Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Streaming To Sooloos or not to

Sorry, to clarify, my system is undergoing some changes. Maybe with ID40 M are actually there. Until I have all the kit and it's bedded in I don't like to speculate.

Rereading my reply made it sound like M didn't have a world class solution available now.

You've had M DSPs since you were 20?

dayum...

I had a Marantz receiver and a pair of Advents when I was 20. Sounded damn good to, albeit, no DSP.

Oh I wish I was a trust fund kid .....

Regular Yorkshire bloke who was music mad (playing in bands and working in studios) to save up for "gadgets". Had a Mission Cyrus One and Rotel CD player (and I think an Akai Tape Deck) - all from Richer sounds. Every thing I worked for and spent on was just music stuff.

One day was in Huddersfield HiFi of all places, and stumbled across some 2nd hand 18bit 5Ks and a 200 transport in a corner. Never heard of M before but was completely and utterly hooked. Wasn't a big fan of Rosewood (even then) but it didn't matter. The sound, the simplicity and the fact it was just two parts (speaker and transport) was amazing to me. I sold nearly everything I had and I'd saved to make what was a huge leap!

I only just changed them last year (Duncan took my beloved Rosewoods) and this year the C15 is now at the front. After 25 years of music I'm actually a bit deaf, and am sure if I kept pushing the boundaries I just could just upgrade one more thing. For me, the M offers me simplicity, fantastic sound (whether more fantastic is available I'll let you guys debate - quite possibly), and it has completely brought the emotion back to listening, just like 20 years ago. I get mesmerised, involved and sometimes even reduced to tears, all from listening,

I'm sure there's better stuff out there but for me the simple stereo set up just does it.

And anyway if I was a trust fund kid I'd have bought 6Ks and would now have 8Ks in my front room

I know, I wish Meridian would sort the broken width out, it upsets me too!!

Would I recommend Meridian to anyone? To me that is a hard question. I've has a Sooloos system for over 12 months now so FWIW a few thoughts:

The positives:
* superb AQ. I have never heard better.
* convenience at accessing your CDs (see caveat below on the search engine)
* means that you "rediscover" CDs you had forgotten you have in a big collection. Using the "swim" function which randomly selects tracks, reacquaints you with the music so when something attractive is played you can go to listen to the complete album.

The negatives (and there are far more than I'm comfortable with):
* it is VERY expensive (and bear in mind it is a rapidly evolving area so you pay big time by being an early adopter. IMHO far less expensive and maybe more functional systems are around the corner. The $64 million dollar question is which corner, how long to wait, how good, ....)
* at 6 minutes per CD, feeding them in is a very tedious process. You can do the math for how long the 8500 here took.
* the metadata is clunky. In a 3 CD set it will find maybe, one, maybe two, sometimes 3 and possibly none of the cover graphics. Incredibly it might find data for 2 in the set and proclaim the third is an unknown!
* entering in a set can scatter the entries across a few pages if a number are done at the one time. I'm still trying to find some of them.
* sets can be collated into a single icon entry but that is all it achieves. Each item in the set has to be selected to play. I understand Meridian is working on that.
* the search engine is fine for finding artists and works a treat for pop, jazz etc but is quirky and unreliable for classical discs. Search for "Beethoven Symphony 7 " and it displays heaps of entries as each track is listed. Opera searches can be even worse making finding what you want a needle in a haystack process.
* the APP on iPad is primitive, again Meridian are reported as working on that.

Despite the above I'm not sorry I have a Sooloos setup. It has enabled me hours of musical pleasure I would not have experienced otherwise. The reason for this is I'm listening via headphones and can listen to what I like when I like. My wife does like classical music also but her tastes are less adventurous than me, dislikes opera which I love and, more importantly, she objects to the volume I enjoy. I started headphone listening via the CDP but Sooloos is vastly better.

So, do I recommend Sooloos? The answer is a yes, if you can afford it, but be aware that it has quite a few limitations and is not as good as the advertising and review hype would lead you to believe.

John

How does the Sooloos sound in comparison to the M disk spinners? In my case, connected to a G68.

101 answers to that one ranging from not as good, the same to better.

You should go to a dealer and have a listen.

Hi John,

Please don't take this the wrong way, I'm genuinely interested to know if any hitchhikers have experience of other systems which address these points?
This may be difficult to answer as in-depth experience of Sooloos and its competition is required.

1) Ripping faster than Sooloos, so less than 6 minutes for a Classical CD rip.
2) Better more accurate metadata lookup than Sooloos.
3) Album sets and the ability to play a set from a single selelction, do any other systems even allow sets?
4) Better CD searching, specifically the text search function rather than the Control 15 cover art browse.
5) Better iPad application than Sooloos

Cheers,

Rick

3) Squeezebox server allows multi-CD sets to be treated as one volume.

So you can play the entire set, in order, with a single 'play all now'?

Rick

1) dBpoweramp is much quicker than EAC/Sooloos with full 'accuraterip'. In fact I can dBpa rip and import to Sooloos quicker than a Control:PC rip.

2) As well documented recently, Sooloos doesn't use per track data at all whereas, for example, Squeeze does. This data often comes from the same source (AMG) plus GD3, Musicbrainz, freedb and tracktype.. Sonos also has track data. Sooloos just ignores it. I have to manually tag the AMG ID in Sooloos quite often. I rarely do with dBpa.

3) As per VK's note above. Disc sets handled fine without having to manually link them via a control screen. I don't mind linking sets in Sooloos as it happens.

4) Sooloos has some of the functionality built in e.g. if you edit album 'artist' it will start to list all artists that match the letters entered as you type. This type of functionality could be lifted to the search engine to edit results lists as you type. I think Ronnie made a list of apps that did this a while back (Ronnie ??)

5) iPeng or Squeezepad. Both excellent. Browse by album cover art, really quick access to different areas of the alphabetised albums, artists etc. Even better is that you can tap to see all meta data, full album art and with the aid of some simple plugs ins you get the track lyrics loaded direct from the net. All these things make the current Sooloos app in its black n white text only feel very plain. It only takes a few minutes with the squeeze apps to see what can be achieved. Hoping that M have done some homework here already for the rumoured next release.

Sooloos also does some really nice things. Intent here is to highlight some cool things the competition does. This is what one loses when moving to Sooloos so as a 'market leading/premium solution' I'd like to think M would take these things pretty seriously.

cheers

3) In case you've not played with squeeze setup before