Interesting thread.

Although I'm facinated by lots of A/V toys the Soolos is not on my list and this appears to be the main point of V6.

Unfortunately "apodising" is turning into another audio gimmick after introduction by Meridian and hijacking by others. This is not trying to depreciate Meridian's efforts but, as others have posted, to capitalise on them needs a lot of capital. Whether or not anyone can justify that is a personal decision.

But there appears to be quite a lot to be learned about filters with digital reproduction. David Schulte of "The Upgrade Company" is deep into filtering and claims filtering for RF is more important than replacing clocks with more accurate models. He is a contraversial figure, made more so because he refuses to detail what he does in a $USD2000 upgrade. Bottom line is he DOES make a significant difference to audio quality from players. He massaged my Esoteric UX-1 LE and it came back a different machine. Before the makeover I found the Esoteric G-0s external Rubidium clock made a significant improvement to the player but when it came back it made absolutely no audible difference. Result: sold the G-0s and that more than recouped the heavy transport costs + upgrade.

Apologies if this is a bit off 861 discussion but thought it might be of some interest.

Back to the 861, I've never been a great fan of what is does to 2CH in its surround modes. To these ears it corrupts the 2CH output at the expense of the (rather nice) synthesised surrounds. I have got around that by feeding 2Ch into a McIntosh preamp with L/R going direct to amps and speakers but still capitalising on the 861 surround sound capabilities by feeding a signal back from the preamp so the 861 does its bit on the rest of the system. A bit messy, but it works fine using a progammable Aeros 850 remote + a few IR operated relays.

So I'm in the camp of sceptics about the version 6 doing much more than integrating the 861 more smoothly into Soolos. As for Soolos itself improving audio quality there are less expensive ways of utilising hard drives as an audio source. But if you love Meridian, and can afford it, it is the way to go. But not for me.

John