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Any suggestions on upgrading M and S leads; Thanks

Hey Stu,

Here are a couple of previous threads on this subject. Hitchhikers seem pretty divided on this subject. For the record I'm strongly for upgrading the SPDIF side of the M & S cables. If you search the last few year's archives with key words like "M & S", "cable", "leads", etc you will find more.

http://www.meridianunplugged.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=6;t=000205;p=1

http://www.meridianunplugged.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=5;t=000196

Happy trails!
Vince@freewheelcycle.com

I always get a chuckle when reading about the sales job people get when buying audio equipment. I think that I get the most enjoyment out of the stories that involve digital audio equipment sounding much better after it has a few weeks to break in. I have read that with very high quality digital cables you need to use them on and off for a few weeks and allow them to adjust to your home climate. Every home has magnetic fields and it takes a while for the high quality digital cables to adjust to these magnetic fields.

There are at least two ways to look at cabling argument, the first is technical. Look at the digital cable that connects your transport (in my case a PC) to your surround processor (G68 in my case). If while watching a movie with DTS the signal stays locked and everything sounds fine then you are getting all the bits correctly to your sound processor. The bits that make up a DTS stream are compressed, and if they are not received correctly they will be decoded into something sounding very different than intended. There are plenty of other good technical arguments for having a digital cable good enough to get all of the bits to get to the other side, any better and the sound does not change.

Another argument is psychological. You have to look at the incentives for the sales person giving the advice. Early in the history of Xerox, Joe Wilson could not understand why its new machine was selling so poorly in relation to its older and inferior machine. He found out that the commission arrangement with the salesman gave a large and perverse incentive to push the inferior machine on customers. You would be amazed at the subconscious motivational effects that high profit margin cabling can have.

Meridian on the other hand does not have the same incentives with regard to cabling, they supply cabling that gets the bits reliably from one component to the other. They use the same cable for all of their product reviews and trade shows. You will notice that the vast majority of dealers selling Meridian products will demonstrate Meridian products with stock cables. It is interesting that they are not so eager to get all of the benefits of more expensive cabling when they are paying the difference.

My impression is that cables make a difference on the digital interconnects side of things.

Stugomer ,if you want to demo some Transparent Reference Link interconnects custom made for a Meridian Digital Theatre you are more than welcome to do so.

http://cls.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?cablintr&1133901760

sreddy.......you have the rest of the big kit, I guess. Why are you not keeping these super spec(????)/super price cables to match ?

Is it that stock cables do the job just as well ?

Nick,
I do not have the space behind the walls to install these long lengths,
Cheers,
Sandeep

My I suggest you read the following book. This should cure you of any thoughts about cables making a difference at all.

"Principles of `Digital Audio" 5th Edition
Ken C Pohlmann from Mcgraw-hill

Chapters 4, 5 and 13 should do it.

Sedluk and Stebbo, sorry to be blunt, but there are many here, myself included, who feel you are barking up the wrong tree. It's not hard to verify the difference...irrespective of what the engineering wisdom would suggest, just listen to different makes of cable. Then come back and tell us that it's all hokum.

Cheers

George

George
Been there! Done that. The differences dont exist

In fact there is a long standing prize available over on usenet to anyone who can tell the difference between cables. There one catch though.
You wont know which cable is attached so therefore your own preconceptions cannot be included in the decision making process. I believe it is up to about 10k dollars.

I'm in the stebbo camp.

Current capacity (guage), impedance and shielding yes, if they are wrong you will cause problems. But if they are right one cable should sound no different than another unless it's faulty or wrong spec.

There was another internet thread that used a coat hanger for Dolby Digital connection and did a double blind test.

Hi-Fi audio is a hobby. We are supposed to have fun listening to our system.

I enjoy spending time on the water in my boat. I have a nice boat but my engine compartment is stock.

I have some friends that like to have all of the engine parts in bright colors, some have hydraulic engine lids that open slowly and expose all kinds of fancy colored engine parts. I happen to like the looks of the gold braided hoses and neon lights.

Now I don`t think that the gold braided hoses and the neon lights add much to the boat ride, but they are having fun. The same can be said for those who like fancy digital interconnects. If you like them, and they look better, and you think it sounds better, then I think you should have them.

I really wish I could just use any cable and not tell the difference or just be happy with any cable. However, I can hear the differences. More so with analog cables. Sometimes no differences. There are a lot of factors that play here. All it takes is one component that fogs the final result and you will hear nothing different. Even the room acoustics can fog the differences in detail and soundstage depth/height/width/macro & micro dynamics/timing that makes the differences noticable. Trust me I had an amplifier that had its own sonic character that didn't allow me to hear cable differences. Except for Cardas cable that actually tamed the top end grit by that amplifier. Once I moved up the ladder to a higher resolution amplifier...then I could hear the differences much more so between different cable designs. There ability to reject RF using shielding or twisted/braided designs. Even the use of different materials that affect the dielectric factor or the ability of the cable to release a charge. Litz wire designs that minimize electron flow from jumping between different wires. There are a lot of factors that the human ear can hear that can't always be measured.

Ron