Thanks for an informative post and great to see someone else willing to invest time and effort to experience the reality of using audiophile RJ45 cables in a high-end system. No issue at all with hearing that Vodkas don’t cut it in your system (I only cried for an hour) – I’ll try to get my hands on some Chord Anthem when I have the chance. After getting surprisingly good results at a friend’s house yesterday and repeating the findings in my own system today, I’m now looking to upgrade the link between my Ethernet switch and MD600.

I’m sure there are many on this forum who are open minded on the impact of RJ45 cables, but it’s still startling to see how aggressive some people get in the face of real-world experience reported by forum members who are clearly highly coherent and own well-sorted high-end systems.

I’ve always felt that an essential prerequisite for real science, discovery and progress, is humility. Whatever one’s real or perceived level of knowledge in a given arena of science, the absence of humility, curiosity and of any urge to experiment and discover new things, infallibly creates an ‘anti-science’ environment, in which preconception and complacency dominate, and progress withers away.

I trained as a scientist and engineer. In my late teens and early twenties, with that early gift of naiveté in the excitement of learning, I dared to think that I knew a quite a lot about quite a lot of things. Now, as every day passes and I experience more of reality, I become increasingly aware of how much I don’t know. I like this: it means there’s a lot to experience that’s new and great things to discover and share with other people who love music. If I discover something that makes music sound better, I feel an urge to share it with other music lovers. If I discover something that does the opposite, I’m keen to share that experience to save others making the same mistake.

So I’m grateful that high end audio manufactures largely remain curious, hungry and keen to move forward. Without doubt, one of the fabulous outcomes of that mind-set is the wonderful Meridian experience that so many of us enjoy today. I remember the times when some stated vociferously that ‘all CD players sound the alike, because they’re digital’. That small victory of curiosity over complacency has brought us wonderful music and will certainly bring us much more in the future.

So here’s to humility and curiosity; here’s to willingness to allow one’s ‘theory of how things are’ to be modified a little by real-world experience, and here’s to the urge to hear music that’s more involving.

Cheers & happy listening,
Dave

808v5, MD600 & DSP7200.1
Dedicated audio mains supply