Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems I just got some M6's ... now what?

The MS200 is an audio endpoint on your network that feeds the M6's. You can run Roon or Sooloos over this.

The result will be fine trouble free audio that will make you wonder why you ever faffed about with anything else.

Chris

Now that's a prize with a catch! Good news, you've won some great speakers in our raffle. Oh, the bad news is that you have to buy some of our expensive products to actually use them.

Who won the AC200 - I would search them out and do a deal...

If you can't get a suitable front end to drive these, try and swap them for a 'legacy' pair of DSP 'speakers that will have a standard SPDIF input and the ability to control themselves.

Steve.

Ain't that the truth!

There is, it's called an AC200 or 818v3😉 [/quoteAh, well if I had a few grand to throw at a fancy D/D convertor, then I'd love to have one of those 818v3s
Need to enter more raffles, I suppose

Eh, faffing about is part of the fun, TBH :shrug:
That said, once set up, my setup is pretty easy to live with -- it's already got all the DSP and room correction to make my open baffles sound great. I just wonder if these M6's sound great-er. If they do it may be worth dropping some dosh on an AC200 which could replace my analog system as well - definitely a WAF improvement.

Roon runs on linux?! Arm, even! That might change the game, because it would allow me to run Roon on the Pi, then connect to an MC200. I will investigate this further.

In the meantime, I'm going to try to hack something together based on taking an SPDIF from the current receiver that powers my OB 3ways, which is driven by the HDMI from the Raspberry Pi.

I'm still left with one niggling question about that - does the M6 *need* a control signal? Without one, does it just play at full volume? The HDMI or SPDIF output from the Pi can control volume in the digital domain, so as long as the M6's are playing full tilt, then I can reduce the volume at the source pretty easily.

An AC200 is $1500.00 retail which is very reasonable for what it does. With that you would have a very nice system that is worth $7000.00 that you would have $1500.00 into. Even the most frugal would take that deal. If not sell them off and run with the free cash.

Don't confuse MS200 with MC200: the former is an audio endpoint, while the latter is a self-contained/all-in-one Sooloos system (just connect directly to your M6's and control via iPad).

The control signal is proprietory, without the ability turn them on, select a source, they are likely to be as useful audio wise as a cat scratching post.

However, all(?) other Meridian DSP speakers also have a serial protocol for home automation. For later SpeakerLink speakers, this is part of the SpeakerLink connection - a dealer should be able to supply a simple cable converter. If, and it's a big if, the M6 supports this, then it's a simple serial text protocol that any terminal emulator or bit of code can interface with.

So a SPDIF + RS232 to speakerlink connected to suitable source and control unit *may* do what you want.

Alternatively, a cheap legacy multi media controller or processor, such a 562v2/3 or 568.1/.2 plus a SpeakerLink dongle such as Reviver or homebrew will do at low risk as if it doesn't work out you are unlikely to lose much cash on resale.

Hi JR,

You'll need 'something' to adapt RS232 for control, and digital audio into the M6 SpeakerLink connector.

Cheapest solutions from Meridian are AC12, or a Distributor 1. The Reviver is also available as a third party solution.

These all have an SPDIF socket which will connect to your Raspberry Pi for the audio, so that part's sorted.

Then you'll need some way of switching the M6 on and controlling the volume. All the solutions above will provide a conventional 9 pin D type RS232 connection.

You could write some code for your Raspberry Pi to send the correct RS232 commands, or get a global Cache IP2SL box and use vMSR iPad app.

Cheers,
Rick

So, what about some legacy controller device like this 561.

Says me: this plus an AC12 would give me SpeakerLink out, a bunch of analog inputs, and a bunch of digital inputs for music servers and whatnot.

How would it sound compared to a newer controller like the AC200?