Remember we are discussing a G68 here and not an 861v6 and Meridian have never been a company that produce products that "do everything" but what they do, they do extremely well.
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I don`t understand why Meridian is being rebuffed in this; the G68 is made to a spec, the spec is published and one purchases it for what it is; if one requires “more” then go for an 861v6, or go to a different marque.
Okay, I accept that the extreme high end will buy an 861v6, but a G61SL or G68SL+HD621 is still a lot of coin. I admit that it does meet the published spec, but I feel that the lack of 7.1 discrete digital input is the "dirty little secret". People coming to the marque don't look for it explicitly because every other current HDMI accepting processor in the world (correct me if I'm wrong) does accept 7.1 LPCM at a bare minimum. It's like explicitly asking if the processor allows you to set channel levels, you don't ask because it's a silly question; they all do. Except it doesn't.
Should Gary have checked that the spec included 7.1 discrete input? Perhaps. Am I surprised that he didn't? Not at all, I think it's a basic expected feature. A non-Meridian owner is unlikely to start reading the manuals of the products before purchase to check the minutiae of the products inner workings.
Personaly, I think the G68SL should have 8 channel input and SpeakerLink input as well, but that's another story.
It would seem to me to be an obvious step to make cat5 the new standard interconnect between M components, thus providing a low jitter, 8 channel link that includes comms built in. There should be 4 MMHR inputs to allow multiple components to be able to input 7.1 high res digital. This would be in addition to a set of coax and digital inputs of course.
Then again, I thought it was a tremendously "brave" move to remove the coax digital outputs from the SL processors...
Don't get me wrong, I think their kit sounds very, very good (and I'm pretty low on the scale), but I think that they are their own worst enemy...
Dave
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