Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems G61R questions

So, I've just got all my speakers back from Steve P (swpnt), recapped and checked over and got them home and connected. Awesome service and genuinely nice guy, thanks to Steve and also to all the people who recommended him!

So for the first time I have my 5.0 system up and running (I'm looking into a Sub, but I've spent a bit on this recently and I think I may have some car repairs in the immediate future to sort (orange lights on dashboard!) so a sub may have to wait!)

Except......

So I have a grand total of 5 DSP5000's - 2 x 24/96 DSP5000's (Front Left and Right), 1 x 24/96 DSP5000C (centre) and 2 x 18bit DSP5000's as rears. All being controlled from a G61R.
all have the latest/last firmware for the HW version (so 5.21 for the front 3 and 2.31 for the rears), the G61R also has 1.07 installed.
in MConfig I've set the front 3 speakers to be 24/96 capable, the rears are marked as not being 24bit capable.

and I have configured 3 sources.

1) a Toslink cable from the Panasonic OLED tv (and through that a matching Panasonic Bluray player and a Virgin V6 box)
2) a SPDIF coax cable from a Hifiberry Digi+Pro hat on a Pi3, this runs as a Roon endpoint (with HifiberryOS)
3) I've also temporarily added a windows laptop connected to the USB connection on the back of the G61R, installed Roon (for the endpoint) and the device is recognised as a Meridian 16/44.1 device.

so to the bits I don't think are right

- I cannot get the . on the front speakers to show they are being fed a 24/96 upsampled signal. The displays on those look exactly the same as those on the 18bit speakers (i.e. CD.65 or tn.65 etc) - what have I (or not!) done?
- both the Roon streamer and the TV show ac3 3/2.1 as the best I can get. I'm reading that as a 2.1 signal not a 5.1 signal - so wondering what I've missed?

and the question

- I can connect the pi3 to the USB port directly (using Ropiee for example) and use that to pass data into the G61R. However the G61R seems to be recognised as a 'Meridian 48k/16' device. If I feed the G61R with the Digi+pro and it's SPDIF connection - I can pass 24/96 data streams into the G61R. This seems a bit odd, is the USB connection limited to 16bit/48khz ? or is that just the label on the windoze device driver and it'll actually pass higher data rates into the player?

Im asking as I have another potential use for the digi+ if it's not needed here - as I have another 5kC that I could put in my office and drive directly from Roon and the Digi+pro to make a decent sounding (albeit mono) sound system for 'ambient' when I'm working

a lot of questions, but I hope this makes sense

TIA for any tips, Mark

Ok, so thanks again to this forum - and in this instance specifically Frank Blackfire!

We've had a chat - and Frank helped with answers to just about everything I was trying to ask.

so- first point - my G61R had decided that as not all my speakers were 24/96 capable, then it would treat all the speakers as 18bit - always. Deleting the rears (the 18bit ones) from the config uncovered a setting on the G61R that turns 24 bit on. A bit more digging found the same setting in MConfig - bloody well hidden though! Switching this on and I get the magic .

a bit of experimenting and it seems that marking the rears as not 24/96 capable and leaving HS=Y on the surround settings makes the G61R upsample music tracks to the front speakers and still leave the rears enabled (I guess some music has prologic encoding or something else that can be decoded to the rears) - I still get the . on the fronts at the same time as noise from the rears

and to my next question - Meridian spell AC3 5.1 - as AC3 3/2.1 so everything is passing what I expected - it's just the labeling that confused me!

aaanndd the USB input is a waste of space. I'm better off streaming from Roon through the SPDIF using Roon to provide the highest res stream it can - which is often higher then the 16/48k that the USB port supports.

Thank you Frank