Could anyone with expert knowledge of such set-ups tell me the best way to connect my turntable (Beogram 5500) and cassette deck (Beocord 5500) via their amplifier (Beomaster 5500) into the rest of my system (Beosound 9000, Beosystem 3, Beolab 5s front, Beolab 3s rear, Beolab 10 centre, plus various peripherals like an SACD player, Playstation 3 and Apple TV)?

The way my dealer and I previously did it was to route the signal via my old CD player, a Beosound 2300, since we couldn't make a direct connection to the Beosound 9000 (into the auxiliary socket) work. This works fine for most of the time, offering good sound and full remote control, but every time the whole system is powered down for rewiring or incorporating new devices (the latest was the SACD player), the Beogram 5500 stops sending any sound to the speakers, although the remote control still works.

Playing around with the system, and repeatedly rebooting it in different orders, seems to cure the problem eventually, although we've never understood why. This time, however, it refuses to get back on its feet, and we're at our wits' end. How should we go about resolving this problem?

I've just spent the morning playing around with it, and another possibility occurs: the speaker outputs on the BM5500 utilise the same plugs as the analogue sound inputs on the BS3. Is it therefore possible to hook them up directly, using two cables (left to left and right to right) and assigning the BM5500 as an auxiliary device on an unused slot?

Does the BS3 accept amplified input?

The way I would do it is use the Tape 2 output on the BM5500 as a line source - you can attach it via DIN or RCA as both are available.

That's a good question, Peter! I'm not sure whether the BS3 can accept an amplified input. We've been using the Tape 2 output to send the signal to the BS2300 in the current set-up - can the BS3 accept input from DIN or RCA, then?

I was thinking the BS9000 but you can certainly get a connecting cable to go to the BS3 - AV4,5 and 6 seem to have RCA in for audio - clearly there will be no video in.

We've tried hooking it up to the BS9000 in the way you suggested, but once again we got no sound. My dealer was speculating that it could be the BM5500 that has the fault - might be the case, but I doubt it, as it's only done this each time the entire system has been powered down and rewired, rather than showing as an intermittent fault. What do you reckon?

You did use the outputs and not the inputs on the BM5500? They are badly labelled!

Think so, yes! This morning, I tried the cable in both sockets, just in case (although I'm 99.9% sure we had got it right). Neither of us can figure out why it won't produce any sound - or why it sometimes suddenly starts working after we repeatedly power the system down and restart it in different orders. It's driving us crazy!

I cannot see any reason the Beomaster will not produce an output so it must be the input on the BS9000. You could also try tape 1 of course.

Yeah, it wasn't producing sound via the input into the BS2300 either! That's the baffling bit! So it must either be a problem with the amp, or more likely some odd connectivity issue that only rears its head when the entire system is powered down for a few hours. (And we used a different cable to connect into the BS9000, so it's not a cable failure, just to make things more perplexing.)

Very odd! The output from the BM5500 is dumb - it is always there with no selection possible. It must be the selection of the Aux socket on the 2300 and 9000. I don't have one of these systems to play with though I have used the Tape 2 out on the 5500 for years with my computer and it has never failed.

I connected a Beosystem 7000 (almost the same as a Beomaster 5500) through the TV AUX on the Beomaster 7000 and the AUX on my BeoSound 9000. It took some time to figure out why I would get no sound at all from the Beosystem 7000 on my speakers connected to a Beovision 7-40 and via Masterlink to the BeoSound 9000.

Beoworld member Sören pointed out to me that the in/out pins of the Aux sockets on the Beomaster 7000 and BeoSound 9000 are configured differently. You need to make your DIN cable into a DIN crossover cable.

Take the plug of your DIN cable apart and change around the cable order by resoldering them to different pins. It was Beoworld member Sören who send me this schedule:

BM7000                  BS9000

 Pin 2----------------------Pin 2

 Pin 1----------------------Pin 3

 Pin 4----------------------Pin 5

 Pin 3----------------------Pin 1

 Pin 5----------------------Pin 4

I did this and it works! To this day I'm very grateful for Sören's help. This also goes for connecting through the Tape 2 socket on a Beomaster 7000.

You can find my thread about this problem here:

http://forum.beoworld.org/forums/p/13641/100868.aspx#100868

Good luck!

Thanks, Beolab1. On the BM5500, the Tape 2 socket (which we've been using for outputting sound) has seven pins, though. The only five pin output is marked SENSOR - is this the same as AUX?

No, the sensor socket is for other purposes ( I think for connecting link receivers from link rooms). The Beomaster 7000 that I have, also has 7 PIN plugs, but only 1 to 5 are used to make the crossover cable. Pins 6 & 7 don't change function and remain untouched.

Thanks! In that case, our problem may be solved.

But the 5500 has RCA plugs as well - these are the ones I use as it is not necessary to mess round with DIN cables. The 7000 only has DIN plugs.

So it has, Peter! In my stupidity, I never realised we could use either the RCA or DIN plug output for TAPE2. Would you recommend an RCA-to-DIN cable going into the BS9000, or an RCA cable splitting the sound into left and right channels going into the analogue audio inputs of the BS3? In either case, does it just have the one RCA plug at the BS5500 end, going into the TAPE2 socket?