Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems G98 vs. BDP-LX52

I am running a G98 into a G68J and recently purchased a HD621 and Pioneer BDP-LX52. It goes without saying that visually Blu-ray is a significant improvement on DVD. This is a difficult admission as I have so many DVDs and hardly any Blu-ray disks at the moment. However, there really is no disputing this - even my wife could tell the difference.

On the audio side though, things are not so clear cut. Whilst Stealth on Blu-ray comfortably out performed DVD (recorded in LPCM on Blu-ray and the DVD sound track could have been a lot better) the same cannot be said of The Matrix. In fact, the audio on the DVD seems slightly better than the Blu-ray when comparing the many action sequences. This is slightly disconcerting to say the least!

I am beginning to wonder if my system has been set up properly. The installer did make a complete mess of this and was unable to get any sound out of the Pioneer at all. He eventually gave up and said that he would come back another day. In the meantime, I found the setting he had missed and made the necessary changes. My old laptop does come in handy every so often. There a lots of other settings though and I don't know what they are all for. This means that the HD621 and / or G68J might not be set up properly. Either that or the G98 does a better job of compressed 5.1 audio compared to the Pioneer BDP-LX52 in HD audio as far as The Matrix is concerned. Before you ask, I have selected HD audio rather than the compressed option on the Blu-ray player and I have checked this by keeping an eye on the on-screen bit-counter available on the player.

Could it be that the Pioneer is just not as good as some of the other Blu-ray players out there? Beginning to think that I should have gone for the Oppo.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

David

Ha! Yes, you should have got an Oppo. No, honestly, they're really much of a muchness. If you need SACD, DVD-A, fast operation and multi-region, then the Oppo is your man. If that's less important that you don't need it. Same performance as your Pioneer I wouldn't doubt.

There's a good chance that the Bluray of matrix just doesn't have that great a High Def soundtrack transfer. If you're listening to the DVD through a very high end M system, then chances are it's already giving you an awesome presentation. Maybe the Bluray will give you 5% more resolution but in a film that noisy, it's probably harder to notice. Try some other material and report back. I found that with very good electronics, it's astonishing what they can extract from plain old Dolby Digital. Your choice of player shouldn't make too much difference at this level.

Rather than the Bluray having a substandard soundtrack, it seems (from reading the reviews) that the DVD has an above-average ("demonstration standard") one.

It does nevertheless seem rather surprising that PCM and HD621 should fail to be better. You don't say what the rest of your system is: perhaps it isn't high-enough level to make the differences obvious? (Clutching at straws here.)

N

Mrmarbach has a very good point, often not mentioned by the hi-fi press. You need a killer system for the extra fidelity of Hi-Def audio to really show it's hand. At the level of the �400 amps and �1200 speaker systems, you may as well stick with DD and DTS, straight off DVDs as you won't have the system to resolve the increased fidelity, even if you can decode it. That's my experience of Bluray audio. The visual difference is much more apparent, much more easily.

Many thanks for your replies. The rest of my system is DSP5000C for the centre and a pair of DSP5000s for the rears. The main speakers are Naim SBLs with a NA52 pre-amplifier and NAP300 power amp. The sub is a M&K MX-150.

The difference in sound between the DVD and Blu-ray of The Matrix is quite difficult to describe. Whilst the Blu-ray sound is definitely deeper and treble slightly brighter and more revealing, the sound from the DVD is more open with the Blu-ray sounding a little flatter (literally). When, for example, Neo dodges bullets as the whole sequence moves around the room, the DVD soundtrack is a lot more open and the steering far more accurate. However, when the sprinklers go off in an earlier scene, this sounds better on Blu-ray probably due to the more detailed treble.

Superior picture quality from one format and potentially better sound from another. I think that someone is trying to drive me a little crazy!

Hi David2350,

I'm considering adding a LX52 to my setup; so keep up the good work with the comparisons, and also how you find LX52 operationally ie speed of loading, ease of configuration etc.

Regards
Carl.

David2350, I don't know the Naim speakers, but your system is probably quite revealing. On the other hand, judging an inherently multi-channel source with speakers which come from such differing houses as Meridian and Naim is probably very difficult.

Will, and of course the same goes for Bluray. No point in having it if your screen is too small or you sit too far away from it. Another reason alot of the press is bs... (And why I am buying a big plasma.)

Nic

Hi Carl

I have completed my comparison and my short review will be ready in a day or so.

Regards

David

Thx.

I`ve now spent some time comparing the few films which I have on Blu-ray and DVD. These were Robocop, Blade Runner and Live and Let Die along with The Matrix and Stealth which I have already mentioned in an earlier post. If I had to choose five movies to base a comparison of the G98 and LX52 I doubt that it would be these but, in the event, the experience was interesting and quite an eye opener.

Before discussing the differences in sound quality, I should say that the remote for the LX52 is of the highest quality. The pause button is not at the most logical place and it took some time for me to get used to finding it in the dark. As you probably already know, with Blu-rays the menu is normally made available by pressing the ‘Popup Menu` button the remote. The menu then literally pops up from the bottom of the screen and you choose a scene or one of the special features whilst the film is still playing. Not all Blu-rays have this feature though.

I suppose that, in normal use, I would not be using the pause button so often. However, when synchronizing the two players, the pause button is really helpful. Thinking about it, the only time I normally use the pause button is when my wife bursts in half way during a film to tell me something really important which could not possibly wait until the end of the film. This normally has something to do with remembering to turn of the dishwasher when the film has finished.

It seems that Blu-ray players have become just as well known for their improved sound and picture quality as they have for how quickly, or slowly, they load the disks. The LX52 is terribly slow in this respect. It takes almost twenty seconds after turning on the player before it reacts to pressing the open button so that a disc can be inserted. The time from loading the disk to actually watching the film can be quite shocking given that we are all used to DVDs.

However, what no one in the hi-fi press seems to mention is that there is actually a waiting time when watching DVDs. There is the annoying opening logo sequence, copyright notice, useless animated menus and then we actually get to press enter so that the movie will play. With Blu-rays the load time is slow but then with most of the disks I have, the film normally just starts playing without all the preamble. This means that although it took a whole two minutes before Live and Let Die actually started (with one press of enter to get past the menu), the DVD still took 1 minute and 10 seconds. Other load times in Blu-ray were 50 seconds for Blade Runner and 57 seconds for Robocop. Normally, I put the disc in the player first and, by the time I have closed the curtains, turned on the television (65” JVC rear projection D-ILA which is totally awesome) and settled down, most of the start-up time has already passed.

Whilst it has evolved somewhat over the years, I think that is it important to appreciate that my system was originally based around a ‘traditional` hi-fi setup quite a few years before DVD had even been released. So CD was the primary high-quality source and old fashioned video was used for AV. The Naim kit handled hi-fi superbly and a Meridian 565 along with the DSP centre and rear speakers were added for AV duties. With their design philosophies so different, I was always surprised how well the Naim and Meridian kit sounded together and this is even more so today.

The reason for my preamble about my AV system is so that I can explain that, whist DVD can sound superb, in my humble opinion, there is always something missing when compared to a CD. This can be taken literally as there really is quite a lot missing with compressed audio. I always felt that, no matter how good the kit, when watching a film or TV, the sound coming from the Naim SBL speakers (which are very capable) was simply not in the same league as when playing a CD from the Naim CD player. This has nothing to do with Meridian vs. Naim as both manufacturers are at the top of their respective game. It has everything to do with the inherent limitations of compressed audio sounding 'musical' on my system.

So, first of all I played Robocop. Whilst the picture quality is better, it is not a significant jump and I would have thought those clever engineers could have improved the picture to a significantly greater extent. The sound, on the other hand, is an improvement. Assuming that you have seen the film lots of times, the meeting in the Board Room near the beginning of the film contains some clapping from some shoe licking executives. The clapping was definitely more detailed and ED209 sounded more menacing and lifelike with a deeper and slightly more controlled bass coming from the subwoofer. When the unfortunate executive was shot by ED209 it was possible to hear the women crying in the background slightly more clearly than on DVD. Charming.

More generally, the soundstage seemed wider and the SBL main speakers were certainly more musical in the way they presented the music. This is what these speakers were designed to do and I was surprised how they achieved this from a non-CD source. The sound was more detailed and more transparent, meaning that the speakers did a much better job of seeming to disappear and just fill the soundstage with music.

More than anything else, this came down to two factors, the first was that the bit rate was much higher and the second was due to Meridian`s brilliant engineering. The digital to analogue decoders on the G68J are truly excellent as they are able to retain all the detail and emotion of the sound. It seems to me that they were designed (quite a few years ago) to provide a quality of sound which exceeded the AV sources available at the time. It just goes to show how good Meridian's products are.

Next was Blade Runner. Whilst I`m mainly writing about differences in sound quality, I have the say that visually the difference was quite considerable. Unlike with the Matrix where there was a difference but was nothing much to get all that excited about, Blade Runner was a different story. Even with the all new version of the DVD, visually, the Blu-ray just blew it away. The improvement in clarity was amazing.

Anyway, on to the sound. As with Robocop, the sound was more musical. Not a whole new experience but certainly more musical. I have to wonder though how many systems will really benefit from the improvement in sound quality and, possibly more importantly in a world full of MP3 players, how many people really care about this type of improvement.

If they had never invented Blu-ray, I really would not have minded as DVD can sound so good. However, the emotion of the music really came through when the Replicant was shot whilst smashing her way though all that glass. Rather than just being another piece of background music, it was possible to appreciate the creative effort which had gone into playing the music by the musicians. Also, the sound of the glass smashing was a lot more detailed. There were times where the rear speakers seemed as though they were further away which was probably to do with the wider stereo field being generated from the rear speakers. From a sound perspective, I don`t want to get carried away with all this though, it really isn`t a whole new experience. It is just, in most cases, better then before.

It`s not a fair comparison to compare the sound track of Live and Let Die, which is my only Bond film on Blu-ray, with the DVD. Whilst the DVD was the all singing and all dancing special edition, the Dolby Digital track was actually used to encode a mono soundtrack. One the other hand, the Blu-ray has a True DTS-HD Master Audio track. So, in this case the considerable improvement from Blu-ray was because the DVD soundtrack was so poor. In any event, the Blu-ray sounded superb and was, I am sure, in a completely different league to when the film was shown in the cinema.

Stealth was far better on Blu-ray in every respect. The sub, for example, really had an opportunity to shine with a deeper and more controlled bass. However, this was partly because the DVD could have been so much better and partly because the Blu-ray was probably the best I have yet to hear. It really was that good.

Whilst the film itself is no classic, it is one you should have in your collection if only to blow your friends away when they scoff at Blu-ray and start telling you that download speeds are increasing all the time.

So, going back to The Matrix. Once again, the music is more `musical` and the front soundstage more transparent. When the sprinklers went off, it felt as is each and every drop of water could be heared. The bass was certainly deeper and slightly more controlled (not that it was anything less than exceptionally well controlled by the G98). However, the G98 showed the LX52 a thing or two with the sequence where Neo dodges bullets from one of the Agents as the whole set rotated. The steering from the DVD was perfect but the Blu-ray sounded a bit muddled. Equally, the G98 sounded much more realistic and controlled when listening as the blades of the helicopter passed overhead.

So all in all, despite The Matrix, the combination of the LX52 and HD621 did manage to edge past the G98. Visually, there really is no substitute for 1080p no matter what you might read about upsampling. I would have thought that virtually all HD televisions over 32” will yield an improvement in picture quality that anyone would appreciate. Even my wife noticed the difference.

Improvements in sound however are not so obvious and require quite a high end system to hear the difference. On the whole, these improvements are more subtle (unless the DVD soundtrack was actually mono) but they are there and, given that this is a Meridian chat site, you will probably notice the difference.

Excellent information, thanks. I agree about the huge improvement in Bladerunner from DVD to BD.

I find DVDs upscaled vary quite a lot in the video quality and there is far more variation between discs than from player to player.

The business about the pop-up menus and pausing BDs is a big gripe of mine. Why didn't they just sort it so that you press pause like everyone expects?

Hi David,

Thanks for the review!

I'm also considering buying the LX52/ HD621 combo (paired with 568.2MM & 558).
I've read elsewhere that CD performance of a good midprice blu-ray player (like Oppo 83, Pioneer LX52 or Sony 760) via HD621 could be as good or even better than highend CD/ DVD players like your G98 (or even 800/ 808). If this is the case I'll sell my 507 and play CD/ DVD/ blu-ray with the LX52.

Would be great if you could play some CD's to find out!

Cheers,
Bob