Hi Ian,

It sounds like there is potentially a hardware issue with the speakers. If you have re-typed each speaker, that effectively soft-resets them, so settings like EBA will be at default values (i.e. the same on both speakers).

When you press CLEAR on the remote, only the Master speaker will respond with CON or NCON, the Slave speaker is effectively a slave and won't respond to any remote commands.

The only other thing you can try is to send a digital source directly into the Master speaker, retype it so it is using the COAX input (so LM COAX). You don't need to change anything on the Slave speaker.

Any digital source will do (an old CD player or DVD player should work fine - max output rate 96KHz).
If the sound is better, then it will be the 218 that has a problem; otherwise, the speakers will require attention.

Let me know how you get on.

Cheers,

Steve