Originally Posted by gIzzE
Hi-Fi used to be completely interchangeable, this allowed you to add expensive pieces as and when you wanted to upgrade and funds allowed.
Meridian is now pretty much a closed platform and that is a dangerous place to be in I reckon. You can't really dip your toe in the water any more with M gear, which means you shut a hell of a lot of potential customers out.

All this speakerlink only crap is just a joke too, well it wouldn't be if they charged a proper amount like �100 for converting, but at �400 x 3 for a typical 5.1 system it has stopped me looking at their processors full stop.

Yes, 4 AC12's for an existing 7.1 DSP-system is not encouraging and M introduces more and more boxes to the chain, including the HD621. The new AC200 will probably include all kinds of inputs except HDMI (the most common one in the current market). So, let me see: HDMI-Source(BD-player) -> HD621 -> 7.1 Processor -> 4*AC12 -> DSP-speakers (or 4* AC200 -> 3200's), means 5 elements in the chain.

@Gianni, qoute:"don't the latest DSPs still carry an SPDIF input?"
No, as fas as I know, M is eliminating SPDIF from both their speakers (DSP420 is stripped a year ago and only sports SpeakerLink, and now the 3200's), as well as their sound processors (the $25K 861v6). I don't see M abandoning the chosen path to eliminate SPDIF more and more and, therefore, I have my eye on the $15K Tact-MkIII that has both HDMI and SPDIF all-in-one, which cuts down the 3 elements in the chain between the source and the speakers (HD621+861+AC12) to only 1 element (as it should be, in a minimalist approach).