Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Digital Cables between 621 and Processors

Friends,

Has anyone experimented with upgraded digital cables between the HD621 and the 861 or G68? I am curious to know whether anyone has found that the better digital cables improve sound quality. If so, I am curious to know whether people used high-quality cables for all three outputs, or emphasized just the L/R and perhaps the C/SW channels.

Thanks for any responses.

when I eventually get a HD621 I will invest in or build a better quality lead between the my 568 and HD621 so I would say yes to the question but that only my opinion.

A good guy to talk to about this is mark at missing link cables in the uk all aspects of my Meridian ,mains,analogue,digital ect is all missing link great products .He may be able to help you out in this department hell certainly be able to advice you.

Heres the link: http://www.the-missing-link.net/

Truman I've always been told that digital interconnects are far less important an issue then analog speaker cables. Seems to make sense, dig cable is passing 1s & 0s whereby analog speaker cables have to carry and translate more than a digital stream.

Obviously this is a non-technical over simplified answer. I think your dollars are better spent elsewhere in the audio chain. So you can purchase "nice" cables but should not need to buy into the hype of paying huge or more for a digital cable. I'm pretty sure Meridian approach bears this out. Being the Digital leaders well ahead of the competition with digital they are not over spending or over engineering their digital interconnects. Clearly they would not build some of the finest digital equipment on the market and supply a "lesser" digital interconnect, have you seen the blue interconnects, nothing special

Save your money


Best,

Jay

More expensive digital cables offer better connections, noise immunity, and impedance matching. Any other claims are just for marketing.

Connection
You want a tight connection but not so tight that removing the cable damages the mating connector. You also want gold to reduce oxidation.

Noise Immunity
Your cable should be well shielded in order to prevent it from acting like an antenna. Otherwise you may inject noise into the analog path and you may hear that.

Impedance
Because the HD621 has FIFO buffering and retiming, any signal degradation that may happen along the cable due to its impedance is restored 100% at the output of the HD621. In other words, any cable will do as long as its 75 ohm, which is any digital audio or video cable. Paying for very tight impedance tolerances in this case would be like polishing cannon balls (wasting your time and money). The exception is if you have very long cable runs (100s of feet) then impedance becomes more important and you have to pay attention to these specs. Otherwise forget about it and just invest in a cable that is well built mechanically and has a good shield. This should be relatively inexpensive.

Or just use the Meridian blue cables which fit the above spec - they very well built and shielded despite their minimal appearance.

Cliff

+1

I agree with what Jay wrote about the blue cables that come with the HD621 being just fine as long as the cables are not subject to EMI or RFI. EMI sources are large bulky magnetic items (TVs, amps, motors, compressors, power supplies) so they are pretty easy to spot. Just keep a safe distance between them and your cable. But RFI is from wireless devices and is all over the place. Still, you can probably use them without RFI problems because they are so short.

Thanks for your thoughts.

I do not want to start another cable war here. But ... When I first got my 800 and the 861, I started out using Meridian's blue cables. Shortly thereafter, I tried a few other digital cables of note, and found a nice improvement, especially in soundstage width and depth. I settled on an Illuminati cable. I also have auditioned digital cables in other people's systems, and again heard improved performance.

Perhaps it is true that improvements in buffering, dejittering, caching, etc. have made the digital cable less important than it used to be.

My dealer, who admittedly has a vested interest in the matter, has described Meridian's current version of blue cables (which are noticeably of higher build quality than they used to be) as "crap." He asserted that just about any cable from one of the well-regarded cable manufacturers (e.g., Nordost, Transparent, Analysis Plus) would improve the system.

I have not tried my Illuminati cable in the HD621/861 triad of connections, because the Illuminati is currently connecting my 800 to my Berkeley DAC. I do plan to do some experimenting soon. But I am also curious to know whether anyone out there in Meridian Nation has actually evaluated different digital cables in the HD621 to 861 or G68 path.

Ask him to stand behind his statement. If his answer is that it just sounds better, then he isn't adding any more value to your situation than Joe Shmoe off the street. Being a dealer he should be specific rather than say that they are crap. Do they break? Is it their sheilding? Is their frequency response inadequate?

In defense of my dealer: He has carried Meridian gear for 20 years or so, from the entry models up to the 800 series and the 8000 speakers. He did not try to sell me digital cables based on a verbal argument. He simply told me that, in setting up Meridian systems in his demo rooms, he has found the Meridian cables to be inferior to those offered by the good cable companies. He said I would hear it quite easily. He offered to let me take some cables home with me to audition. I declined the offer at the time, because I thought it best to get the HD621 integrated into my system and become familiar with its sound before I started tweaking it. At some point, I will audition the cables he sells. But, as I said in my previous post, I am also eager to hear if anyone else has gone through the exercise.

If I don't hear a difference, I won't buy a new cable.

FWIW, I have had several of the Meridian "blue" cables fail on me over time. In my experience, they do break. The cables that came with the HD621, however, appear to be of better quality than the ones I got with the 800 series components.

FWIW, I have auditioned different digital cables with my 800 -> 861. In the end, I was not able to hear a difference between my very modest (but well built) cables from http://www.bluejeanscable.com/store/digital-audio/index.htm and the very expensive digital cable the dealer thought did make a difference.

I have heard differences with other types of cables - power, analog, speakers. But I think cables differences are the last thing to audition. Your front end gear (pre/pro, amps, speakers) make several orders of magnitude more of a difference.

I bought my 861 from a respected Hitchhiker who is no longer here along with his Analysis Plus Digital Oval interconnects. Compared with Meridian, these provide a subtle overall difference in clarity and body/tone. I'll use these interconnects when plugging in a HD621 in the next couple of weeks. Doubt I'll retry Meridian's cables unless something sounds amiss. JimK