Has anyone measured the output of the Meridian apodising filter compared to the previous linear filter or other filters to objectively compare their frequency response? That might be one way to understand how much of the reduction of ambiance is indeed pre-ringing reduction or high frequency response reduction. From what I've read (not much), like other aspects of audio design, there is no free lunch with filter design. It's about trade offs.

My opinion on this debate:

Like pretty much every other digital company out there, Meridian has their opinion on the best way to engineer a digital filter and the related sonic "flavour". Most claim their approach is the most "neutral" and "realistic", however since they all sound different it's pretty tough to conclude that most of them achieve that goal. It is more likely that they achieve the designer's sonic vision. In the end, it all comes down to personal preference of the listener and system comparability. Some will like the resulting sound (it seems Meridian has done some testing in this regard by what others have said here) and others won't.

My ask of Meridian:

Don't force all Sooloos system lovers into using Meridian filters and DACs. Include the option of using a HIGH QUALITY, CLEAN digital output to an outboard DAC of our choosing. I capitalized some words here because I realize it is possible to bypass the up-sampling apodising filter now, but the resulting sound quality from my MC200 with this option is quite poor.

Thanks!

Roon, MS600, Simaudio 780D, Simaudio P-8/W-8 and Revel Studio 2s