The Adventures of Wacko DAC and His B&O

So I'm nerding out during this Memorial Day quarantime (short for “quarantine time,” I coined it, send money). While cleaning out closets, I found an old Bang & Olufsen CD/tape adapter with 5-DIN plug! Got it years ago when I added a generic CD player to my much-loved BeoMaster 8000.

Forgot all about it. But now it’s got me all aquiver. As I’m sure you are, too.

At this juncture, presuming you’re still reading, you’re probably scratching your head at all this palaver. I should explain that I’m a vintage stereo gear nut. For those who might share my affliction, you know that the BeoMaster 8000 was, in its day back in the 1980s, THE thing for audio freaks.

Here’s a blurb from B&O, and they can be forgiven for the breathless hype: The BeoMaster 8000 still remains the most powerful receiver ever produced by B&O. It was also the largest and amongst the most expensive. As well as bringing new levels of performance and quality, the BeoMaster 8000 also introduced a new range of features that would remain in subsequent models until B&O ceased to produce hi-fi separate components.

So when I found this old adapter, I thought, great, I'll try plugging in my cheapo DAC (digital to analog converter) so I can source music from my iPhone.

Yes, I can hear the screaming from the audiophile faithful. Digital streaming? Blasphemy! Infidel! Apostate! But I’m not getting any younger and there’s something to be said for convenience.

My cheapo DAC is hooked up to my much-loved Marantz 2250-B, which is even older than the BeoMaster 8000 (by how much, I ain’t sayin’). I’ve written about it in another blog post on this site. I bought the Marantz for myself as a college graduation gift after my mother rewarded me for four years of hard college work with a powder blue leisure suit.

This is even after I’d dropped numerous hints that the Marantz 2250-B, at its moderate price, would be a wonderful graduation gift for a music nerd like me. But no, a leisure suit. Polyester, to boot.

I only wore it a few times, and only when I visited my parents because, hey, it’s my mom.

But back to the scintillating technicalities of vintage stereos. There are three inputs on the BeoMaster 8000 – phono, TP 1 and TP 2. Phono works great, I have a stylistically non-matching B&O BeoGram 3000 Type 59 that’s mechanically identical to the BeoGram 5005 and its 7000-designated predecessor, but lacks the high-end tangential drive system of the 8002, which matches my 8000 in design.

I admit, I greatly covet the 8002.

But my little non-tangential-tracking BeoGram 3000 has served me faithfully for 35 years without once ever needing repair. And it plays beautifully, delivering all the warmth one expects from good vinyl.

So that’s the phono input. Then there’s TP 1, which is currently occupied by a NAD 516BEE CD player. Which, as anyone with a drop of common sense knows, is a bitchin’ unit.

TP 2 is unoccupied and thus the perfect spot for the DAC. I plugged in the adapter via the DIN jack, plugged the DAC into the adapter via RCA jacks and son of a gun, it worked!

Sorta.

I immediately noticed that the audio from one of the four-foot-tall B&O MS 150 speakers was crackling in and out.

To test that this wasn’t a system failure, I switched on phono and then the TP 1 CD player. All’s well. Checked speaker cables just to be sure. Ditto.

Then I unplugged the DIN, ran RCA cables from the adapter and reconnected to the 8000’s TP 2 RCA jacks. But that didn't work either. Silence.

Well, duh. Although the RCA jacks look like they’re TP 2 inputs, they’re actually TP 1 record-out jacks and wouldn’t work in a million years.

Clearly, the next and last test step is to unplug the CD player from TP 1 RCA jacks and plug the adapter and the DAC into TP 1 playback DIN jack and, if necessary, then try the TP 1 RCA playback jacks.

Got all that?

I did and it worked great. Which means the adapter and DAC are good.

Sherlock Holmes said that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

In this case, the truth is that there’s a problem with the TP 2 DIN input jack.

SOLVED!

All this sounds mercilessly tedious to the uninitiated, but it was actually a lot of fun to do this experiment. Digital Bluetooth technology doesn’t allow playfulness like this. And playing with gear is sort of the point, at least for me. I have plenty of that with the BeoMaster 8000 as well as my ancient Marantz, which still holds a place of pride in my studio, still delivers great sound and still looks good. Unlike that damn leisure suit.

In fact, just this past weekend, I hooked up an old Klipsch sub-woofer to the Marantz and man, what a difference. Thump, thump, thump. Fun, fun, fun.

I even fixed the matching Marantz 6350 servo-control direct-drive turntable I’d acquired at a vintage gear shop about a year ago that suddenly stopped working.

One day, I'll tell my readers how.

Okay, since the tension is too much to bear, I’ll tell you how.

I plugged it back into the electrical outlet because I guess I unplugged it for some reason. That’s how I fixed it.

Genius!

Hey, during quarantime, it’s the little things that keep nerds like me busy. And happy.