Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Streaming MD600+MS600 review

Thanks Ian for that sober and comprehensive post.

I re-read the review and wondered about the MD600 -> MS600 connection. The reviewer has used "fancy" cables for the purpose of connecting the two devices to the router. Given that he has them stacked I wondered (a) if the vibration from the MD600 drives could be affecting the MS600 (see section Sidenotes) and (b) if a router is actually necessary to connect the devices; they both have IP addresses and, in this set-up, only transmit one to another; surely if there was no router at all that would eliminate network latency and mis-transmission events?

Gianni, if they were hard wired together and not part of a wider network then you would have no means of control.

Doh!

Hee hee, I made a similar suggestion in another thread, completely forgetting the need to be able to select and control music

If there was a way to begin playback, and then reconnect core/storage directly to the endpoint, it would be an interesting way to help to identify any detriments from things like long ethernet runs, swtiches, etc.

I thought much the same here.
My TS's are rack mount versions and located in the basement.
So here is what I have observed with 2 Sooloos systems in 2 houses.
I've rack mounted the TS, set in on a shelf in my rack, and put Aurios Pros under the TS on the shelf.
The rack mounted TS sounds worst. Flat, no dynamics
The placing the TS on a shelf in the rack sounds better.
Placing the Pros under the TS on the same shelf yields dramatic results
The Aurios isolated TS sounds best, by a wide margin. The has been repeated in both systems.
I feel the isolated TS keeps micro vibrations from affecting the arms reading the data off the hard drive platters. Hard drive jitter?? I don't know and this is just a guess.
As far as the MS600 goes, I think I'll put a VPI brick or 2 on it and see if the weight on top, like the reviewer found, does anything. But, maybe putting the MD600 on top of the MS600 in the review system actually damped the hard drives rather than the MS600 as it is assumed?
Who knows....

The power cord should not be viewed as an extension of the house wiring but as an extension of the electronic environment inside the equipment which is very noisy (EMI/RFI) indeed. It is not the last meter of mains cable, it is the first meter of cable from a very electrically noisy box of electronics.
The cable becomes part of the electromagnetic environment. The switching transients of power supply components, among other things, and will transmit these "noises" and cables will pick up noises from interconnects and other power cords unless it is well shielded or constructed in a manner to deal with the noisy environment.

I believe (I don't know, however) that is where the sound improvements are coming from, or at least how some of the differences among power cables become evident. Most noise is contained or rejected by the metal case of the equipment. The power cable becomes a conduit for that noise to escape or to enter the equipment, potentially anyway.
I have no experience with changing power cables but I did add some power conditioners that made an obvious difference for the better. I do plan on trying power cables in the future.

I have a LINN Genki CD player that has a switching power supply and when I have the Genki turned on and I am listening to the radio from my tuner I can hear the hiss coming from the speakers. I turn off the Genki and no hiss.

With all due respect, you are mixing the chaotic world of audio with the ordered and precise world of computers.

Computer systems and networks have very many controls to detect and control errors. You have acks and naks, parity, crcs etc etc all adding their bit as data flows around a computer system. From the critical sub systems, including some momery systems which are highly reliable even without error detection,, if you get an error you know about it in a catastrophic way. How you deal with the error is a different thing altogether but you are not going to get data off a hard disc without knowing whether the data is 100% correct.

Audio data is a tiny fraction of the data that flows around a computer system. Errors, jitter, whatever you want to conger up to explain the differences, are not going to make music sound more of less pleasing in the same way that the numbers in your bank account aren't suddenly going to be subtlety more beneficial without anyone knowing or you move your laptop from the sofa to your lap and your word processing document looks slightly more interesting.

Maybe you have a problem with your networks, a duff piece of equipment, a cable the bends slightly whenever you move or raise your twin store and this is causing the Sooloos system to go into error recovery mode which is causing an issue. I don't know, but hard drive jitter is isn't.

You are more likely to hear issues if someone is browsing the internet when listening to music rather than immersing the core and store in snake oil - easily rectified by correctly configuring the network.

By guess, with all due respect, is the problem with A/B listening, the placebo effect and just expecting it to all work like good old fashioned audio causing you to think you hear differences.

Anything else is simply going to go against the well understood world of computing.

All good so far but let's try and keep this thread from sinking into any 'Punch and Judy' (oh no it isn't!/oh yes it is!) stuff like so many similar threads before it on this topic.

thanks

If I pull the ID40 LAN cable out from the 861v6 how long does it continue to play the audio?

My Dune BD Prime 3.0 buffers very long for comparison, maybe half a minute worth of FLAC packed audio.

Now this reminds me of something, the MC200/MD600 unpacks the FLAC to PCM, then transmits it over TCP/IP, maybe it is more sensitive and buffers are small @ID40 and this makes it more sensitive to what happens on the network?

2 different systems at 2 different houses?
I don't think so....

at risk of falling foal at the punch and judy comment...

Billions of computer systems at millions of locations? And suddenly they all work slightly different when moved slightly. I don't think so...

Falling foal? Is this some sick Spanish festival we're talking about.