Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Streaming External power supply for MC200

Greetings,

I'm interested in tweaking the performance of my MC200. I'm a firm beliver in the benefits conferred by high quality power supplies and power cabling.

I'm considering two approaches:

1) Using an IEC-->C7 adapter so that I may replace the stock power cable with an aftermarket power cable.
2) Replacing the external "brick" switching power supply with an 3rd party power supply.

I'm in the USA and haven't seen any aftermarket power supplies designed or compatible with the MC200.

Does anyone have any advice/experience with either of these approaches?

Cheers

Yes I'm currently working on powering the MC200 with a 12V/3A Linear Regulated PSU.

I've found the Kingrex PSU MkII 13v/3A and perhaps one can easily step down the voltage for it to fit.

Hi Crion,

As you have an ID40 card, is this PSU upgrade just an attempt to improve the MC200 zone?

Regards,
Carl

Thanks Crion. Have you noticed any differences using the Kingrex PSU?

Teddy Pardo is another company that manufactures aftermarket power supplies. I've never heard of them, but they seem to make a PSU model "Teddy 12/4" that might be compatible with the MC200.


I am tiptoeing into this by purchasing a Voodoo Cable C7-->C14 adapter. That way I can at least try one of my Shunyata power cables between my Hydra power conditioner and the MC200 brick power supply.

Cheers,
Edward

Teddy is one of the good guys and is often found over on the pinkfishmedia.net forum. I'm sure he could verify whether one of his supplies would work or not, or whether he could do a special order for this.

Cheers,
Simon

I'd be interested in this option should the Teddy 12/4 be shown to work and offer an improvement.

Cheers!
Mark

The Teddy 12/4 looks to be a perfect fit for the MC200, the DC cable is already set with the correct DC connector so no soldering required. Also the correct voltage and being regulated it has 4A capacity but will probably run much lower normally. The MC200 has a 3A switched mode PSU so there is a little nice oversized margin as well.

I've not delved at all into high-quality linear regulated PSU's (wall wart replacements) so there might be much more alternatives out there.

But the first step to a performance increase for the MC200 seem atleast with common thinking be to put a high-quality linear regulated PSU instead of the wall-wart switched "bump".

Crion

In your case, it should be easy to prove beyond any doubt whether or not a power supply change on your MC200 will make an audible difference to your 861/ID40

If you use a network sniffer such as wireshark, set up a playlist to send to 861zone. In wireshark etc, create a filter to only capture UDP packets between MC200 and 861/ID40 that contain the bytes AESDATA (iirc) - you will probably need to use a network hub or a switch that supports port mirroring.

Start the capture then start playing the play list. On completion, stop capture and save.

Repeat above in alternate configuration.

Compare the captured packets. If the content of the packets are identical, then there is absolutely no difference between the two configurations playing to your 861/ID40.

Hi Crion,

Did you see my earlier post in this thread?

If it is the ID40 and not the MC200 zone, as I assumed, that you are attempting to improve; then performing the test suggested by Ian would be most enlightening.

I don't see it making any differance myself UDP packet data is UDP packet data. However, I'll try to have an open mind it.

Regards,
Carl

I expect the UDP performance to be fairly similar. It is the overall noise in the system and it's network connections that I'm interested in if there are any SQ gains. This all started with the Ferrites...

I thought the ferrites were defending against the intrinsic noise of the network itself: caused by the data transfers. As such surely the same data will produce the same noise? - regardless of power supplies?

Hi Matsaly,

With regard to your original post. What exactly are you attempting to improve?

Are you trying to improve the MC200 as a Sooloos "Store/Core" or as an Sooloos "End Point" ?

/Marcus