Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Could DSP 7200 DACs be upgraded to handle 192khz/24bit material?

Dear forum,

I was specifically recommended NOT to worry about this issue in my first post (earlier this morning), but worry I must, and I have a quick question about future proofing!

I realise that the Meridian DSP 7200 and DSP 8000 speakers can handle high resolution material natively at a rate of up to 96khz/24bit.

Bearing in mind I might keep these speakerts for 20 years +, if 192khz/24bit material really takes off, is it conceivable that Meridian would be able to upgrade the DAC in an existing pair of DSP 7200s? Is it likely such an upgrade would be made available? I don't know if Meridian employees manage this website - but if so, maybe they could share some input?

Also, forgetting about Hi-Rez downloads, there are actually a fair number of SACDs out there if you like classical, so it would be quite nice to know you were hearing the full resolution of the material (even if it doesn't offer genuinely audible differences over the 96khz/24bit stuff).

Cheers,

Keyser

Meridian has been saying 192Khz firmware update since 2001 on DSP Speakers.

Don't hold your breath.

Meridian seems to be upgrading hardware less and less and doing trade-ins.

Meridian does not run this site and they don't share this type of future plans.

Keyser, is SACD important to you? You should be aware that Meridian players do not support SACD. Third party players are supported via the HD621 HDMI pre-processor.

I get the feeling that all 24/96 DSP speakers will accept 24/192 but will down res it to 24/96, is that right? ie the speakers will "handle" the ultra high res audio, ie play it, just not at the top res. of course, whether you'd notice is another issue...

I'm pretty sure the latest DSP speakers all have 24/192 DACs anyway. Try to feed them 192k audio, and interface protocols will drop it to 96k automatically (unlike 24 bit audio, which is received regardless, even if the receiver only processes 16 bits).

I "upgraded" from an amp with 24 bit processing to a similar one with 32 bit processing, and got a drop in sound quality for my troubles. I think 24/96 capability is worth having, but beyond that its marketing, and I think M take a similar view. I doubt they would be persuaded of the value of adding 192k. I haven't seen anyone, anywhere, advocate 192k for a very long time.

Nick

There is currently no way to feed 24/192 signals in to DSP speakers.
The maximum supported sample rate is 24/96.

Regards,
Carl

This is true.


I totaly agreed with this. 192/24 DACs are fine; we now this can improve the quality of analogue output, but 192/24 source sample rates, nope.

Regards,
Carl

Nick,


The DACs are only part of the picture in supporting 192kHz. The bigger issue is DSP. Going from 96kHz to 192kHz means you have twice the amount of work to do in half the time. Means you need roughly 4x more processing power.

Shawn

Aren't you double doubling there. You have X time to do twice the samples. So 2x processing power is needed?

I was thinking of something similar today. Many M owners with HD621 processors benefit from apodised over-sampling of 44 & 48k audio up to 88 or 96k.

Some of this will be 24 bit audio, and some multi-channel. And we know that apodising is heavy on processing resource.

If speakers could accept 192k, that would presumably push the apodising burden up much higher, wherever it is performed.

Applying speaker levels, delays and crossovers is one thing, but I bet room correction and apodising of HD MC audio is very demanding. Maybe too demanding for current hardware?

Nick

but is it primarily too demanding because the "current hardware" is barely any different from five year old hardware, as far as processing power is concerned?

dave

FYI, Room correction is not done in the DSP Speaker.

P.S. It's not "over-sampling".

But yeah, apodizing MIPs (done in DSP Speakers) from 96Khz to 192Khz may not be linear either.