Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Bought the Meridian Ellipse …

After auditioning the Ellipse at a local dealer, I was so impressed by the sound staging and traded in my 16 year old F80 for it (F80 trade in value of approx £600).

My impressions so far after a few days at home -

• The unit I received has a slight quality control issue to the main chassis where one plate isn’t flush to another. A minor issue but once seen can’t be unseen.
• I connected a USB thumb drive with some MQA tracks and it seems the internal DAC doesn’t play MQA as the tracks appear as PCM on the control app.
• On several occasions I found that the Control app volume control doesn’t work.
• I’ve lost wifi connection to the unit a few times (something that doesn’t happen with my WiiM mini streamer which is in another room further away from the main router).
• When I play music from a USB stick, the Control app file Manager is unable to scroll down and show me all the folder contents so I can’t access more than about 50 tracks in any sub directory.
• When I play a song from a USB stick and bring up album art, each time I try and go back to the file manager, the app keeps buffering and crashing.
• The track navigation for USB connected drives is terrible. I can’t figure out how to go back to an album after playing a particular track - it sends me back to the top of the entire USB directory. The control app also doesn’t allow you to generate playlists?
• The main reason I bought the Ellipse was to access the Melco server of my main system over UPnP but the Meridian Control app doesn’t see the Melco server. The manual suggests using Bubble? UPnP but I can’t even find it in the App Store. I’ve downloaded Mconnect and will try that instead.
• The sound signature is more forward than for either my M80 or the traded in F80 and so immediately sounds more engaging initially but the Ellipse sounds far more distorted at very high volumes whereas the F/M80s never did.
• It’s a shame the Ellipse can’t handle DSD files in the manner the Ultra Dac was able to.
• I don’t use Roon but I’m wondering whether I need to subscribe to it to alleviate some of the issues I have encountered? Any thoughts and opinions are welcomed!

I will play around with the settings to tame the brightness to the sound and it’s possible that the app crashes might be because I haven’t downloaded the latest iOS (although this hasn’t caused a problem with my dCS and WiiM apps) but my feelings re the ellipse are a little mixed right now.

I think that if these are the issues after a few days I would be seriously considering taking it back to the dealer and asking for my money back, it clearly is not suited to the way you want to use your music.

Rgds
Stuart

Roon would certainly help with file access, searching, making playlists and such from UPnP files. If you can supply a wired ethernet connection to the Ellipse, this will improve things a bit.

The brightness might just need a little burn-in, but distortion will never settle in. Is it possible you have a damaged unit (with the body panels not flush, etc.)? If it’s not been assembled correctly it might be rattling at high volumes which might sound like distortion…?

If your dealer is nearby, maybe it might be possible to compare it to another, or their demo model, to see if this is a general issue or confined to your unit. Honestly, I would want a replacement on build quality alone from what you’ve described.

The other app issues are a shame, but presumably fixable in software/firmware. Or, if you can get to the bottom of the brightness/distortion/build issues to the stage where you’re happy to keep the unit, Roon is really excellent, especially from a wired Ethernet connection.

I’d guess you’ve a faulty unit.

I have an F80 and have listened to the Eclipse at unsociable volumes and they can’t be compared.

What kind of music are you listening to?

Thanks for all your messages - really appreciated.
I have an update as follows -
1. The quality control issue re casework was also evident with my dealers demo unit so I guess it’s just an issue with the manufacturing process .
2. The inability to play MQA tracks from the USB stick or via upnp is a real disappointment- I wonder whether this will be corrected via firmware update ?
3. Control app volume lag and freezing is still a problem.
4. I am using mconnect for control and it’s miles better and more stable than the Meridian app.
5. Mconnect works well with my stored music via upnp and the sound quality is excellent.
6. With good quality music it sounds great .
7. I have tamed the brightness and the distortion by lowering the bass and space setting to medium or low and should concede the distortion previously was through Spotify which is obviously lower quality .
Overall , with good quality music it sounds great via a third party app.

Regarding the QC issue: you can witness that on the Meridian website :-(

Apols, I don't know how to use the width attribute with the [img] tag.

That’s a pretty poor fit, it looks like it’s not clipped together properly.

Alan Boothroyd the great Design Director must be turning in his grave.
How did this design issue pass QC?
Another nail in the c..... !

AB was a huge loss.

I actually think it’s quite a clever design as it’s near identical to the F80 shape and size wise…just pushed on it’s side.

In this way it’s demonstrating exactly what the DSP advances can do with the same volume.

Hey Nav

Roon says the Ellipse can decode and play MQA content, but I found you have to go back in and manually configure the Ellipse within Roon as an MQA decoder and renderer first.

WiFi issues were a known issue (I believe mostly around sound quality) with the Ellipse, but I assume that was fixed with the latest firmware update. Worth checking you've got the latest version installed...

Hope this helps,
Jeremy