Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Introducing the Meridian Prime Headphone Amplifier

Are there any HHers who haven't written a review of the new Prime Headphone Amp...?

Not reviewed it, but I fixed the alignment problems:-

Can you fix the SpeakerLink input too?

And maybe get rid of the blue LED.

On more serious note, is there anyway to dim the LED's - I assume that they will be pretty bright by default.

Hi Ian

You could always locate it remotely and use a very long headphone cable

Russ

Another review here: Head-fi.org Review

It had to have occurred to Meridian that by only including a USB digital input, they've greatly limited this device's functionality. The Director, at only half the cost, managed to include both USB and SPDIF. For a unit that costs $2000, they should have been able to include both an SPDIF input and a pass-through SPDIF output.

I'm very impressed by this.

It's interesting to see the inclusion of ASP, which Bob first employed in the 601 preamp from the early '90s. I enjoyed the 'out of the head' imaging offered by that unit with HD650s, and I have no doubt that the implementation here is far more accomplished.

I'm surprised that there's no SPDIF input, but if market research suggest that USB is the dominant carrier method these days, I'll accept that. It looks like a very flexible unit indeed, and the availability of the upgraded power supply (with outputs enough to drive several devices) takes us nicely back into Lego for Dads again!

To echo Frank's comment, a matching phono stage would do the trick nicely. The bottom shelf of my rack contains Musical Fidelity's trio of X-Canv3, X-PSUv3 and XLPv3. Meridian have just ticked two out the three boxes for me...

Splendid work Meridian!

Cheers

George

That's a glowing review too.

Perhaps Meridian's market researchers should have looked at Meridian's own components, none of which, to my knowledge, has a USB output. Yes, they have analog outputs, but I think my G91A converts all inputs to digital. I hope I'm wrong about this, because otherwise listening to an SACD through the Prime would involve two A/D conversion stages.

I'd be curious to know how many other DAC/headphone amps in this price range lack an SPDIF input.

Just to prove I'm able to see the glass as half full, it's good to see the Prime will power balanced headphones, although it wasn't clear to me that the Prime was itself internally balanced.

It's not (I mentioned this in my review: search the text for XLR).

Hi,

I see there's some interest for having a SPDIF input, the major problem with this is that it would introduce constant digital noise to the analogue circuitry harming its performance. The best results are achieved with multiple boxes to isolate noise, this is reflected by the double skin design of Prime.

For $2000, I expect Meridian to figure out a way to address the issue of noise introduced by an SPDIF input.

This is starting to bring back memories of the controversy regarding the lack of HDMI inputs on Meridian processors.

Does this mean that Meridian has an SPDIF to USB converter box in the works?