I've recently upgraded a few bits and pieces of my Hi-Fi setup and, while some of the discussion has been on other threads, I thought I'd put in one place what I've been up to as well as how much of a difference I feel they made for anyone else who might be thinking along similar lines.

If anyone has tried the same or alternative upgrades, I’d love to hear your thoughts...

A short while after I bought my 7200's (all of four weeks later), Meridian launched their SE speakers. Unfortunately, I couldn't justify the cost of the upgrade given I didn't get a lot of time to listen to the system as it was stuck in our living room. We moved house about a year ago and now have somewhere seperate to listen to music, which meant it made sense to think about upgrading the system to SE speakers and the 818v3.

So, I thought it would be interesting to describe how the journey went along with some commentary:

1) I upgraded the speakers from DSP7200's to SE's, which was a definite improvement, but nothing compared to what was to come

2) I then upgraded to the 818v3 which was a huge difference (I think the moral here is to do both upgrades at the same time if you can). I can't see the 818v3 upgrade making such a dramatic difference on its own. All of a sudden the sound stage became far more realistic and stable. MQA was even better.

3) I then got stuck down a rabbit hole of mains noise. What started as a 'let's not risk missing anything by not replacing the mains cables' became a project of understanding why this could make a difference and I ended up a long way down this particular hole. First with the Shunyata Triton v2 and Shunyata cables. This easily matches, if not beats the upgrade from the standard speakers and 818v2 to the SE's with the 818v3 upgrade. Seriously, go and listen to one of these (or a Denali, I suspect, would also be pretty damn good). Up until now, lead singers on the virtual stage would shimmer or get lost at times. The v2 fixed this completely and I think the lesson I learnt here is not overlook the mains supply!

4) The Shunyata Triton v3 upgrade a few weeks later made everything sound much more musical, the soundstage now had a sense of depth and the instruments sounded much more life-like.

5) So, if noise on the mains makes a difference, how about noise on ethernet? I tried an SotM dcBL-CAT7 special edition and the sound got even better, the sound stage more clearly defined (not as much an improvement of the changes above, but still worthwhile)

6) I then upgraded to the Antipodes CX and this was better (but has a really apparent burn-in time), although I don't think I noticed the quite the difference that others might achieve. This maybe because I'd already put a lot of effort into building my own low-noise music server with an 'audiophile JCAT ethernet card. Nonetheless, I think most people would hear a great improvement and it's easier to have Antipodes test upgrades to the machine over time than doing this myself.

7) I also decided to look at the speaker cables. After all, if Meridian feel that using someone else's mains cables wouldn't help, and they did, why not the speaker cables? On the advice of Velcro22 (and this is probably the most difficult one to justify price-wise), I went for the AudioQuest Diamonds (I did look at others, but I could understand how the Diamonds might work, and the alternatives would have paid for an upgrade to DSP8000SE's!). Now we're getting way beyond anything even close to anything I've heard from a Hi-Fi before. Piano's, Guitars, Vocals etc sound so lifelike, it's unreal. At this point, friends who couldn't tell the difference between previous changes are now sat there with the mouths open.

8) Also on the advice of Velcro22 (thanks, mate :-) ), I ordered an AQVOX SE Ethernet Switch. I then went a step further and ordered an SBooster linear power supply feeding an Uptone LPS1.2 to drive the switch. Again, this wasn't the largest difference I've heard to date, but a great improvement on how clearly defined everything is on stage.

If I were to pick upgrades in order of priority, I'd likely suggest either looking at the SE/818v3 or the Shunyata power conditioners first (then the other), followed by the AQVOX (at least until we know how good the SoTM and Uptone Audio switches are), followed by the Antipodes and the AudioQuest Diamond's. To round it off, ethernet filters are definitely a good thing.

Not sure what I should do next, probably more work on the SotM ethernet side of things, but I thought I'd describe this journey in case it helps someone else. One, perhaps, obvious note is that I did this in the order above and doing this in a different order may have better/less obvious benefits and, as always, YMMV!

Prolific music listener / Hi-Fi addict!