Originally Posted by WelwynNick
Comparing the 861 & C61 was surprisingly difficult, and I spent longer than I expected trying to choose.
It was only when digging really deep that I finally heard a clear advantage to the 861, which had better low-level resolution, darker backgrounds, and more subtle phrasing and musical interplay. On the other hand, the C61 was good with the skeleton of the music, and could hold on to a rhythm better, but was a bit more two-dimensional.

Very interesting Nick, I'm not surprised by your findings. I'd be most interested to hear the opinions of a blind listening lay (ie non hifi enthusiast) person, a partner for example - I suspect the differences between the two units is actually quite small...

Meridian are faced with a whole host of euro nanny regulations and cost issues when they're designing a product and this can lead to compromises in potential audio quality.

Higher quality power supplies can be built and they will achieve a higher audio quality but at much higher cost as a new PSU design need new certifications etc (8k Ruby anniversary implementation)

The mains input filter on the G series for example is of low quality and includes the inevitable fuse - for audio quality considerations only best bypassed all together IMHO, as are any fuses in the mains. I use euro schuko plugs and sockets for this very reason.

For circuitry containing only digital signals a bank of batteries in conjunction with a Jung type superreg circuit is very effective indeed.

However, batteries are a disaster on any analogue audio boards due to their high impedance which softens the dynamics. The Sooloos Control 15 contains a digital only output board inside its base...

From the internal pics posted of the MS600 there would appear to be considerable spare real estate inside the unit for a linear supply conversion.

Avondale Audio in the UK come highly recommended for linear PSU's, Les is aloways open to custom projects and has many many years experience. Googled searches for Squeezebox PSU upgrades will reveal others.

IMHO there are two quality bottlenecks present in M components, the first is the use of SMPS in conjunction with cheap off the shelf input filtration modules. The second is the SPDIF (inc speakerlink) interface.



Last edited by Dpaws; 2011-11-28 16:07.