Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Worthwhile trading-in 808.2 for 808.3?

Locus do you mean a wireless Control:10 because audio is no longer streamed out of it, (so less bandwidth is needed)?
Yes this may well work, but my advice is wire it if at all possible. You'd be suprised how much data is needed to populate all the cover art files instantly onto the Control:10, and I do mean instantly, you can belt through your album collection and the Control:10 can keep up.
If you really can't pull a cable between the Control:10 and TwinStore then I bet you could use a Wireless Access Point as a bridge back, not that I've tried it, but it would start to slow it down and that would be a real shame.

The Control:10 is quite bulky, and has an external Power supply, you're not really going to carry it about with you anyway!

Rick

Now where's that beer.

Bill,

No I don't think the ID40 would be doing anything if the Control:10 is connected dirctly to 861 / 808.3.
The ID40 only gets files from the Sooloos storage and turns them into a PCM digital stream. Think of it as a souce one with its digital output straight into the guts of the 861/808.3. It's not an additional processor card, rather a streaming input card. Network in - digital backplane of 808.3 out.
The Control:10 is only used to tell the ID40 what to stream from the TwinStore.

This was always the Sooloos design spec, the Control 1, the Sooloos predecessor to the Control:10 before Meridian got their hands on it, I don't think even had a digital output on it.

The system at conception was Control:10, TwinStore, Source One.

All that has happened now is the Source One has been supeceded with the ID40 for the very best performance in conhjunction with an 808 or 861.

Hope this makes sense?

Rick

Hi again Rick,

It's a good question but not the one I asked (or a least meant to ask) which was:

Does an 861v6&ID40 + Sooloos sound as good as an 808.3 [playing from it's internal drive] when feeding a pair of 8000.2 DSPs?

On the portable touch screen front; it was Apple's new iPad (A4 size, circa 14 inches diagonal) not the iTouch I was thinking off. I agree an iTouch is just too small.

Enjoy the beer; I hope it`s real ale

Regards,
Carl.

The original Sooloos concept was correct, I was not happy that M put audio outputs on the Control:10, I see this as a stop gap.

In my opinion the Control:10 in this respect muddies the waters here; M should have put SpeakerLink (and an SPDIF+Comms variant) on a source unit not on a control unit.

Music streaming is and should remain a 3 tier architecture:

Control: Static hardwired touch Screen and / or Large (A4) WiFi touch Screen
Storage: Should be NAS not propriety; Sooloos prices for storage enclosures are ridiculously expensive
Source: Card Based (ID40), external SpeakerLink, external SPDIF+comms, external anlogue variants


Regards,
Carl

Interesting info about the Control Bridge. I'll just state for the record that the iPad (obviously) has a lot more screen real estate than the iPhone/Touch and that the iPeng app caches database info including album art. I'm not saying this to dis Sooloos, but just to bring a little focus as to what is already out there.

OT but as we have been discussing Wi-Fi devices; at home I have a Linksys (Cisco) Dual N band Wi-Fi router and my Dell laptop in which I swapped out the band G chip for a band N one, never goes below 130 M/s anyway in the house and if I`m in the same room as the router hits 280 M/s.

It is extremely impressive technology and “cheap as chips”.

Regards,
Carl

I wonder why people are surprised that software exists that can handle thousands of records fast ... personally I am more surprised that most software can not even handle a few hundred records with decent speed ... maybe I should not be surprised considering the size of most modern software and the fact that it is built on loads of 3rd party stuff.

Unless you have actually used a Sooloos, it is almost impossible to imagine how fast the Sooloos user interface actually is. It seems to respond faster than your brain recognising that your fingers have actually pressed the screen - almost to the point of it being telepathic and presenting the answer to your next request! As Linford Christie once said, he goes on the B of the 'Bang', whilst the iApp probably would wait until the 'g' and that would be on a good day. Unless Apple start to do something seriously different with the memory management in the iPhone OS, an iDevice is not going to get in the ball park speed of the Sooloos, let alone levelling the playing field. Just a shame Sooloos doesn't have multi touch although I wouldn't be surprised if this would actually slow the UI down.

It may fast interface, but what its latency?

One more quick thought.........

Given Meridian's oft stated reservations about taking high frequency video data streams into the 861 over HDMI, I wonder why they feel do differently about Network Data Streams, which will also be high enough frequency

Other than that, replacing a �3,500 Source One with a �1,000 ID40 Card is not a bad idea

However, the Cost plus the Inconvenient Architecture of the Sooloos makes it a very tough sell to those of us with well developed Music Server solutions

That last 2% (maybe???) of Audio Performance carried a Large Cost Premium and more importantly, a large Inconvenience Premium. All IMHO of course

Hi Carl,

Ok sorry I misunderstood the question, what would be intersting to know is what gives THE best sound you can get; a stored stream (808.3 ID40) or CD playback direct (808.3 CD), and also is 861 ID40 as good as 808.3 ID40. A combination of which would answer both our questions. Particularly interesting when Linn are now stating that streaming is better than playing a CD direct. I'll do some more digging and come back to you with an answer hopefully, although it will be some time before I am able to answer this from my own listening experience.

Viruskiller,
The way the Sooloos interfaces into a third party device is that you don't just pull all the metadata into the third party device cache on first connection, and then make any searches within this cache, you send specific search requests to the Sooloos which it undertakes and returns the relevant results. This minimises the bandwidth required between Sooloos and touchpanel and keeps the results consistent and up to date. I suppose you could cache everything but then all the cool searches would have to be instigated within the third party device, so a Sooloos update would require a third party device update to stay consistent.
What we have at present with the AMX module allows the explore function to be run by the Sooloos itself. For example when rhaposdy becomes available on Sooloos this feature will automatically be available on the AMX module, with no additional coding to the AMX being neccesary. The Sooloos tells the AMX what searches are available, that rhapsody is now an option and what serches are available within rhapsody, undertakes the searches requested and sends the answers to the AMX module.
Hope this makes sense!

Evdberg,
We certainly agree on this!
I mearly have observed the same as you, that 'most software can not even handle a few hundred records with decent speed'! I am not suprised that the Sooloos is fast, but its access speed does appear to stand out from the crowd. I think a lot of this is due to the fact that Sooloos aren't using these 3rd party, off the shelf, cobbled together solutions, but a proper solution built from the ground up.

Ian,

Yes I agree, you have to experience the Sooloos against other solutions to appreciate just how responsive the Sooloos is.
I believe that Sooloos has intentionally limited some of its connectivity possabilities so it doesn't compromise this inherrant speed, another reason why it doesn't use off the shelf NAS drives.

Rick