Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems The Stereophile with Kal's long-awaited 861v6 review just hit my mailbox...

Regarding modular boards, it was explained to a couple of us that part of the backplane change was to do with where a board got it's bus clock from. With v6, apparently the clock is a single centralised source but prior to that multiple clocks seemed to be split across multiple cards and shared with 'known good' card pairings. The result is a more stable backplane requiring less complicated termination or even none in most cases. Presumably this improved stability led to better control leading to better audio quality.

I can guess that depending on whether an old card had it's own bus clock and combined with its stability 'behaviour', then it may or may not work as apart from pre v6 cards containing their own 'bus' clock or not, it sounded to me that there is nothing physically different between v6 and prior cards.