Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems New to M, and befuddled by surround rear/side precedence

Having lurked on the sidelines for some years, I've finally taken a dive into the Meridian pool courtesy of a hard-to-pass-up deal on a 568.2MM and HD621 bundle. I'm now predictably bursting with the new user's setup questions. I've been trying to do my best to search archives rather than post what seem likely to be duplicate questions, but there are aspects of setup which seem a bit arcane (never heard that, have you?) and I hope more experienced Meridianisti might indulge me with some pointers.

My 568.2MM seems to be running the last 2.5 firmware.

Everything plugged together and basically worked with the initial HD621/568 setup the dealer had pre-programmed (assuming a 5.1 setup), but then I began to try to fine-tune things. First up was attempting to adapt the setup for my 6.1 (I see you all shake your heads sadly) speaker setup.

I made sure the surround side connections were going to the side surrounds and one surround back connection to the lone center full-rear speaker, then used the trick an Arcam tech had taught me for setting an AV8 up for 6.1: tell the processor that the rears are less than 12 inches apart (which should cause them to be treated as mono), then up the level by something (3dB? 6dB? I forgot, so tried 3dB) relative to the other speakers, so the single speaker would contribute as much volume as the two rears in a 7.1 setup would.

Then I listened to some surround material. I was surprised and distinctly unpleased to find that in (I think) the "Direct" DSP mode from 5.1 sources (all I can get fed discretely from the HD621), the surround sound was coming from the rear speaker rather than the sides.

Now, I believe we all learned on Dolby's knee that the surround speakers in a 5.1-channel setup should be at the sides, level with or ever so slightly behind the listener; when things got all fancy with even more channels, they first added number 6 directly behind, then that got split into 6 and 7 (back L and back R). But for pure 5-channel surround, the active, primary surrounds are the sides, yes? And if any channels are synthesized from 5.1, the "fake" channels are the rear ones.

At first I thought that perhaps there were different speaker-location assumptions for 4.1/5.1 music (surrounds behind you) and film (surrounds at the sides), and the processor was enforcing this. Maybe that actually is true. Then I thought that buried somewhere in the HD621 or 568.2MM config might be some means of specifying which speakers each discrete channel was to be associated with, and I just had to change that assumption - but I haven't yet been able to find such a setting.

But then I though more about the options for surrounds in the legacy config program for the 568: "One rear only", "Two rears", "Two rears and two sides". Not only is there no option for the "Two sides and one rear" I'd of course like to see, there's no option for just "Two sides". There seems to be a built-in assumption in the Meridian setup infrastructure that the first, primary surrounds are the rears rather than the sides. Am I crazy here? Isn't this just plain wrong, according to the norms as set out by Dolby or Lucas/THX?

http://www.dolby.com/consumer/setup/speaker-setup-guide/index.html

http://www.thx.com/consumer/home-entertainment/home-theater/surround-sound-speaker-set-up/

Or... is it just a disagreement between Meridian (who've been at this about as long as anyone) and those Johnnies-come-lately (who just happen to be the ones prescribing the industry norms now)?

Or (as I hope) is there just something I don't yet get about how to set this up properly? Because among many other things, I certainly don't properly understand what the "Layout" letters (which appear when you tick "Advanced" in the Layout section of "Speakers" in the legacy config program) imply.

And no, I can't really just give in and buy the seventh speaker. My TV-watching room is problematic in that there's a lovely place directly behind and at an appropriate height for a single centered rear, but where a right rear would need to go if I split the rears there's a small entry hall then a large doorway. No place for that speaker, no chance of anything like a symmetrical placement for two rear surrounds.

My apologies for the great length, and if all of this is spelled out somewhere I haven't looked cleverly enough to find.

-Jeff

Work on the assumption that in a 5.x system, the speakers are fronts and rears. Only in 7.x (PLIIx) system are the sides used. Look at the room layouts in the manuals - earler ones may be better - they are all on Duncans site - try 565 install guide as I remember that having different layouts - they may not be relevant but you will get an understanding of the way that Meridian work and their transition into 7.x. Suggest not coming into Meridian with any pre conceived ideas on how you think things work. You may never get 6.x to work as M skipped that stage.

I don't know about the 568, but on my G68 I can cycle through the set up options for each DSP mode using 'function' together with <> keys. In there I can set whether sides, rears or both are used for the surround channels. I would be surprised if the 568 couldn't do that somehow.

Read the manual, read it again, then re read it again.
Start with a 5.1 system. Fronts Rears and Sub.

Arcam tricks wont work here. Personaly I would put speakers where you can for your room, measure your distances and set delays. Get it running and the sound levels adjusted then see how you like it.

My rears are positioned to my side on the rear wall firing directly at the listening position. It sounds great to me.

From here you can change things as you prefer. Good luck. Chris

Yes the manuals do seem arcane.

Jeff,

Jobseeker is correct. You can setup for side, back or both in each DSP setup. You can change on the fly while listening to music too. I have a 568.2mm as well so I know. You can also save each DSP mode to default to what you want. Even save more than one setup of discrete mode if you want. Just make sure you setup you Bluray player to sum the rears into to sides. In other words turn off the rears on your player. The player will sum them for you.

Ron

Thanks for the responses. Yes, I'm finding that each re-reading of documentation (for this and other models), combined with commentaries from other sources, provides additional hints or perspective. It's what I imagine studying Talmud must be like.

I can't help but worry (mostly based on theory) that if the people mixing soundtracks for consumer release are assuming side surrounds but M is assuming rear, *something* won't be quite right.

But then, in practice, things sound pretty darned good.

I'm particularly impressed with how organic and nondestructive some of the DSP presets can sound, as compared with implementations I've heard in other equipment. I've certainly never before heard a center synthesized from stereo and integrated as successfully as Trifield manages to do.

And when I told my spinning-disc player to do the decoding and pass LPCM to the HD621, so the HD621 could do its newfangled apodizing magic while upsampling those sources at upsample-able rates, I was most impressed with how much less "digital" (in that now-old-fashioned sense referring to poorly-implemented digital) things could sound - particularly dramatically, to me, from lossy regular-DVD soundtracks. And CDs sound quite good via this path, despite the potential disadvantages of subjecting their bits to HDMI travel.

Yes, this lashup will be worth the trouble to learn how to tune.