Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Digital Cables between 621 and Processors

The "Which?" Test was connecting standard Kit to standard TV's and knowbody could tell the differance on HDMI Cables from normal viewing distance.
So you can happily save your money there.
Differances were noticed with Scart Cables due to lack of screening on some cables. Close up viewing. Differances were lost at viewing distance according to the test panel.
Just use well constructed competant cables IMHO and spend more time enjoying content.
Cheers Chris
Cheers, Chris

Jitter matters. If you were to look at the signal which is being received by the processor, it will look more like a poorly behaved sinewave than an ideal squarewave. This nonideal signal WILL increase power supply noise and it MAY transfer its jitter to the DAC clock. Both of which may raise the noise floor.

FIFOs don't accommodate for this. Only power supply and clocking circuitry design can accommodate for this. I am sure that a Meridian processor will be well designed. But even so, it helps to minimize jitter at the source rather than only trying to filter it after. And in this respect, a cable is a source. But I will say, even at the risk of instructing you to suck eggs, that beyond a certain price point, you are polishing cannon balls.

How`s that for working in a couple of idioms into one sentence?

So what happened with the evaluation? I returned the polished cannonballs to the dealer and ordered a behemoth center instead

Good for you. I bet you can hear a bigger difference there. And for the price of the Shunyata's I bought some 5200s.

If that`s a 7200HC you will not disappointed.

Regards,
Carl

My HD621 bought second hand came with a cable I assume was not original as it had too many connectors. As it was too short for my needs I looked around for a cable of the correct length.

Not being a tecky I still couldn't bring myself to connect the HD621 to 568 with a �5 cable from Amazon, so settled for the the Oehlbach VGA-RCA cable:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/OEHLBACH-VG...ectronics&qid=1267612715&sr=1-14

I installed this last night and can only say it fulfils Axle's earlier criteria for a decent cable: shielded, gold plated connectors, impressive tight connections. Otherwise well built from my point of view.

Does it sound any better? That I will never know as it was too much of a struggle to fit to conduct any A/B comparisons.

Do you mean there are two different kind of blue M cables and if,
is there a visible difference?

Robert

Robert,

When I purchased my 800 and 861, and when I had them upgraded, Meridian provided a blue digital cable. These cables were about 0.5 meters in length, and had silver-colored, metal RCA connectors. On two occasions, I found sound was not coming out of my system, and found that these cables were the source of the problem. They failed. This could have been caused by my own yanking of the cables. The RCA connectors on these cables fit very tightly to the plugs. It is possible I damaged the cables when I did a recabling of the system.

Recently, when I purchased the HD HD621, Meridian provided three digital cables. These are longer than the ones that came with my 800 and 861, and the RCA connectors are a black plastic material. They seem to be of a higher build quality than the cables that came with the 800 and 861.

In the past 10 days, I have auditioned the following digital cables: Blue Jeans Belden 1694, Synergistic Research Tesla D1 ($600), SR Tesla D2 ($1200), Stereovox XV-Ultra ($350), and the Nirvana Transmission Line ($645). So far, my favorite is the Nirvana. I have read very positive reviews of digital cables made by Purenote, Morrow Audio, Stealth, Marigo, and Virtual Dynamics.

It is nice of Meridian to include cables with their equipment. But just as Meridian's power cords can be easily bettered by other offerings, I also believe that Meridian's digital cables are not the last word. Indeed, I seem to remember that Meridian partnered with Transparent some years back to offer a higher-quality digital cable specifically tailored for Meridian systems.

Transparent partnered with Meridian? That sounds very strange. They have only ever gone to VDH, that I've read.

Years ago Meridian partnered with Transparent at trade shows. Transparent may still offer its own special Meridian digital/COMMS cables.