Well I'd already extracted the BM3300 from the shed by the time I read your sensible comments about Datalink 86 @Madskp, so thought I'd try it anyway. Of course it doesn't have an Aux port, just CD, Tape and Phono. I connected a 7-pin from the 1611 to the Tape socket and fired up the radio, then turned on the Passive, and there was sound! I could control the volume on the Passive with the IR eye or Beolink 1000, but could not control the BM3300 through the IR eye which confirms your Datalink thoughts. Interesting, but I'm not sure whether there's much practical application for this. You could establish a link room with 'join' and volume control only I guess. Perhaps running a pair of active powerlink speakers from the BM3300 rather than Beovoxes, but still a bit of a faff. Experiments currently underway with the Active/Passive/BL2000. Results so far are consistent, but confusing! Will report back later. Dave

To explain your observations about the 1611 it csn work as a stand alone audio and video masterthus allowing for two selectable sources on any ML link room product. This was tested very throughly in another thread which among other things resulted in this great sketch made by Matador /api/files/9a58e050bcbd41b09c826e6c00bc7de3  

I have been working my way through that thread, there's lots of good info in there. I'd not really appreciated you could get an output from e.g. the Tape socket on a Beomaster, though I realise now that's exactly what the Audio Aux Link into a 1611 is all about. There's a world of non-wife-friendly possibilities with this stuff!

Results of today's experiments! Firstly I was wrong before about the Beolab 2000 working differently to the Beolink Passive. It doesn't, the results are exactly the same. I've got a long sheet of permutations and results, but they all correlate so far into two scenarios. Setup is: BM6500 Aux socket > 7-pin 'Audio Aux Link' cable > Beolink 1611 converter > Masterlink to RJ45 distribution board* > BL Active/BL Passive/BL2000/BL3500 Results are: Any one of BL Active/BL Passive/BL2000/BL3500 connected: Pressing the standby button directly or via Beo 4 / Beolink 1000 on the link product turns the whole system into standby Any two of BL Active/BL Passive/BL2000/BL3500 connected: If both link products are On, turning either of them Off (into standby) works as it should, with the Beomaster and the other link remaining On. But if the second link product is then turned Off (standby), the whole system turns off. This is the same whichever link products are connected, and whichever order they're switched on or off in. Putting the first link product into standby works as it should, putting the last link product into standby turns everything off. I don't (at the moment) have enough bits of Masterlink cable with the right ends to try more than two link products at once, but I suspect the same result: last one into standby turns everything off. As reported above the same behaviour appears with one product and genuine Masterlink cables so I don't think it's my home-made RJ45s at fault. So I still don't know if it's my 1611 or my Beomaster that's at fault, or something else. I have a bid on another 1611 on eBay as that's the cheaper experimental option! Would like to try with a different AAL- or Masterlink-enabled Beomaster but I don't have such a thing. At the moment.

• quite pleased with the RJ45 distributor, a few £ from eBay and easy to attach a Masterlink cable to. All shielded/ grounded too.

 

Just some extra notes to be clear: Do you start the music from the main system or from one of the link rooms, and do you also have the speakers in the main room in use in these scenarios? I belive if the music is started from a link room the behaviour is correct as long as the main room is not in play. I will see if I can verify this on one of my systems today.

So I just did some testing with some of my equipment: Beocenter 9300 - 7 pin datalink cable -  1611 - masterlink cable - Beolab 3500 MK1 both with, and without a powerlink cable between the BC9300 and the 1611. Beosound Ouverture - Masterlink cable - Beolab 3500 MK1 In bot cases I get the same behaviour as you describe even when I start the music from the master system. Now what I expected. I will see if I have time to look more into this today