I have this old Bang & Olufsen vinyl record player, with a old connector for the speakers. Do anyone know what type of connector this is? And if there exist some converters?
Looks like DMX, but it can't be that?
Would love to get this to work again.
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5This sort of cable was much more common from a turntable to an amplifier than to speakers– Chris HCommented Oct 17, 2017 at 13:46
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1What is the model number of your B&O turntable?– FreiheitCommented Oct 17, 2017 at 14:09
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7Agree with Chris H. There is a DIN type plug specifically for speakers, with a flat centre pin and a radial round pin. There would be no need for 5 poles to connect a speaker.– TimCommented Oct 17, 2017 at 16:23
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2DIN-5s were common connectors for other things as well, like serial ports on early European computers.– Lee Daniel CrockerCommented Oct 17, 2017 at 22:00
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See here for more details.– Giacomo1968Commented Oct 18, 2017 at 18:01
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5 Answers
Those are 5-pin male DIN connectors. Same as used in the original IBM-PC keyboard cables.
From the photo this is obviously a patch cable of some kind for an audio application.
Here are some typical wiring schemes:
(Shields are connected to pin 2)
5 pin Male cord Mt. 180 degree, Din Connector (Amazon)
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2
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1@ChrisH typical might be a problem. Or rather most problems with cables I've seen was caused by assuming typical layout without checking if it really was what device was using.– MołotCommented Oct 17, 2017 at 12:59
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1@Mołot I'd get the at least the multimeter out, personally. And quite possibly my pocket oscilloscope -- then I'd make an adaptor cable.– Chris HCommented Oct 17, 2017 at 13:45
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1These cables are also used for backstage <> booth theatre intercom systems and head-sets. Commented Oct 17, 2017 at 16:06
This is common on old audio equipment in Europe:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIN_connector#Analog_audio
Though your equipment could be wired differently, so it's worth checking carefully with a multimeter to avoid possible damage.
It's unlikely that the record player had an amplifier, so it wasn't meant to connect directly to speakers. You've use this cable to connect to an amplifier, then attach the amplifier to speakers.
It's a common enough problem, though, that if you search for "Bang & Olufsen 5-pin DIN to rca" you'll find cables you can buy that convert it to the more common RCA audio connectors you'll find on amplifiers today.
answered Oct 17, 2017 at 15:02
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5It's also important to note that the turntable doesn't just need to be connected to a amplifier to work, it needs to connected to phono pre-amplifier then to an amplifier and then speakers. It used to be common for amplifiers and receivers to have phono pre-amps built in, but these days only higher end equipment has them. There's also a chance that the turntable has a phono pre-amp built in, but it's likely the original poster will need to get a separate phono pre-amp to get it work. Or at least to get it to work and not sound like crap. Commented Oct 18, 2017 at 0:56
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@RossRidge Yes, that’s very likely. You’ll still get some sound without the preamp, but not the intended volume, and it’ll be noisy. Commented Oct 18, 2017 at 3:01
Still alive and kicking, as a MIDI connector, albeit with only 3 pins connected - the three central ones. Be aware that there are three sorts of 5 pin DIN plug/sockets - 180 degree, as you have, and 270 degree, for much the same uses, and domino, with a central pin, impossible to get them mixed up when plugging in.
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1There are actually three types of 5 pin din connector. "180 degree", "270 degree" and "domino". Commented Oct 17, 2017 at 16:53
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3Actually, MIDI does require the 5-pin 180deg version, even though there are only 3 connected, because it uses the inner ones (2,4,5): midi.org/specifications/item/midi-din-electrical-specification– AaronDCommented Oct 17, 2017 at 20:28
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@AaronD - it's been a few years since I made up MIDI leads. Thanks, and corrected!– TimCommented Oct 18, 2017 at 6:19
Bang and Olufsen equipment were designed to work together very closely, ie, connecting your turntable to tape deck to the receiver allowed the receiver to control the turntable and tape deck directly. Pressing turntable on the remote would power up the receiver and turntable and switch the receiver the the turntable input.
This was enabled by having control signals passed between receiver and turntable over the additional pins in the connector.
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3The 7 pin connectors enabled this, however, the 5 pin connector shown in the question was an older, simpler system. Commented Oct 17, 2017 at 15:46
Plain old 5-pin DIN cable, used to be very common up until the mid 80s before, for some reason, RCAs came along and displaced it, even though to do the same job as a 5-DIN you needed four separate RCAs (or two stereo ones each with 2 plugs at each end), all connected to the correct sockets in the right order, and the separate grounds aren't of any benefit when Ground is Ground in all the interconnected equipment.
I've got a classic turntable and receiver-amp pair that connect straight together with a single one of these, and it's a total piece of cake. Like a SCART or HDMI for four different analogue audio channels. If the mismatched tape deck that also sits with them was but a few years older it would connect to one of the two-way "tape" sockets on the amp (the turntable connecting to a specific Phono socket, which has a built in EQ stage) with another single cable but, thanks to the standardisation, be able to both play and record using that one lead. As it happens, it is an RCA device, same as the DVD player (well, various different inputs passing though a manual switchbox in truth, but it's the normal user) feeding "tape 2", so I've had to use a 2RCA to DIN-5 converter lead with my fingers crossed that it's the "right" way out for both (got lucky...).
(oddly, I do have a 4xRCA to DIN-5 cable somewhere around here that I once salvaged from an old rig at work, with a stereo in and a stereo out (or as it was for some bastardised video editing rig, video + mono audio in and video + mono audio out), but never yet got to use in anger... thankfully no need (yet))
I wouldn't immediately have thought it was for speakers, as it's not meant for carrying any significant power, but people have done a lot of corner cutting or otherwise easily enabling hacks down the years, official or otherwise, so it may well be a very strange way of connecting them, with somewhat limited power? The amp I have uses 2-pin Speaker-DIN, breaking out of the same chassis backplane as the line-level connectors... absolutely no chance of junior accidentally plugging something in backwards and making it go boom, therefore..
