Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems My journey with Meridian (and Shunyata, AQVOX etc)

Thanks, Asa

Yes, yours was one of the reviews I took note of and I seriously considered the Chord cables. The only reason not to go down this path was that they are *very* pricey at the top of the range and they didn't stock cables in their library of the next cable down (the Sarum T, which was also pretty pricey).

The next best option seemed to be the Diamond cables as I felt they were trying to achieve a similar end result as the ChordMusic cable, but in a different way, and at a price I could afford.

I would agree that I believe the differences cables have on SQ become more pronounced the better the rest of the system is. Certainly, going down the Shunyata Triton route has had a huge impact (as did the SE speaker upgrades combined with the 818v3).

By way of an update, I’ve been exceptionally lucky and managed to lay my hands on a second-hand Typhon to keep my Triton company during the cold winter nights.

The Typhon was something that I had planned to do next year, but it seems the Typhon QR upgrade essentially gives you a brand new unit as something like the faceplate is the only part that remains, and even that can be replaced if you ask for it. One come up on eBay and I couldn’t resist... mostly because I don’t think they’ll be many original boxes for sale (Shunyata had originally said they couldn’t be upgraded but have since changed their mind).

Thoughts to follow as it acclimatises to its new home...

Well, I've been a bit quiet on this topic as I suspected there may be something wrong with my (I hasten to add second hand) Typhon, although Shunyata say it needs about 150 hours of music to settle in, so I think I'll need to leave trying that out for a business trip next week and leave it running while I'm in Germany. I've read reviews saying the same thing, so it might be a matter of being patient... or being doubly patient and waiting to upgrade to the Typhon QR, which is the ultimate goal (and an upgrade that I've been told is very worthwhile).

If it is second hand why might it need any hours to settle in?

Do they have any comment on that ?

I didn’t ask that question, but I would imagine it would be to do with the polarization/charging of the material used inside the NIC’s after the unit has been disconnected for some time.

A quick update on the Typhon: Following my conversation with the (I must say, ever-helpful) Shunyata team, I plugged the Typhon directly into the mains socket next to the HiFi and this has made an incredible difference. I've been playing the Queen Bohemian Rhapsody album and the speakers pretty much disappear with the staging extremely well graduated from left to right.

At a guess, I think the issue with the original design of the Typhon is that it takes a long time to settle in as it actually requires noise on the mains to do so and much of the noise is already filtered out by the Triton. Plugging the Typhon directly into the wall socket resolves this issue at a stroke (bear in mind the new Typhon QR works completely differently in this regard as it sits before the Triton).

PS As a short update, the Typhon has now had two days back in my system and is getting better by the day. The soundstage now has real depth - so much so, when standing listening to a live recording, it can feel like I'm overlooking the stage from a balcony position and can hear where instruments are, not just left to right, but also where they are front to back on the stage. And it all sounds very, very musical. So my view is now that, second hand, these are tremendous value for money - once you have them run in.

It'll be interesting to see what happens if I connect it back to the Triton after it has had 150 hours to settle, although I must admit I'm slightly nervous about making changes to a system that is working so well.

[MQA version of the Queen album arriving tomorrow, which should be interesting...

Where did you buy this?

Cheers
Greg

I checked and it turns out I didn’t. I had a look today and discovered that, although Google showed a match, I missed that it was actually a completely different album that got ordered.

Lesson to myself is not to trust Google with the ability they give advertisers to copy your search string into the search results and prefix this with the word ‘buy’.

That said, there is a higher res version available in the US, but not MQA.

If only to show that not all sound improvements need to cost silly money, I thought I'd write up a recent discovery which, while more of an emergency measure, demonstrated how even low-cost power conditioning might improve the SQ of our Meridian systems.

By way of some background, it seems in December one of our neighbours put in PowerLine adaptors to get around the networking issues inherent in new-build properties; the signal from which not even the Shunyata kit could eliminate and the sound stage completely collapsed.

After some reading up on the topic, the quickest fix turned out to repurpose a Tacima mains conditioner sitting in my study (costing all of £35 from Amazon) to feed the processor as a stop-gap measure. The sound stage not only went back to how it was, but I think actually may have improved the focus (although, perhaps not all areas of the performance).

I'd recommend against using this solution for DSP speakers, though. I experimented with this and the sound ended up feeling really clinical, losing any sense of realism.

Definitely worth considering for a processor. For the price, I'm not sure it can be beaten.

Do you mean just for the 818?

Is it this one Tacima 6 Way Mains Conditioner and Radio Frequency Interference Filter https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B000PS5700/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_eiLkCbNC90CD1 ?

Cheers
Greg

When you say one of your neighbours, do you mean one either side or further away?

Yes, that's right

Yes, mine has a green core for the common mode choke, but has the same model number