Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion HiFi & HT Chat Cleaning the bits

While I agree that speaker placement and interaction with the room are most important, I take issue with the bits-are-bits nay-saying concerning interconnects and filters. No, you don't need to "clean" the bits themselves, but you do need to prevent anomalies like RF/EMI from impacting your DAC if you want to hear more of the fine detail in recorded music. I've enjoyed wonderful M systems over the years without realizing what properly set up gear can actually deliver when the various types of digital noise are eliminated.

And there are very inexpensive ways to do this. Instead of upgrading my 218 to 818v3, I thought to try a $50 Raspberry Pi along with a decent power supply, loaded it with a quiet operating system (Audiolinux in my case - $199 for a multi-device perpetual license) and enabled the Diretta network protocol ($100, also perpetual) to leapfrog what I previously considered to be excellent.

I know that this is blasphemy for the majority of audiophiles because I've been lambasted left, right and center on certain forums filled with self-satisfied experts who already know everything. -But, having heard what my DSP9s are capable of when given everything captured by the recording engineers, I can't go back and am sometimes compelled to answer a question like this. If I'm not dismissed as delusional, and people here want more information, I can share what years of experimentation have taught me.