Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems 7.1 input on G Series

Afaik almost all cinemas are 5.1 and the few that are 7.1 run 5 speakers at the front and still just the two channels for the rear. Thus cinema mixes are (I think) mostly for 5.1. That said if a disc has a 7.1 discrete soundtrack it's somewhat ridiculous that a brand new �6500 (G68 + HD621) processor is unable to accept it.

I'd really love to hear the "official" line on this from M central or even from bob. Surely it can't be reasonable to require people to get the 861v6 just to get 7.1 input. I couldn't believe that the speakerlink G processors didn't have either an MMHR port or a 4 port smartlink input.

Actually I would have put multiple MMHR ports to allow for a future multichannel Sooloos system.

Dave

The newer Cinemas that have gone the DLP Route and Films on Hard Drive etc. are designed as 7.1. A significant number of older cinemas have, or are in the process of, going the DLP plus Digital route

The Sound Engineers also have special Software Tools that can "steer" certain effects to certain channels, even if the original movie was only 5.1.

They can do the same with the 7.1 Blurays that are out there.

In summary, they can do more with their Systems and Software to exploit a 7.1 system than Meridian can do with turning 5.1 into 7.1. Not that Meridian's efforts are bad in any way, but.................

ahh, interesting. didn't know that



one shouldn't have to spend �18000 on processing from Meridian just to get discrete 7.1 input? when a �400 onkyo AVR will happily accept 7.1 LPCM over HDMI (never mind the DTS-MA and TrueHD)? I know they're far from the same thing, but this is the kind of comparison people will make, and rightly so I feel. One would think that in these strained economic times a manufacturer of luxury items shouldn't be giving people excuses to buy another manufacturers product.

Question to GaryArthur: If your dealer had made it clear to you when you were buying that the Meridian solution didn't support 7.1 discrete input, would you still have bought it? By the sounds of it, you got a G68, HD621 and a full 7.1 set of speakers, which is some serious money to be mis-sold on. I appreciate that you might be perfectly happy with it now, but when you were choosing would that issue have given you serious cause to choose the classe and an alternate choice of power amps and speakers?

for myself, I'm happy with a 5.1 system for I'm not directly affected, but this doesnt mean I don't think it's bizarre situation to be in.

dave

Of course Meridian should have added 7.1 Input capability to the G68. I also think they could have done so relatively easily

As of now, CinemaSquid lists a total of 283 Bluray Discs as being 7.1, with quite a number of those being Concert, Classical and Opera. Some are Duplicates for different countries and Zones

They also list another 70 Bluray as being 6.1


Having said this, I would still prefer what the Meridian G68 does with 5.1 Movies into 7.1 Speakers than most of what the competition can do with native 7.1 into 7.1.

And I certainly prefer what Meridian does with 5.1 into 7.1, as well as 5.1 into 5.1 Speaker systems

And 5.1 Bluray releases (even new Discs) still dominate....................CinemaSquid currently list 12,099 titles!!!

It's quite amusing to see Meridian being berated for not pandering to the latest "more numbers are better" marketing game.

They are the only makers of domestic kit that I know of who make some sort of acknowledgement of the work of Michael Gerzon et al who proved that you only need 3 channels to transmit 360 degree localisation information and 4 channels to transmit full spherical localisation information.

5.1 is bad enough in the inefficiency stakes but 7.1 is laughable.

Ironic you say that when Meridian themselves were one of the first companies to advocate and design for 7.1 (actually they prefer 7.0) Speaker Systems in the Home, with the Meridian Digital Theatre Concept more than 10 years ago now

Their Processors were also among the first to allow for 7.1 Speaker Layouts

And the reason that they chose this route??? They realised that the typical Room Layout in the home differs significantly from the Gerzon Test Speaker Positioning and Distances from the Listener.

And they also demonstrated height speakers to the press at Bristol more years ago than I can remember!

And if they care so much about Gerzon, why not fix Trifield? [though this is not to deny the seminal importance of his input to Meridian thinking and designing]

I think Meridian does need to support 7.1 discrete in order to play the numbers game on $10K processor. But I believe in practice it's not that big a deal.

Go buy an Onkyo.

By the way with DSP Speakers you could accurately setup 7.1 discrete with G68 and HD621. Tricky and complicated but I believe doable. I've explained how before.

Please no PM's asking my how.

David I'm definitely not perfectly happy now. I am still a bit miffed. It was my hope to be finding new positive things with my new Meridian equipment. Would have been delighted to be saying "Wow it has even more capability than I thought". Having said that, the G68 has been incorporated into my system for more than a month and I like the look, I like the MRC, and I love the sound.

Could I have ended up with a different processor had I realized the lack of discrete 7.1 in the G68? In a word - yes. Maybe even probably - yes. When I listened to the Classe it was not in my setup and everything is different so my own prejiduces invade my judgement (please read Dan Ariely's book "Predictably Irrational" for a better understanding of this).

My old processor was an 8 year old Proceed AVP2 and it is now being used in my Los Angeles office. I believe the lead engineer on the AVP2 development was also the lead engineer on the Classe SSP 800 development.

My main speakers are Martin Logan CLX's and the rest of my system choices have been driven by the ML's.

Can I learn to love my new Meridians? I certainly hope so. The most important thing - sound is impressive.

I jumped into this thread based upon a $20 purchase of the movie "Bangkok Dangerous" which was listed as 7.1. I cannot comment on the quality of the 7.1 because as it turns out the Meridian G68 combines the sides and rears and feeds you what it thinks is best.

What bothers me most now is the creeping feeling that Meridian is not listening.

(P.S. for David - Go ManU, Rooney, Rooney, Rooney. I'm a fan)

Yes, as a mathematician I certainly understand that 3 nonlinear points define a circle. But the last time I looked for source material for the 3 speaker 360 surround system it was a null set {}.

Yes, and there was a terrific article in The Perfect Vision a number of years ago (cannot recall the issue, nor do I still have it) that made a pretty compelling argument that in order to have effective image steering along the sides and back of the sound field, each axis needed to have three speakers. So, 8 in total - 4 at the corners and 4 centers. The side speakers in a 7.1 layout accomplish that for the two sides, the typical center speaker takes care of the front, so all that is needed is a rear center (and maybe an overhead/envelop channel). So, actually, we 'need' 8.1 or even 9.1.

If more (7.1) is better then even more (8.1) is betterer.

If they made a statement that 7.1 was OTT and 5.1 was all anyone ever needed, then I'd have respect for that, but no, not only do they support 7.1 on the output but they are more than happy to sell you 7 DSP speakers too. oh, and they support 7.1 discrete input on their �11,500 processor.

I appreciate that (probably) when they created the G series then there were no sources of 7.1 input and 5.1 digital input was restricted to other Meridian gear, but this gear costs *a lot* of money and I don't see why they couldn't have upgraded the internals to be able to accept 4 stereo digital inputs simultaneously.


I'm not surprised frankly, I think you've been mis-sold some very expensive hifi by a dealer who should know better[1]. Now don't get me wrong, I expect your new Meridian digital active system sounds awesome but it's still missing a really basic feature that means your shiny, brand new home cinema system can't play back some of the audio recorded on the disc.

Now perhaps Meridian's processing of 5.1 into 7.1 is very good but that's not the point. The point is that your new 7.1 Bluray is not sounding as the sound engineer intended. Especially when you consider the market that Meridian is after is the very high end market who want something that "does everything". surely that's a very difficult position for Meridian to try and defend?

Dave

[1] Now if you decide to get rid of all that blasted crappy Meridian gear, you just let me take care of them for you