Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Streaming new control 15 and speakers allready there ?

Hi Rick,

I've got a Control:10/Ensemble on loan from Meridian and for easy I just placed the Ensemble on a spare shelf on my rack. I can hear the drive spinning and accessing data from 10 feet away. For a permanent install I would locate it outside the room so no big issue.

However, my concern with the Control15 with its internal HDD is how well the drive noise is insulated; I expect I would have the Control15 only a couple of feet or so from me.

Can you shed any light on this; also is the drive "user" removable like the other Sooloos drives?

2.5" HDD Market
I too have had a look at what is available on the 2.5" HDD market.
The �150 "Seagate Constellation 7200.1 2.5" 500GB SATA 32MB Cache" looks about the best.
However, the are some 600G 10K RPM drives that also look good but they are over �400 each, that's a lot to pay for an extra 100G.

The �155 Western Digital 1TB Scorpio Blue 2.5" SATA-300 5200rpm 8mb is perhaps not reliable enough to be considered by M.

3.5" HDD Market
The "Seagate 2TB Barracuda XT 3.5" SATA-600 7200rpm 64MB" looks like the best drive choice to select for use in the TwinStore/Ensemble units.

Regards,
Carl

I share your noise concerns. (And a 10K drive is always going to be louder than a 7.2K drive of the same type, isn't it?)

The system really has to be silent. I can't imagine that Control 15 will be the ideal solution for everyone. I also can't imagine it will be the last Sooloos product to have the Meridian audio goodness on the digital output. An Ensemble in a year with the same upsampling etc would sell as well...

Rick, rumours?

Hi Carl,
There is no problem with the noise from the Internal hard drive on a Control 15. I had a good listen at the launch and it makes no more noise than a Control:10 does, so very little.

The drive isn't designed to be swapped out, so no easy accessible drive slots or anything like that, and it won't self configue like a drive does in an Ensemble or TwinStore. I would strongly advise against even considering upgrading it, I don't think it will be impossible, but its a lot more involved than the other stores. Just go for a TwinStore in the future. Or another Control 15, more storage, another Zone output, and Control in another room.

Yes I'd seen a western digital 1TB 2.5" drive, but have had bad experiences using 'cheapy' Western Digitals, although their Enterprise drives are really good.

Rick

The control:10 also has a hard disk in it - if you listern closely you can hear it but as it is a laptop drive it is very quiet.

Rick,

Any idea if the new apodizing audio board for Control15 can be retrofitted to C10?

Thanks,

Chenko

No it can't.
An origional Control:10 can be uprated to an upsampling Control:10 though.
The new Control 15 board doesn't fit in the Control:10, and the back panel is slightly different, no RCA phono audio input for a start.
Rick

Which presumably means apodizing?

That gives hope to those who like me fancy the idea of an Ensemble more than a Control.

No I don't think it does mean apodizing. That's only on the Control 15.
Rick

Very interesting and, for me, appropriate thread as I'm seriously looking at jumping into a Sooloos.

I've been offered a demo Control:10 at around 1200 pounds less than the Control 15 and am agonising over whether or not the extra cost is worthwhile.

Note I do not have a dedicated Meridian system so will be feeding the Control into either a modded (by Steve Nugent at Empirical Audiop) Benchmark DAC1 or into the ID30 card on the 861 via XLR. From there on it goes into non Meridian amps & speakers.

The agony is to decide whether these aging 75 year old ears will hear the difference the apodising in the Control 15 would make. It might well be the Benchmark DAC1 or Meridian 861 will neutralise any gain made by apodising. But against that my mantra has always been to have the best possible intput along the GIGO theme.

So, I would appreciate a description from someone with experience on this to comment on just how much difference apodising would make to a digital FLAC conversion. I gather it is more "analog like" but a more succinct description than that would help me.

TIA

John