Originally Posted by Ronnie Hurley
Originally Posted by VirusKiller
[quote=Kal Rubinson][quote=Ronnie Hurley]Historical and Long Known potential issues with Crackling on MD1. Long acknowledged by Meridian, which is why they point users to MD2 rather than MD1
Wow! I never heard or heard of this. I have been using MD1 for the 3xS/PDIF input for some time and not had any problems. That is the reason that I used MD2 for the HD621.
I expect Meridian made a running change to the production card. [/quote]
Unfortunately, not necessarily the case Joel

I've heard "new" 861's with the same problem. Likewise, new IE42 cards in "problematic" 861's has not resolved the problem

One important point to note: The Crackling problem ONLY arises if the following conditions are met
a) A High Res Multi-Channel Device is connected to the MD1 of the 861 AND
b) The Sources was "playing" a High Res Multi-Channel track

That is:
** No issues with playing CD's into the MD1 on the 861, even when connected by MD1 / Smartlink.
** No issues when playing High Res 2-ch DVD-V's or DVD-A's into the MD1 of the 861
** Not surprising, given that CD and 2-ch High Res only uses the D1-2 connection of the MD1

Like I said, when Meridian came out with their DVD-A Smartlink Connection, they spent some time trying to resolve problem, but it was one of those inconsistent problems that affected some 861's and not others. Because there were 2 Multi-Channel connections on the IE42 card, it was far simpler to tell customers to just connect to the MD2, which has been the consistent advice for years now. It's really only since the advent of the HD621 (i.e. a 2nd 3 by SPDIF Device) that it's began to raise it's head again.

In addition, many 800 / G98 users have moved away from "Spinning" DVD-A's altogether, so the above conditions are not being met too often [/quote]

As this issue and setup advice is news to both new and experienced 861 users, it would be nice if this was added to the Wiki.

Thanks Ronnie.