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

Ronnie, I could NOT agree more and, to this end, fear that my days as a Meridian owner are at an end should the cost of upgrading my 861v4 to a 861v6 be $20,000 as there is no way that I can see the cost/benefit of this...the other point that I would add would be that it now appears official that the 800 architecture is dead meaning that there will be no upgrades at all to the end...so putting all this together what I now have is:

1. $25,000 invested in an M800 that because of i) my Oppo BD-83 ii) my SONOS into my Radiance for apodizing and iii) no further upgrades is a door stop.

2. $25,000 invested in an M861 that is now too a door stop or now a $45,000 investment.

So, to make a long story short, I will either have $50,000 invested in upgradeable kit that is either not upgradeable or cost prohibitive to do so or $70,000 invested with nothing other than a 861V6 to show for it....what is M thinking!!!

OK Chris,

Where is the apodising upgrade for the G98 then?

It's in the speakers.

I think Chris has actually covered all points which may not cover apodising everywhere if you have legacy kit but does if you have recent speakers.

Chris, this has been covered many times. There are several logical issues with apodizing being not in the processor.

e.g. to use apodizing in the 2 DSP's that have it means you set the processor to not upsample. By doing so it means all hi-res material gets downsampled....a waste !!

As Malcolm states...what about the G98, 598, 596, 588, etc etc etc..in fact any digital source you might want to treat consistently

The only way out is that M would make an SPDIF-HDMI gadget. I may be dreaming but I swear I heard a rumour that they did have one on the bench.

The C-series is discontinued.

Ronnie:

1. Coax from Control:10

2. HDMI needs a video source, so the simplest video signal I could find is a white video noise at 525i coming from one of the Crystalio's outputs.

What I am saying is, Meridian want people to pay for Apodising as a return on their investment, with this thought, Apodising brings added value to a New Meridian Spinner and Stops people getting the Very best sound from a Cheaper source.
In Business, A Point of differance hard earned has to be exploited to the full.

For myself, I dont expect to be kept up to date with my personal system, old as it is.
I clearly see how those with heavy Recent investment look to being supported and somwhat future proofed. Time will tell but I dearly hope they are.

Cheers, Chris

The G98 will output 2 channel on HDMI and so it can feed an HD621 and so as a CD player we have apodising.

It can't output multi-channel PCM on the HDMI output so perhaps that is the apodising upgrade required.

The G98 doesn't upsample.

David
My apologies if what I wrote above was unclear, as I suppose I had in the back of my mind that I had made Two other postings here recently about the same thing and therefore was taking too much of a short cut in my post above

SUMMARY: I preferred what I heard when Playing the Media Player thru the 808.2i rather than thru HD621 (which in turn was better than direct into a SPDIF input on my 861)

If we allocate ALL the differences I heard to Apodizing, which could well be too many assumptions, then I would say that the results of Apodizing in the 808.2i outweigh the result of Apodizing thru the HD621 (Other contributing factors could easily be HDMI Audio needing to be carried in a Video Stream and this could also lead to compromises)

This echos what Meridian have been saying for over a year; att the HH2 day and just yesterday to Frank at CES, e. that Apodizing in the 808.2i is Meridian's "best" implementation (or most fine-tuned version) of Apodizing. This could be down to Product Architecture; available MIPS and how much time was spent fine-tuning Apodizing in that product (obviously a lot of time spent on their Flagship $20k 808.2i and less time spent fine-tuning the $3k HD621)

So

** Apodizing to 24/88 in the HD621 is better than Upsampling in the 861 (Meridian "HS=On" option) to 24/88

But

** Apodizing to 24/88 in the 808.2i results in better music replay compared to the same source via HDMI into the HD621

Hope that clarifies

You don't apodize analogue sources, you just use 24/96 ADC.

Regards,
Carl

I meant apodizing applied to the D2A of an A2Ded analogue source IYSWIM

Thanks Mirek
We are essentially doing the same thing then, except I am "marrying" a Blank Video carrier to the Digital Audio within the Video Processor and then outputting that over HDMI into the HD621, i.e. no need for an external SPDIF to HDMI adapter.

Same net results though