Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Streaming RJ45 Cables (Ethernet and SpeakerLink Use Cases)

We are not curing cancer here, just sharing enthusiasm.

I have 10 meter length SpeakerLink cables, the distance between my DSP7200.2's is 2.4 meter, homerun from center positioned 818.2 it means a lot of unused SL length. Guess what, it lies coiled up under my cabinet.

Whilst I am making a new home network I bought some 100%copper, 26 AWG, Cat6a SSTP PiMF patch cables, thinking it may deteriorate the SQ a bit but at least clean up the cable clutter it is maybe the worthwhile to test the effect.

Ok, simple. It is a bad idea to use SpeakerLink coiled up due to much length. I can say that the difference with non coiled up, proper length Cat6a patch cable is "dramatic". Ok, well that is too much audiphile speak, but I do experience a more holographic music stage. The Black (!) tombstones vanish, eerie.

My next step is that I will now buy the correct length that I need and leave the SL as spare part collecting dust. Or I buy some Telegartner RJ45 connectors and patch them on my left over Cat7 home network orange colored cable. (I will call them Jenever, the better Dutch version of Vodka.)

Cheers!

I was just cleaning up a few old reading lists and checked to see if the conclusion to the previous ArsTechnica was ever posted. Well, it was and for completeness, it is here..

No eyebrows raised to the 'conclusion'. Chinese/noname Cat6a failed the Fluke test meter - no surprise there.

Viewing the layout of their 'test setup' in Vegas I'm not surprised they heard no difference. Ethernet cabling was clearly not the weakest link.

Reviving an old thread, but has anyone directly compared the 'new' round Meridian SpeakerLink cable to the 'old' flat one on the endpoint-DSP runs?

The current flat Meridian cables I have are fine, but much too long so I have a lot of untidy wire everywhere. Unfortunately, some bright spark at Meridian omitted probably the most common length of speaker wire sold (around 2.5m) from the inventory for the flat wire (which jumps from 1m to 5m). Well, I've rarely, if ever, seen speakers only 2m apart, and the average British home doesn't have 10m walls on the narrow end, so I'm not sure what the thinking was there, or if there was any.

Until they see fit to offer pre-terminated flat SpeakerLink somewhere between those extremes, I'll have to use something else, so any auditioning findings would be welcome!

Agreed. You do need a certain level of equipment and environment to be able to hear differences in cables.

However, were the cables on test on speaker runs, or carrying audio information, or just network information? I'm more dubious about the latter making a difference, although I admit I haven't done any listening tests myself for that application and wouldn't completely dismiss it out of hand.

An interesting test before swapping the cables would have been to pull the SL cables out so that they were uncoiled to see if there was any sonic improvement. (Do you still have the SL cables?)

Cheers
Tom

I’m still using them, yes. Interesting, will try uncoiling!

Of course if I do hear an improvement by uncoiling, I’ll be even more annoyed Meridian don’t make a sensible 2.5m-ish length for home run use!

Hi James,

You should have a chat to Rick, he should be able to divide a 5 meter length and convert it into two shorter terminated SpeakerLink cables, see this 2011 topic IC: Custom Length SpeakerLink Cables.

Regards,
Carl

Brilliant! Thanks Carl, will give him a call.