Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Meridian CD transport in today's world

I ran across a deal on a used G98DH for a reasonable price ($600). My question is, will this offer any sound quality improvement over an Oppo player? The G98 would be hooked up to my 861 via the MHR connector and the Oppo is run through a Shawn Fogg modified Octavia then to the 861.

I believe using either of the above setups passes the signal directly from the player to the 861 in a digital format so I am assuming each would be bit for bit. If this is the case, I don�t see how one method would be an improvement over the other.

I would be using the G98 as a music only player to spin CDs and DVD Audio disks. The only down side is that the player does not read SACDs or Blu-rays.

I currently have both a G98DH and an Oppo BDP-103. I also previously owned a BDP-83. In both cases, I felt that CD and DVD audio from the G98DH to be better than the Oppo in an A/B comparison. I conducted this experiment both on my former G68 (before and after it's last upgrade) and on my 861v8.

The source switching wasn't instantaneous, of course, with the 103 running through a HD621 and the RJ45 input and the G98 running the multi-channel digital inputs, but subjectively I always gave the edge to the Meridian player. That said, the Oppo is very, very good and I use this component for my networked DSD/24bit audio and video playback. Its picture quality does surpass that of the G98 on DVDs.

Hope this helps.

I would pretty much agree with all the above comments.

I have both Oppo/HD621 and G98 and would say that for RBCD and DVD-A the G98 is the best.

For anything video related the Oppo is way superior. The upscaling of standard DVDs is excellent.

I have an Oppo 93 with the Vanity Lite board, at the moment I'm hunting for a G08.2 in black (on the basis that my G68 is black and the cases are similar) as the Oppo's performance for pure Red Book is reasonable but not as good as an old 507. HDCD, DVD-A and SACD are all pretty damn good given the price of the ensemble.