Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems What made you choose Meridian in the first place ?

Wow- what a great thread. I'm really enjoying reading this (actually I read most of it over the past several days).

In my case, like just about everyone I started out as a youngster being interested in anything electronic and thus, anything that reproduced audio or video. And a big influence was, of course, Star Wars. I remember trying to do a kind of "poor-man's" surround sound by simply running a second set of speakers off the stereo I got when I was 13. I tried putting the speakers in the four corners of my room- you can imagine the result- it wasn't as good as when the speakers were just two in their traditional positions. But those are the follies- and fun- of being 13- and there are others which we will not get into here .

The next big change for me was when I was out of college and I had saved enough to buy a Yamaha DPL receiver and some Infinity Kappa speakers. The source was DPL VHS. Star Wars never looked or sounded better. This was back in 94.

Then I discovered LD. Right around this time DD was coming to the home and I picked up some B&K separates. I got a used pioneer LD player and I forget whose demod- I actually think it was a Lexicon- did they make demods?- It worked well enough. The B&K did not have DTS nor THX re-eq. As I discovered more I discovered that my infinity kappas were ok speakers, but not terrific and I discovered that the movie soundtracks were too bright with out the THX re-eq. I also wanted to check out DTS. I forget who made it, but there was a company who made a DTS decoder that could be inserted into the chain if you had separates. This all worked fine but I was annoyed that I could not time align the DTS and the whole affair was too cobbled together for my tastes. I had also been reading up on some audio processors winning a lot of praise- in particular the Lexicon (DC-1) and the Meridian (I think then it was the 565). In the end I was able to get a great deal on the DC-1 and the Meridian dealer was unable to get me any kind of pricing improvement. I kept my B&K amp. The DC-1 was fine but it really lacked any musicality. In an attempt to improve its musicality I replaced the kappa speakers with Aerial 10Ts- great speakers btw. And then I swapped out the amp for a proceed high power amp- those 10Ts need A LOT of power. It still wasn't musical enough for me and by this time the MC-1 was coming out and Lexicon had a fantastic trade in program which I made use of. The MC-1 was more musical, but yet again, I felt it just didn't have enough ability with music.

So I traded it for an 861 v2- this was 1999. I was fortunate and I my wife and I were discussing building a home theater with living quarters, otherwise known by non- HT people as "a house" I wanted a home theater and we did the planning for it and my initial plan was to use the Aerial speakers with custom amps fed by balanced cables from the 861 in the control room which is about 30' (linear) away- so that would be more than 30' of cable, maybe 45' or so to be safe. My wife and I were at CES in 2001 and we heard the 8000s and we were literally blown away. These speakers had everything I prize, clarity, imaging, and most of all dynamics. Also in the 18 months or so since I purchased my 861, a strange thing happened to my "serial upgrade-itis": it abated- at least when it came to the processor. I felt the 861 was the pinnacle for someone who wants to do it all in one box. What hooked me - and still does- is the performance. But when I also considered the ease of having the full on digital theater I went for it and in so far as the audio side is concerned we have had the DSP speakers and 800 since 2003 and have never felt the need to upgrade or change them. The 861 since 1999 and that has just been upgraded to the latest version, and I will continue to do so.

My opinion, and this could be applied to anything- any product at least- is there are many people who could lay out the current state of the art specs and build you something that would be state of the art today. But, there are very few who understand the art of balancing the trade offs of all these items in a way that makes a product produce a result that is pleasing today and well into the future. They understand the technology so well that they know where to push and where to hold back.

IMHO, Meridian is that rare artist that can make this balance and do it with exquisite precision. I am a very happy customer and beyond that I highly respect them.

best regards,
Jerry

JerryL:

Agree with eevrything in your post -- now,let's just sit back and see what M does with our beloved 800s; specifically, will they continue on into the future as HD-DVD, Blu-Ray, Music Server, etc....time will tell...

I had always wanted to go the Meridian route from the very beginning when I started looking seriously into home cinema and high end H-Fi in 1998. Having researched Meridian`s history a great deal I had become fond of the practices and beliefs that seemed to drive the company before I`d really heard any of their equipment, so finally getting demonstrations of the 500 series, the 861 and the DSPs some eight years ago sealed my passion for their products thanks to things like Trifield, and the beautiful ability to meet, nay surpass, my expectations on both films and music.

It was a slow journey for me to come to let any M gear into my life however, due to limited funds and practicality. I`d enjoyed Tag Mclaren`s AV32R for some time, but as their company dissolved I took the initiative to finally follow my heart and buy some Meridian components, which began last September with the purchase of a 568.2, and earlier this year with a 500mk3 transport. This is proving to be a perfect combination for me at this time where we`re in somewhat of a transition period with home cinema what with HDMI and the new audio codecs…etc. My next priority is to actually settle on a new display device before I look to considering some DSPs, after which I will probably then finally make the move to get an 861 or whatever it`s HDMI/next gen audio equivalent might be. The fact I am taken aback hearing my system even as it is now leaves me excited knowing that for me, in future when I can improve the speakers and amplification, the best is still to come.

My road to M-land went through a long and tortuous path.
Being the son of Julliard Grad Concert Pianist, and audiophile, I grew up with both excellent reference gear (a Steinway concert grand in the living room) and many iterations of hi-fi from the 60`s and 70`s.
Dad had a love affair with ‘surround` since the early days of CCD time-delay systems and thoroughly adopted Quad went it came.

When I went my own way as a young adult, I was always intrigued by surround, and while I knew discreet was good (4-track reel to reel anyone?), the majority of content was on 2-ch sources (LP and CD).

So in the early 80`s I adopted a Carver C-4000 pre-amp with sonic holography and thought it was too cool. Then the first digital pre-amps came about, and since I could not afford Lexicon or Meridian at the time, I went with Sony TAE-1000ES digital, then the TAE-2000ES. The concept of DSP doing the processing and EQ was a great concept, and in those affordable units, reasonably implemented for the day (and for mass-produced units).

However, neither of those did a decent job on 2-ch to multichannel improvements.
While auditioning some Martin Logans (the one and only speaker system for me) at a dealer who also represented Meridian, I got to hear a 565 and a full digital theater speaker system (DSP5K`s if I recall). I was blown away. Not just by the great sound that kit generated as a cohesive whole, but mostly by what Trifield could do for 2-Ch audio.
If there is one thing that got me to go Meridian, it has to be Trifield processing. Yes, Dolby and DTS modes are incredible, as are some of the other modes, but nothing stands up to Trifield when fed good quality CD`s.

I first got a 565, then upgraded to my current 568. I`d keep going to a G68, except that M does too good a job, I can`t find a reason to go to a G68. I don`t need MRC, as I already ‘roll my own` DSP speakers using DBX DriveRack 260 speaker processors and fully bi-amping my Martin-Logans ( I bypass the factory passives and hand-tune my own settings). The DriveRacks let me do my own room correction in both time-alignment and in frequency EQ. So while I subscribe to the concept of DSP speakers, I happen to have a penchant for ESL that outweighs using M-DSP solutions.
Although, since Martin Logan failed to build a sufficiently powerful center, I designed and built my own. See my thread about that here ).

This final iteration of my DSP based Martin Logans (Monolith III`s and my own SL3 based Center) are my homage to Trifield. It now is truly the best sounding environment for redbook audio and for SACD/DVD-Audio.

Looking forward, I know I will always have a Meridian processor somewhere in my system .

What made my interested in M gear was the digital out. I have no use of MRC since I'm using an active system with BSS filters. I'm waiting for a processor that can handle iPods and DTS and Dolby's HD formats. I will certainly not buy a M processor that hasn't analogue 7.1 input(s). Trifield for me is not important since I'm not convinced of the need for it. If Trifield is so good for music listening why is M not using a trichannel setup for their stereo equipment?

Other than that though Harryup you're probably quite happy , eh ? Being Christmas and all....

I'm sure you could connect your iPod with the right cable. I have an 40gb iRiver connected to my 561/861 any time I like. Dts and Dolby's formats are attainable with an IA40/45 card. Is there a 7.1 format available that I haven't heard of ?? If Trifield doesn't rock your boat there are plenty of other presets to choose from.

Merry Christmas !!!!!!!!

~M~

I'm curious why you would join a forum dedicated to a brand you don't appear to like ??

Meridialien:
I certainly like the sound quality of the Meridian processors, but time is traveling fast now. The G series are not entirely modern when it comes to HD ready. A iPod is easy to connect but I would like the option to being able to navigate it too. 7.1 will be a standard input for HD in the future if you are not using HDMI 1.3. Slightly allergic to all the standard presets. I would like to preserve the recording acoustics.

Merry Christmas to you too
Harry

Ps. take a look at a standard Denon, Pioneer or almost any other receiver and you will see it all from a price in Sweden equal to 500�. Although not equal the sound quality of course. But still they are rather bug free when launched and the last for only a year in production. Ds

Oh, besides Trifield, there is Ambisonics. M is the only major vendor I'm aware of still producing Ambisonic decoders. If you have a substantial collection of discs from Nimbus records (and I do) Ambisonic surround is amazing on a good setup.
I even fooled some folks during a demo of SACD and DVD-A that a Nimbus recording (ripped and upsampled to 16/88.2)decoded with the M-Ambisonics was a DVD-A ;-)
Thy could not beleive that was a redbook disc when I told them of the switcheroo.

Short answer: the drawer mechanism on the 506!