Hi there,

I have just acquired a set of beolab 3's with the beolab 2 sub and a beocenter 2. I already own a beosound 9000 that was hooked up to beolab 4000's . The idea was to replace the beolab 4000 with the beolab 3's. When I hook up the beolab 3 (and sub) to the beosound 9000 there is a very high pitch/frequency sound that comes on in the background. It is almost inaudible but unfortunately noticable enough when listening at low volume to produce a nice going headache fairly quickly.

I tried switching wires around, unhooking the sub, changing positions but it's still there. If I put the beolab 4000 back, the sound was gone. After two days of tinkering with it, I took the beolab 3 set up and hooked it up to the beocenter 2 and no noise!!! Then I plugged the same set up back into the beousound 9000 and the noise was back!!! So it seems that for some reason the beolab 3 and beosound 9000 won't work well together. I have no idea what the problem is but it's frustrating as I can not use the bs 9000 with the new speakers. I would very much appreciate any thoughts or ideas as to what the problem may be and of course a potential solution.

Many thanks!

Do you have the appropriate powerlink cables for the Beolab 3:s?  They are the ones with a little triangle. 

Don´t know if it´s the solution, but anyway....

You are probably using MK1 or MK2 powerlink cables. Beolab 3 speakers require MK3 powerlink cables.

If you use MK1 or 2 cables with Beolab 3 speakers, you always have a high pitch sound.

So don't worry, they are not broken!

Nicolas

Hiort and Nicholas,

 Thanks a lot to both of your for the suggestions. It could very well be the case as I am actually not sure which power link cables I am using. (I didn't know it mattered.) I'll check it out as soon as I get home after work.

BTW if I have the BL 3's connected from the BL 2, do I need an MK3 cable between the BL2 and the BS 9000 as well as between the BL 3's and BL 2? Thanks! :)

I would suggest to use MKIII cables

Here's the real deal on powerlink cables, from Steve at soundsheavenly.com:

"To summarise the different cable versions:-

Powerlink mk.1 is only suitable for the simpler Beolab speakers (ie. those without displays or digital amps. They are very thin and I personally won't sell them as I'm not too happy with the sound quality on longer cable runs.

Mk.2 cables (aka. "fully-wired") have all 8 pins connected and will work with any Powerlink-equipped speakers, including Beolab 5 and all models with displays.  As Lee has said, these are the best bet if you think you may change your speakers in future, as you know you won't need to replace the cables.   I use them all around the house, as they work well with any speakers.

Mk.3 cables have extra shielding (as mentioned by joeyboygolf) to ground the digital amps in newer speakers, but they lack the data wiring for Beolab 5 or speakers with displays.

Kind regards,

Steve."