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Answered

B&O speaker connection to AMP

  • 19 February 2021
  • 9 replies
  • 74 views
J

Hello,

 

I have recently purchased a Sonos Amp to replace my Beosound Essence as its intermittent connectivity was driving me round the bend. I asked Sonos if my Beolab speakers were compatible with the Amp and they said they would plug right into the amp as line ins.  They have connected, but I cannot get any sound to come out of them.  The speakers are wired rather than wireless. 

 

Does anyone have any ideas?  Sonos were very swift to reply pre-sale, three post sale emails have now gone unanswered.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

j

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Best answer by tracker 21 February 2021, 06:46

@Jfitz73, try reading the following message on this forum, which probably has the info you need:

Essence is great when you have multiple B&O products, e.g. a television and a sound system, which you *also* need to feed to your speakers.  And the Essence remote controls, the Bluetooth “wheelies” you can slap on your walls, work simpler than Senic’s “Nuimo Control” sold by Sonos.  Unfortunately there are two versions of the Essence, and multiple ways to connect -- that’s what is so great about it, a Swiss Army Knife.  But this makes it nearly impossible to debug online: too many questions to ask and answer.  If you want to try that before jumping to the Sonos Port, ask on beoworld.org for help.

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9 replies

A

Isn’t a ‘line in’ an input? You’d need an output to drive speakers.

J

Hi Amun,

my mistake earlier, the speakers are connected into the Ethernet ports.

j

A
Userlevel 3
Badge +3

It sounds as though you were not well advised. As far as I can see, the Essence does connect to B&O speakers via Ethernet, but an Amp will not be able to drive the speakers that way.

What speakers do you have, and do they “Line In” RCA type connectors? If so, it may be possible to connect a Sonos Device with a “Line Out” to those connectors, but the Amp doesn’t have a “Line Out”.

Fortunately the Amp can be returned under Sonos’ money-back guarantee, so you should not be out of pocket.

If you say which model of B&O speakers you have, someone may be able to advise further, but with the info that you have provided so far, I would think it would be best to try to make the Essence work as intended rather than to try and replace it?

G
Userlevel 6
Badge +17

@Jfitz73 If your Beolab speakers are active speakers, you should use the Sonos Port rather than the Sonos Amp since your speakers already have a built-in amplifier.

"Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you." - Rashi
J

@Jfitz73 If your Beolab speakers are active speakers, you should use the Sonos Port rather than the Sonos Amp since your speakers already have a built-in amplifier.

I think @GuitarSuperstar has this right.  As far as I am aware, all B&O speakers are active (amplified).  The Essence looks to be a media streamer without amplification, and therefore the approximate equivalent of the Sonos Port.  As things stand you have an amplifier (the Sonos Amp) and a pair of speakers with built in amplifiers.  This has no chance of working.  I imagine the Sonos person you spoke to made the assumption that the Beolab speakers were passive, or maybe there was a miscommunication of some sort.

The Port has digital coaxial and analog RCA outputs.  If you do decide to go down that route then you must check that the speakers can connect to one of those.  (If the Beolabs do not have a built in DAC, you would have to use the analog out from the Port.)

J

A further thought.  Users sometimes come on here complaining about connectivity problems with Sonos, but it almost always is actually some local network issue, such as wireless interference.  If B&O offer support then i think you should explore that, if you have not done so already.

A
Userlevel 3
Badge +3

In this case I don’t think it’s a limitation of the Sonos products, although the advice to go with an Amp was clearly wrong.

It’s more to do with (it seems) B&O wanting to lock users into their own technical “ecosystem”. As far as I can see, the Essence is not just a pre-amp that drives active speakers via a line-level output. It genuinely does (if you read the user manual) connect to the B&O-branded speakers via Ethernet, using some protocol that I don’t see specified in the user manual.

Whether the B&O speakers also have the ability to take Line-In is unknown, without info on the exact model of speaker.

T
Userlevel 3
Badge +3

@Jfitz73, try reading the following message on this forum, which probably has the info you need:

Essence is great when you have multiple B&O products, e.g. a television and a sound system, which you *also* need to feed to your speakers.  And the Essence remote controls, the Bluetooth “wheelies” you can slap on your walls, work simpler than Senic’s “Nuimo Control” sold by Sonos.  Unfortunately there are two versions of the Essence, and multiple ways to connect -- that’s what is so great about it, a Swiss Army Knife.  But this makes it nearly impossible to debug online: too many questions to ask and answer.  If you want to try that before jumping to the Sonos Port, ask on beoworld.org for help.

J

Thank you all for your helpful comments. I’ve had a reply from Sonos (although I don’t think their suggestion will work), but I’ll head of to Beoworld to get a better sense of why the military grade wireless system drops out so often.  Cheers J

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