Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Streaming Meridian Offer QNAP & dBpoweramp Support

Thanks a lot Nick. Believe me, I do not in any way take offense. This forum is excellent and way more civil than some.

I appreciate the advice from you and others on the compatibility to the rest of the gear. I'd love to own an MD600/MS600 combo if my current toy budget would allow.

Also, I applaud what Meridian is doing here. I am simply casually suggesting as others have that a logical extension would be to end up with a reasonably priced pure core product. IMHO the MC200 is not reasonably priced and would have redundant features to the QNAP and MS200.

The prices I mention are US dollars. I have found so far that dealers near me in CA are not all that eager to discount. Perhaps I need to purchase from a UK dealer. ; >)

Thanks, Al

Yeah the problem you're going to have is that you've spent approximately $19,000 on amplification and speakers, which are going to be ultra-revealing, and only spent a tiny fraction of that on your source. So the quality of the amps and speakers is letting you hear every flaw in the upstream gear. The old advice of source first really is true.

Having said that, the point is not to bash you or make you feel bad, but really to encourage you to upgrade that source ASAP to make the most of the rest of a wonderful and expensive setup! I would think firstly that, if you can't afford Sooloos entry yet (if you're thinking about it I'd recommend a second hand 500GB MC200 would be a huge improvement by itself, and probably well under $1500 now? You could then add an MS200 and have a very nice sounding source on which to build

Alternatively, there are some excellent CD players going for a song now that everyone is moving to streaming - some of Meridian's older models are relatively cheap s/h and wonderful sounding machines which will easily best your airport, etc. def worth a listen!

Just to incrust myself in this discussion, but the MC200 is a single zone, so you won't have many MS200 with it and can't build upon it.

Right now the real source is the MC600 and it's entry ticket is pricey. I guess we'll see a multi-zone source without drive real soon, or else I hope real hard.

Hi,

For clarity, whilst the MC200 contains one end point (zone) plus Core and Store, its Core (like all the Cores) supports the addition of other zones (end points) on the network such as:
MS200
MS600
ID40
ID41

IMHO the MC600 is the 'oddball' in the Sooloos range and is much more akin to 'old school' centralised muti-zone audi systems and I would be surprised if they ever make another one.

But we are digressing somewhat from this thread's topic.

Regards,
Carl

Thanks 3dit0r, my Bryston Dynaudio stuff is getting old now, definitely have way less than $19,000 in it. I have been keeping an eye on the used market. Certaining a used MC200 as core with QNAP and MS200 would be a great start.

Thanks for suggestions,

Al

No worries! Just FYI, the MC200 on it's own ain't bad, so you could start with that then save for an MS200 or other endpoint. You wouldn't need the QNAP to start with unless you have a huge collection.

Yes I wasn't implying your other gear is currently worth that, just that it was originally in that price range - way outclassing a $99 source

Or start with one of these?

Meridian Director

With your Bluray player or a decent network streamer as a front end?

You're kidding, right?

I must have been sleeping throughout the entire Sooloos unveiling/demonstration at the HH outing at the Mothership (I'm number 6 in the first HH group pix, by the way).

You must forgive me for not wanting to spend around �4,000 to ensure redundancy in buying a MD600/MS600 - because I don't want to risk inevitable disk failure in buying a �2,000 MC200 (it will fail, it's just a matter of when). If you could open up the MC200 yourself to change the disk for a larger capacity or replacement that would be a different matter.

That's why I was enquiring whether or not it was possible to use an MS200 with a Meridian-enabled QNAP. I thought it was a reasonable question to ask.

Also, if reviews are to believed, the MS600's audio capabilities are significantly superior to a MC200. MS600 vs MC200 It would seem, therefore, that the MC200 is somewhat compromised by comparison.

Even so, you must forgive me for not understanding why, if you already own an MD600 (with integral redundancy), and you already own a different NAS than QNAP, you would want to spend even more money on another NAS just because Meridian says its the only NAS that is capable of archiving your music library.

Surely, it's more cost-effective for customers to swap-out the hard-drive of their MD600's for larger capacity drives rather than spending several times the cost of adding a high-end QNAP plus additional drives?

Hi, yes it is, but the QNAP NAS could be a 5 bay unit with 5x4TB disks fitted running RAID 5 for example, this would give you 16TB of storage (4TB parity disk), somewhat more than a mirrored or not MD600 or TwinStore, of course it depends on the size of your library?

The QNAP NAS is a good option if you already have an MC200 or Control:15 and want to expand your storage, the TwinStore is obsolete and the MD600 has core (which would not be needed) and storage.

There does not seem to be a lot of feedback on disk failure on MC200's so it should be a relatively rare event, hopefully?

Russ, MD600 and TwinStore owner.

I don't think the MC200 will run core with no disk.

Hi 3dit0r,

Thought it did, but have been known to wrong... many times. I seem to recall Ronnie running Core on an MD600 with no disks, I will defer to anyone with superior knowledge.

Russ