MS250
Safety guidelines CAUTION: To reduce the risk of electric shock, do not remove cover (or back). No user serviceable parts inside. Refer servicing to qualified service personnel. WARNING: To reduce the risk of fire or electric shock, do not expose this apparatus to rain or moisture.
Contents End User Licence Agreement (‘EULA’).................... 4 Before you start!.................................................... 5 What’s in the box?............................................... 5 Inserting the batteries into the remote control......... 5 Conventions used in this document........................ 6 Before making connections................................... 6 Welcome, and thank you for buying the Arcam MS250.
End User Licence Agreement (‘EULA’) You have acquired a device (‘DEVICE’) which includes software licensed by ARCAM from one or more software licensors (‘ARCAM’s SOFTWARE SUPPLIERS’). Such software products, as well as associated media, printed materials and ‘online’ or electronic documentation (‘SOFTWARE’) are protected by international intellectual property laws and treaties. The SOFTWARE is licensed, not sold. All rights reserved.
Before you start! Using this handbook This handbook has been designed to give you all the information you need to install, connect, set-up and use your Arcam MS250. The supplied remote control handset is also described. It may be that your MS250 has been installed and set-up as part of your Hi-Fi installation by a qualified Arcam dealer.
Conventions used in this document Zones The MS250 supports up to four zones. The term ‘Zones’ refers to the four stereo analogue outputs supported by this product. Zone 1 corresponds to the room where the MS250 is situated: Zones 2, 3 and 4 are the other three analogue output locations. Before making connections Before connecting your equipment it is important to think about the following points, as these will affect your choice of connections and subsequent use of the system.
Installing and connecting �� �� �� �� �� REMOTE IN ZONE1 ZONE1 � DIGITAL OUTPUTS INPUTS AUX 1 AUX 2 ZONE2 � � TRIGGER OUT ZONE1 ZONE1 ZONE2 L IR OUTPUT COAX 115–230VAC 100CVA MAX NETWORK ZONE2 S-VIDEO COMPOSITE VIDEO VGA KEYBOARD � ZONE3 ZONE4 OPTICAL R ZONE1 OUTPUTS ZONE2 ZONE3 ZONE4 L R ZONE3 ZONE4 RS232 CONTROL BACKUP � � � � � Positioning the unit < Place the MS250 on a level, firm surface.
Backup (USB) 3 This connector allows you to connect an external USB storage device or a USB keyboard to the MS250. A second USB connection is provided on the front panel. These connectors are fully USB 2.0 compliant, but are not designed for use with an iPod®. RS232 control 6 Use this connection to control devices with an RS232 serial port (for example, Crestron and AMX touch screen controllers). Your Arcam dealer has access to specialized documentation for RS232 and IR programming with the MS250.
Front-panel controls � ����� HOME OK LOAD � � POWER � DISPLAY POWER � � 6 Press this button to switch on the MS250. The power indicator light changes from red to green. From power-on, the MS250 will take about 30 seconds to initialise; a start-up message is displayed on the front panel. When powered-on, press this button for a second time to switch the unit off. The MS250 takes a few seconds to shut down. To avoid risk of data loss, do not remove power from the unit during this period.
Using the CR-425 remote control 0–9 keypad Opens and closes the disc tray. This allows text entry of characters and numbers, as on a mobile phone. In character mode, use 0 to input a space character. DISP (display) Genre, Artists, Album or Track lists may be filtered (i.e. reduced) by requiring a match with the first character entered. OPEN Cycles the brightness of the front panel display. There are several brightness levels to choose from, including switching the display off.
Operating the MS250 The menu system The MS250 is controlled using its menu system. This is best viewed on a TV or a computer monitor, connected as described on page 7. The menu system is also displayed on the front panel display, which is sufficient for routine control, especially when you have become familiar with the MS250’s capabilities. Navigation around the menus is performed using either the remote control or the buttons on the front panel.
Playing CDs To play a CD, press LOAD (or OPEN on the remote control) to open the CD tray. Place the CD in the tray with the label facing uppermost. Press LOAD again (or OPEN again on the remote control) to close the tray. After a few seconds, the track names appear on the display. To select particular tracks, use the C and B keys on the remote (or on the front panel) to move down and up the tracklist.
Storing a CD on the MS250 To store the contents of a CD on the MS250, select Store from the left hand window of the CD menu. The STORE CD menu page is displayed with Disc info. selected: Editing CD details This page allows you to enter or modify information for the CD. This is useful if the details for the CD could not be retrieved by the MS250 or if you wish to modify any of the details shown. Navigate to the desired info box (e.g. Genre) and press OK to select it.
Store CD option You might like to select the ‘Background compression’ option to carry out data compression as a background task. Compression takes place when the MS250 is in Standby mode: a simple ‘Ooo’ animation on the front panel display shows that compression is in progress. Storing the CD Choose Store from the left-hand window of the menu page. The following screen is displayed: Select ‘Start’ (storage onto hard disc), ‘Start and Play’, or ‘Cancel’. Press OK to start the storage process.
Playing stored music From the MUSIC SOURCE home page, navigate to Stored music and press OK. The following menu page is displayed: ���� ���� ����� � ��� � � ��� � ��� ��� ��� � � � ���� ��� ���� � � � � Music stored on the MS250 is catalogued by genre (Rock, Classical etc.), album title, artist and track names. The catalogue is hierarchical, working down from genre to tracks, and sorted alphabetically. For example, to find a Blues album by B.B.
Searching for stored music You can search for tracks, album titles or artists in your stored music using the Search function. You can enter part of a title to search to save time. For example, you could type ‘glass’ to search for any track with glass or Glass in the title – the search function is not case-sensitive. 1. Select Search from the left-hand window of the MUSIC-GENRES page. 2. Press OK to select the search text box and enter the track/artist/album name you want to search for.
Internet radio From the MUSIC SOURCE home page, navigate to Internet radio and press OK. The following menu page is displayed: The radio stations are listed hierarchically by Presets, Genres, Locations and Languages, and there is also a complete alphabetical list of all available stations (‘Stations’). There is a default list of Internet radio stations installed on the MS250.
Playlists Playlists are a convenient way to gather together and sort tracks stored on the MS250 in any order you’d like to listen to them. For example, you might put together a list of tracks from various albums suitable for a party. You can give your playlists names to make them easy to find. You can also record the tracks in a playlist onto a CD (see ‘Creating a CD’). Creating a playlist To create a playlist: MS250 18 1.
The PLAYLIST-MENU page appears with the tracks you’ve added displayed on the right-hand window. Listening to a playlist Choose Playlists from the MUSIC-PLAYLISTS menu page. The playlists you have created are listed in alphabetical order. Navigate to the desired playlist and press 4. Adding tracks to a playlist To add tracks to a playlist, you first need to choose the tracks you’d like to add, so they are displayed on the MUSIC-TRACKS menu page (as you did when creating your playlist).
Editing a playlist You can remove tracks, change the order in which they are played, delete the entire playlist, make a copy of a playlist and rename a playlist from the PLAYLIST-EDIT menu page. To navigate to the PLAYLIST-EDIT menu page, select the playlist you’d like to modify and then choose Edit playlist from the left-hand window of the menu page. MS250 20 < To remove a track, highlight the track and click OK. The box next to the track changes to red to show that it’s selected.
Managing your stored music library You can edit album or playlist details including the album/playlist title and individual track titles. You can also add or remove tracks from a stored album. < Choose the album you’d like to work on so that the track names are displayed. Choose Edit details from the left-hand window of the menu screen to display the MUSIC-EDIT screen: < Choose Disc info or Track names to edit details of the album or playlist (genre, artist, album title, and track names).
Creating a CD You can create your own CDs with selections of tracks from an album or playlist. When creating a CD, you can choose between standard audio CD format that can be played by any CD player, or a Data CD format that can be played by a computer, or on a CD player capable of playing MP3 tracks. To create a CD, first navigate to the album or playlist you would like to record onto the CD, and press OK to display the list of tracks on the MUSIC-TRACKS menu page.
Select your preferred CD format and insert a blank CD-R into the CD drive, or prepare a CDRW disc, then choose ‘Create CD’ from the left-hand window of the menu page. The following menu screen appears: Indicator bars show the progress of CD creation, for each track and for the complete CD. Once the CD has been completed, the display returns to the CD MENU and displays the tracks on the CD you have just created.
System and User Settings Although you can normally use the MS250 without changing the factory-set options, the Setup preferences allow you to fine-tune the way your MS250 operates to suit your own requirements.
The Content menu The Content menu allows you to choose where your MS250 looks for music files. By default, this will be the hard disk on the MS250 itself, but you can add other devices including network devices that the MS250 can play files from. This includes some portable MP3 players (those which appear as a disk drive when connected to a PC). The options are: Rescan Select this option to rescan a device to allow the MS250 to update the record it has of the music stored on the device.
The Display menu Choose this option to match the video output style of the MS250 to your display device (TV set or monitor screen). The options are: Theme This option allows you switch between Normal User, a Normal User with no display of Album Art, and Advanced User. TV standard This option allows you to set the default output as PAL (used mainly in Europe) and NTSC (used mainly in the U.S.).
The Region menu Choose this option to set the default language and keyboard settings. The options are: Language Choose the language for onscreen display from the list of languages available: the default setting is English. Keyboard Choose the keyboard character setting for the (optional) keyboard attached to a USB or the PS/2 socket. The System menu Choose this option to retrieve system information, restore default settings and control updates.
The Time menu Choose this option to modify the system date and time, the screen display and standby periods. The options are: Time This option allows you to set the system Date (the entry format is MM/DD/YYYY) and Time (the entry format is HH:MM:SS in 24-hour notation). You can use the format as displayed, or use the B or C cursor keys to decrease or increase one unit at a time.
Advanced features Zones The MS250 has four ‘zoned’ outputs, so you can send different music streams to different zones. For example, you might play the currently inserted CD to Zone 1, an Internet radio stream to Zone 2, a playlist on the MS250’s hard drive to Zone 3 and music from one of the two Aux inputs to Zone 4. For example: < To play the current CD to Zone 1, select Music, CD, Tracks and select the tracks you want to play, then press the Zone button to select Z1, then press Play.
Copying music files You can copy music files from the MS250 to other devices. These devices could be your PC via the network, or a portable MP3 player for example. To transfer files to an external device: < If you want to transfer the files to a portable MP3 player or other USB storage device, you must first connect the device to a USB port on the MS250. The music sever automatically scans the device to check for music files already stored on it. This could take a few minutes.
Connecting to a network and the Internet Once you’ve connected the MS250 to your existing audio equipment and checked that it works, you can connect it to the Internet. This will enable you to make full use of the MS250’s capabilities, such as: < < Playing Internet radio stations < Playing music from existing music libraries on computers on your network Automatically downloading CD details (track information etc.
If you do wish to ‘share’ the internet connection on your PC with the MS250, you can do this as follows: 1. Using an Ethernet crossover cable (not a straight-through cable), connect the MS250 to the computer’s ethernet port 2. Enable Internet Connection Sharing on your computer 3. Switch on the MS250. You can also use a wireless connection between the MS250 and your computer. To do this, you will need two wireless Ethernet Bridges.
Remote control codes The following table gives the infrared commands accepted by the MS250. Note that the system code for the MS250 is 21. Power commands Command Decimal Code Standby toggle 21–12 Standby-on 21–123 Standby-off 21–124 Playback control commands Command Decimal Code Number and text entry 21–n (e.g.
Technical specifications General Power Requirements Within the range 115V to 230V AC Power consumption < 35 VA Dimensions 435mm x 80mm x 350mm Weight net: 5.2kg; packed: 8.0kg Audio outputs Analogue audio outputs Four zones of stereo output on gold-plated phono sockets Output level 2.2V rms at 0dB signal Frequency response 20Hz to 20kHz (+0.1db, –0.5dB) THD+N <0.
Guarantee Worldwide Guarantee This entitles you to have the unit repaired free of charge, during the first two years after purchase, at any authorised Arcam distributor provided that it was originally purchased from an authorised Arcam dealer or distributor.
A&R Cambridge Ltd, Pembroke Avenue, Waterbeach, CAMBRIDGE CB25 9QR, England.
