Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Complete Newbie Considering 808 or 808i

OKay, will see if I can locate a 808i but somehoe I doubt it. I am in Hong Kong btw!

I think the sonos or even a hard drive with a digital output card fed through a quality DAC would probably sound similar to a top flight CDP. I believe that CDP's sonic signature are 95% residing in the DAC anyway and I doubt the 808 is any different.

However there is a slight difference between burning hundreds of CDs to my hard disk sending it wirelessly to a DAC compared withe "pride of ownership" of a Meridian CDP. A high price to pay I might add! In addition I think to get the same sound quality you still need a reference DAC, which will not be cheap either. This is also another of my current options, get a good DAC like a Mcintosh MDA1000 or MBL 1611 and use my computer and / or my Denon DVD as a transport. I guess I still lean towards enjoying putting CDs on to listen although digital inputs would be great for parties when you can just let your hard disk run at random (or Sonos / Squeezbox). I was hoping to run both a good CDP and a computer wireless system

Cheers

Howiebrou

No reason you can't do both (808 and SB3)!

Just think of all the extra CDs you could buy with that cash

Honestly, do yourself a favor and compare the two using an excellent DAC before spending that kind of money

You could probably buy a 598 and the entire DVD-A catalog!

I forgot to mention. The 808i is probably a Digital Preamp. So if the sources you are considering are analog it will convert those to digital internally then back to analog (with no advantage of MRC, bass management, timing etc. that I know of). So if your running analog outputs it probably won't match a high end analog preamp.

Ah ha. This is the sort of info I was looking for. A digital pre-amp changing analogue to digital and then back to analogue. Sounds like a bad way to go.....

That means the i moniker will solely be for using the 808 as an external DAC for another digital source. The cost is going up!

howiebrou

Howie

Excel (the HK dealer/distributor/monopoly) used to have an 800 available in the HK showroom; it might now be an 808.

Regards

Mark

It should act as a good preamp for digital sources as well. You might want to check with Meridian that they didn't put analog bypass in it, it would be a first but at that price who knows.

It has an analog preamp in it. It's just that it likely has a digital source switcher like all Meridian digital processors. So it converts all inputs to digital first.

Meridian might argue that it is the only way to go... From a neutral perspective I guess you're comparing degradation of the original analogue source by an 96/24 ADC and 24-bit DAC vs. the degradation in traditional analogue components. I'm reasonably sure that a top notch analogue pre-amp would win in an all-analogue system, but it would be an interesting blind test.

Thanks Mark, it is a 808 and I demoed it. Very very nice but I don't think they have a 808i (they said most people buy the 808 cos they will already have a high-end pre-amp in the system)

howie

It should act as a good preamp for digital sources as well. You might want to check with Meridian that they didn't put analog bypass in it, it would be a first but at that price who knows.

It has an analog preamp in it. It's just that it likely has a digital source switcher like all Meridian digital processors. So it converts all inputs to digital first. [/QB][/QUOTE]

Not quite sure what you mean by analogue bypass. Am guessing you mean it bypasses the digital circuit straight to the analogue output? I also found out that the preamp doesn't have a bypass feature for home theatre i.e. if I connect my A/V amp output to it to drive the front speakers, you have to control the volume using the AV amp volume AND the Meridian volume which is a pain. My Mcintosh C2200 allows a passthru mode (as do many fully fledged preamps) so that the AV amp controls all volumes.