moment as separate products in different rooms than trying to blend them.
I think that the problem is lack of the modern 'datalink' standard in the BM5000, plus the lack of a controllable line-out (remember that the BM5000 speaker sockets are a speaker-level variable output, with additional data connections designed for MCL82.)
Hence when I used a MCL/ML converter with my BC9500 - it connected to the AUX Din socket of the Beocenter - this socket has both line in/out and data. It did not make use of the extra 'MCL' connections on the speaker sockets of the Beocenter.
When an Overture is used with a ML/MCL converter in an MCL82 system - it is making use of the line-output and the ML data connection. The ML/MCL converter acts as the amplifier, and for some reason it sounds like the MCL82 system that is connected downstream is able to control volume (and sources?) with some sort of backwards compatible data link. Hence this proves that you can feed an MCL2 audiomaster through a MCL82 infrastructure, but not an MCL82 audiomaster through an MCL2 network. This makes sense, because at the time MCL2 was introduced many people will have wanted to upgrade their source without replacing their MCL82 networks.
We need someone to chip in with more MCL82 experience!
EDIT: More here to back-up my logic! http://archivedarchivedforum2.beoworld.org/forums/p/22434/167812.aspx#167812
I have once connected a beovision 6-26 (bedroom) to the A.AUX socket of the bombaster 5000 (living room) via a beolink converter (the latest sw), I could listen to the source playing but I had no control (except the volume of the beovision of course) over the bombaster 5000. In other words I had to go to the living room change the source or skip a track directly from the beomaster 5000. But I have never tried to connect it to the 4-pin speaker sockets or connect it via an MCL/ML converter.
Do you think it worths a try?
akoitidis: Do you think it worths a try?
In short, no!
The only thing that should be connected to the BM's speaker 2 sockets (which are actually 3 rather than 4-pin) is either a speaker, or an MCL82 'network'. I wouldn't recommend trying anything else there! I presume that the extra 2 pins are data and power but am not sure what protocol drives them, hence you should proceed with caution.
Just to be clear, as we have discussed ML/MCL converters and also MCL/ML converters and they may be confused:
- The ML/MCL converter, (Types 1650-53) also known as a Beolink 'Passive' (Types 1655-58). In the context we are discussing, this would be used to enable an ML-capable audiomaster or videomaster to connect to an MCL2 round-the-house 'network'. It amplifies a line-level signal for distribution (at speaker level) and also permits two way data/control between ML and MCL2. The only audio inputs are the ML socket and the PL socket - you can use one or the other but not both. The only audio output is the speaker sockets, and these are 3-pin as required by MCL. The ML/MCL converter cannot take a speaker level signal (such as the speaker output of BM5000) and reduce it to line level for distribution over ML.
- The Beolink Converter 1611 has also been mentioned. This is predominantly used to connect an MCL2-capable audiomaster to an ML round-the-house 'network'. To achieve this conversion, it works purely at line-level, hence it does not connect to the 3-pin speaker sockets of the audiomaster. Instead it makes use of the datalink capabilities of the audiomaster's AUX socket to pass audio and data to/from the ML system. In this case, the Beolink Converter's Datalink/AUX and the ML connection would be operating in a two-way context for both data and audio.
The problem that you have is that there is nothing 'off the shelf' that will connect to the BM5000's line in/out and allow two-way data such that you can integrate with MCL2/ML/NL and control from other rooms.
Thank you Guy.
I know see what you meant in the previous answers. I will see if there is another way around, otherwise I will just make two stand alone systems.
Often people try too hard to connect their systems between rooms - generally it's 'nice to have' rather than essential! The 5000 is a great system however you use it.
I have been living in rented accommodation for the past 7 years hence am unable to lay cables between rooms for MCL or ML. It's quite frustrating having totally separate B&O in each room but one day I will move back in to my own place and have everything interconnected ...