Re: Can't hear my second player... same S bus

I don't think this will work, alas. I tried the same thing and failed. The problem is that Sony changed the design of their players. Unlike the CDP-CX270, the 300 will not pass through audio from a second player unless it's set up to control that player through the S-link bus. Merely setting the 300 to "master" won't do the trick; it has to know the second player is there and it has to be controlling the player. Under those circumstances, the 300 obviously throws some kind of relay or electronic mixer and passes the audio signal through. When the 300 thinks it's operating by itself, it just shuts off the inputs for a second player. But using Slink-e, you can't set the 300 up this way (with a single bus from Slink-e to 300 to 250) because the attempts by the 300 to control the 250 will conflict with CDJ's own efforts to control the 250.

If you had a 270 instead of a 250, you could do it the other way round: run the output from the 300 through the 270, which will pass it straight through. But the 250 of course doesn't have inputs for a second player. Here are your options as I see them:

1. Run the two players into two separate amplifier inputs, then set CDJ up to switch the inputs by IR when it switches players. This is fine if you can spare the inputs, though it involves some tinkering to make CDJ do the switcheroo.

2. Build a mixer (or use one you already own) to feed the inputs together. Colby has designs for simple mixers on this Web site somewhere. The cheaper, easier passive mixer costs a few dollars to build and is a good temporary solution.

3. Wait for Colby to come up with his much-delayed digital crosspoint switch. This will be the best long-range solution, giving you enormous flexibility to add more CD changers in the future, to run SPDIF into your computer sound card, and on and on. It will also be the most expensive, by hundreds of dollars. Funny how life works that way.

I suppose there is one question that Colby might be able to help with. It seems possible that there's an S-link command that will throw the 300's second-player relay into "on" mode even in the absence of a direct link between the two players. I doubt it, but if Colby or anybody else could find such a command and add the appropriate code, that would solve your problem.

Good luck.