Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Official CES 2010 Announcements (no speculation please)

Notice the G68 only had speakerlink outputs so I guess the AC11 is now mandatory for all mixed vintage DSP systems. Do I understand that correctly ?

Nick, one would need an AC12 which is an anti-AC11 designed to allow speakerlink-equiped processors to speak to legacy (i.e. SPDIF) speakers. This has been mentioned in one of the many threads and in the Meridian marketing material.

How much is the AC-12??
As someone with non-speakerlink DSPs all round it would be a must, but is it a �50 box, a �300 box or even worse??

I don't need the video switching of a the G68, FM is dead in 18 months round here so the tuner is a waste of time as far as I am concerned (why stick with FM and not add DAB in the upgraded unit?!) and the G61R to me has a nicer form factor and has room correction, which was the only reason to go with a G68 over the G61 originally.

But, do I grab a discounted G61r and not have to worry about speaker connections and hope there is a apodising added, or do I get the new G61r V2 and an AC-12??

AC11 is 500UKP in the July 2009 pricelist. I would guess AC12 would be more than that, especially if they (sensibly) make it a Comms patchbay as well.

An AC11 lists at �500 so would expect the same kind of level.

FM dead in Norfolk by mid-2012! I though we were looking at 2015 earliest for BBC and later for commercial stations?

But you are right. I struggle to justify a G68 over a G61R for the UK (low balanced take-up, low component take-up) market. Would expect a future DAB module for it though.

The AC12 could be an RJ45 to SPDIF converter which is used close to each speaker pair or it could be a box similar in form to the AC11.

I was told there is a technical issue which prevents a DAB module being added to the G68, but perhaps it is a solvable one.

OK, so that puts a new G61r at �4k.

Just spoke to my dealer and agreed that if I bought the outgoing model G61r and an HD621 it would work out cheaper than buying the speakerlink G61r on its own, and that is before even considering the AC-12 box.

So a no brainer really, gone with that.

That was just Jeremy Vine's show giving the info when they were talking about it, could be completely wrong.

Vk,you are correct,this make sense to have a small box by each speakers.
So you can get the advantages of the new speakerlink(higher voltage and sym-means "better" signal).
Just to have one box by the processor have no advantage to the standard solution today-except you can use the (standard)speakers with new processors.

I have no evidence to suggest whether the AC12 is an AC11 in reverse or a small device to colocate with each speaker. We are verging on speculation here

Looking at the photos or the processor rears, the AC11 and speaker-link equipped speakers and I am struggling to deduce how this will all wire up.

I think speakerlink is a balanced stereo SPDIF implementation on RJ45, presumably with MHR encryption. And I think it works as both a mono or stereo feed to any DSP speaker (or as a stereo feed between devices) so they can be fed either as a star network or daisy-chained. The speaker will need to be configured to tell it which channel to pluck out as now over conventional SPDIF.

Would some-one with speakerlink installation experience please enlighten me?

This will matter for those installing cabling now.

With regard to the SpeakerLink RJ45 inputs, this is what the press release had to say:



I hope to be able to provide more detailed information, particularly about upgrades, later today after my meeting with Ken Forsythe.