Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Who Really Won the Music Format War?

It was restated by John Bamford when we all visited Meridian - if asked to state whether SACD or DVD-A won the CD format war, in reality it was the iPod.

Bob Stuart also indicated his dispair on the iPod predominance over CD in music reproduction. Matters aren't helped by the recent interview given by AVI's Ashley James, who maintains that Mac's and the iPod deliver better sound than some highly rated CD players -

http://www.tech.co.uk/gadgets/porta...than-hi-fi-cd-players?articleid=83644576

Hi, Call me old-fashioned, but do we really need an article written in that style. I cannot take it seriously.

Regards

I agree. This James Rivington seems to have many linked articles derived from his interview with AVI's Ashley James.

The reported diatribe strikes me as an aggressive hard-sell. Just as when people start addressing you by "Listen, mate" and you infer from that they probably don't have a particularly friendly disposition towards you, phrases that start with "Let's have the facts", followed by spurious self-selected ones, usually invite feelings of guarded skepticism. I don't think he advanced his case either by insulting those he disagreed with.

AVI's own website offers a more reasoned justification for the design philosophy behind the products they are pushing. There is also a sidebar inviting you to make the comparisson with the adoption of a superior technology in the early 1900s that was initially resisted by reactionary luddite audiophiles to that with regards to MP3's adoption today. Make of it what you will.

As a laptop repair technician, I find his comments regarding CD drive reliability laughable, I regularly replace HDDs on a daily basis, and I find that as a ratio I replace hdds 4-1 CD/DVD.
And MOST dead CD/DVD drives are usually damaged by the customer, Ipods being hdd based are, by nature fragile things and not strictly portable, unlike flash memory MP3 players, the iPod, IMHO, is a triumph of style over substance, or marketing over reliability....

I had a pair of Meridian D600`s which has analogue and digital inputs.

I fed the ‘iPod` directly into the analogue input and I fed a Meridian 206 CD player into the digital input.

No comparison the 206 won, so I tried a ‘Lite-ON` DVD player, this was also much better than the ‘iPod`.

I think probably the ‘Sony Discman` will easily beat the ‘iPod` for sound quality but not so convenient.

The ‘iPod` is a great piece of kit; it`s convenient and sounds fine through headphones.

The i pod is a big disappointment when it comes to sound quality.It has an ineffectual output chip which is incapable of driving the Shure earbuds(which cost as much) I bought along with it.Listen to the same piece played on an average CDP through the Shures and you realise that the i pod could give Shure a bad name! Connected to a hifi the i pod produces a caricature of music. Truely a grim experience.
As for Mr James of AVI, why he is just doing his job as a marketeer for his rather good stuff- he's merely seen the way the consumer wind has been blowing for a very long time now.Mr i pod buys an AVI integrated and speakers, later he hears an AVI CDP through same. The whole system is in the bag for Ashley...
As for music formats, I belatedly just got into SACD and it has made me sit up and really pay attention. Whether with 40 yr old transfers or contemporary pure dsd recordings.Now if someone marketed a high rez "i pod" that would be something....

I agree with those above regarding the article style - a turn-off to me; On the subject he discusses, I think the iPod does a great job at what it does - reasonable quality at very convienent style and form and use. iTunes using Apple lossless serves up as well as many DVD players per other thread discussions.

All in all though, I wonder if the the dominance of CD and now iPod forms is part of the resurgence we see in Vinyl. Have you guys noticed the impressive growth in those releases - many times that of SACD & DVD-A combined?

I wonder if DVD-A would have made it if integrated with iTunes/iPod as 'the premium version' of downloads - instead of targeting a disk based format - similar to the license deal cut with Dolby. I find myself paying premium dollars these days to Linn Records for 24/48+ Master downloads....

ken

Interesting points guys. I am in agreement. My iPod is great for the gym or the car (integration not headphones!!!) etc but for music "purity" it ain't "all that".

best regards,
Jerry

With care the iPod is a great device - lossless, or 320cbr MP3, tracks and great earphones (I use Shure E5C) delivers some excellent results. I don't ever imagine using the iPod as the main source in my hi-fi though. For that lossless ripped CDs are king.

As for vinyl - I had a major resurgence with it in the '90s and set up a decent rig and bought hundreds of albums over the space of a few years but once I got into digital room-correction and FLAC serving of ripped CDs there was nowhere left for me to go with vinyl and it's "sound" is no longer something that I enjoy. I only listen to vinyl now if a recording is unavailable elsewhere.

Mark

Didn't Dave Wilson of Wilson Audio embarrass some companies at CES a few years ago by pretending that his speakers were being driven by some super front end transport/preamp, only to reveal that he was playing WAVs through an iPod and a low priced integrated amp?

If there is anything that Sonos, Slimdevices and Apple have done, it is show that a great deal of hi-fi is ridiculously overpriced. These devices have gained much traction because the vast majority of people put music library and access first, great sound second and perfectionist sound costing a fortune at tenth place or beyond.

Let's be honest, even on the very best systems, SACD and DVDA are not the fidelity jump that one would expect - at least to the ears of most humans who just want to enjoy the music. Listen to HD-DVD, I'm quite content to listen to the "lo-fi" track via coax to my processor. DD+ and the other full bit options simply aren't that much better than what we already have. Same thing goes for picture quality, unless you are projecting onto a 70"+ screen. Regular DVD done right looks superb for most of the population.

KIS, Just for the record, I just wanted to say that I couldn`t agree with you less. On ALL fronts.

• DVD-V 96/24 and DVD-A is a huge Leap over CD in terms of Resolution, Musicality and sheer Enjoyment. I, for one, can easily appreciate the difference even on modest systems and will lament their passing

• The Uncompressed Soundtracks on some of the newer HD and BD discs are significantly better than their compressed DD and DTS equivalents on DVD-V. This difference will become even more pronounced as engineers figure out how best to exploit the extra bandwidth

• The extra Resolution, Colour Depth and “3D” nature of 1080p discs is IMHO a huge leap over DVD-V, even on a 32” LCD. It`s even more pronounced on 50” Plasmas, particularly 1080p res screens.


It`s a shame that you cannot hear or see the above differences, but please do not superimpose your opinions on other, as being the “honest facts”. While each of us have our own opinions, that does not make them facts

Can I strongly suggest that you listen and watch again??

It's all very simple: Anything digital (ie with no analogue outputs/inputs involved) will sound vastly better than analogue equipment, regardless of price. In other words, a $5000 CD player will fall short in comparison with a $50 DVD-player from WalMart, if the cheapo players is run from SPDIF output (TosLink or coax - makes absolutely no difference) into M DSPs.

The signal from the TosLink output of a new Mac mini is also vastly better than the tiny, cheapo OP-amp in an iPod. Use iTunes (with Lossless, of course) , but not iPod at home!

That's my personal experence. But then again, my ears are 50 years old... (: