Revox B205
The hand-held controller for a whole Revox system. One button, one finger, and the rack wakes up.
Overview
The B205 is not a component in the usual sense. It's the infrared wireless remote control at the top of Revox's B200-series control architecture. You point it at the rack, and the B203 Timer Controller does the switching behind the scenes. Revox's own advertising in the period press kept the pitch simple. Press the "CD" button and the Timer Controller powers up everything required while the B226 Compact Disc player fills the room. Press "Play" and the system shuts down the CD player and changes over to the cassette deck. One button, one finger. That was the whole sales argument, and Revox ran it across multiple Audio issues in 1988 (Audio, April 1988, p.31; Audio, May 1988, p.59).
The B205 isn't really talking to just one box. Audio (July 1985, p.46) noted that the B205 has more buttons than the B215 cassette deck because it also controls other Revox components. It's a system-wide controller, not a deck accessory. The B200-series components connect to each other through rear-panel serial ports. The same remote can drive them whether it's aimed at the receiver, the tape deck, the interface unit, or an infrared receiver in another room. With the units wired together, a single press can start the B215 and switch the receiver to "Tape" mode from anywhere the IR signal reaches.
The B203 Timer Controller is the other half of the pair, and it's where the real intelligence lives. It's an integration device for selected B200-series components that gives the system one-touch control of complex functions. Turn on the CD player and the amplifier and switch the amp to its CD input, all from a single command. That command can be entered on a component's front panel or via the B205. Using the remote, up to five timed events can be programmed. Alternatively, an RS-232 port lets the B203 be driven by a computer. Relay contacts on the B203 can even be used to switch lights on and off. Audio (April 1988, p.31) put the B203 at $600 and the infrared remote at $160. The magazine's own copy walked through the scenario of waking to a favorite CD on Saturday at 8 AM and a classical station at 9 on Sunday, then having an album cued for 5:30 Monday evening when you walk in the door.
In that scenario the B205 is the interface, the thing in your hand. Revox billed the whole B203/205 arrangement as "civilized, solid, smart," built in Switzerland, and the advertising leaned hard on the ease of it. Collectors who've lived with the system tend to describe it the same way the ads did. The one-button promise mostly holds up, provided the B203 is programmed and the serial ports are wired correctly.
There's a catch. The B205 is useless on its own. It needs the B203 Timer Controller and a B200-series system to do anything at all. A loose B205 with no B203 and no compatible components is a paperweight with buttons. Buyers chasing one should confirm the B203 is included or already in the rack, because the remote alone won't wake anything up. That dependency is also why the B205 turns up for sale far less often than the components it controls. Most of them stayed with their systems.
Revox's advertising in the period press kept hammering the "one button, one finger" line, and it's easy to read that as marketing puff. But the engineering underneath was genuinely ambitious for a consumer audio system of the period. That means the serial-port interconnect, the RS-232 computer control, the five programmable timed events, and the relay contacts for outboard switching. The B205 is the part you touch. The B203 is the part that thinks.
For anyone assembling a B200-series stack today, the B205 is the piece that turns a collection of separate components into a system. It's not a standalone product and shouldn't be bought as one. As the hand-held front end to a properly wired Revox rack, it does what the advertising promised.
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