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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.

Pair of 5-pin DIN connectors

Chenmunka
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eivindml
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    This sort of cable was much more common from a turntable to an *amplifier* than to speakers – Chris H Oct 17 '17 at 13:46
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    What is the model number of your B&O turntable? – Freiheit Oct 17 '17 at 14:09
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    Agree 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. – Tim Oct 17 '17 at 16:23
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    DIN-5s were common connectors for other things as well, like serial ports on early European computers. – Lee Daniel Crocker Oct 17 '17 at 22:00
  • See [here](https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/208088/help-me-identify-this-audio-connector-on-a-turntable) for more details. – Giacomo1968 Oct 18 '17 at 18:01
  • Btw, these are not DMX connectors, DMX connectors use XLR plug (and different cabling than most instrument/mic) cables using the same XLR plugs. – Michel Keijzers May 17 '19 at 15:42

5 Answers5

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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:

enter image description here

(Shields are connected to pin 2)

5 pin Male cord Mt. 180 degree, Din Connector (Amazon)

enter image description here

SDsolar
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    [Wikpiedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIN_connector) has more info on the typical pinout. Note that the "180" in the amazon URL is important as there are several types of 5-pin DIN connector – Chris H Oct 17 '17 at 12:54
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    @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. – Mołot Oct 17 '17 at 12:59
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    @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 H Oct 17 '17 at 13:45
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    These cables are also used for backstage <> booth theatre intercom systems and head-sets. – IconDaemon Oct 17 '17 at 16:06
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This is common on old audio equipment in Europe:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIN_connector#Analog_audio

enter image description here

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.

Adam Davis
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    It'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. – Ross Ridge Oct 18 '17 at 00:56
  • @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. – Adam Davis Oct 18 '17 at 03:01
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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.

Tim
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    There are actually three types of 5 pin din connector. "180 degree", "270 degree" and "domino". – Peter Green Oct 17 '17 at 16:53
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    Actually, MIDI does require the 5-pin 180deg version, even though there are only 3 connected, because it uses the inner ones (2,4,5): https://www.midi.org/specifications/item/midi-din-electrical-specification – AaronD Oct 17 '17 at 20:28
  • @AaronD - it's been a few years since I made up MIDI leads. Thanks, and corrected! – Tim Oct 18 '17 at 06:19
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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.

https://www.beoworld.org/beotech/mclconn3.htm

Eric
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    The 7 pin connectors enabled this, however, the 5 pin connector shown in the question was an older, simpler system. – Adam Davis Oct 17 '17 at 15:46
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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..

tahrey
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