Hello.

John's post has obviously been met with enthusiasm and, inevitably, triggered a lot of questions.

I want to start by reiterating that for Meridian, sound quality comes absolute top.
That's not to say we compromise convenience, UI or design; it all has to be great.

Music servers/managers inevitably flirt with the world of personal computers, accessories and computer audio and in fact the very early Sooloos products were based on PC hardware.

Our work with MQA in studios world-wide reminds us every day just how remote PC audio can be from the original.

Our experience teaches us without any doubt that to get the best sound you need dedicated and carefully optimised hardware at the point where audio becomes analogue. It's no accident that the 800 Series, our dedicated endpoints such as MS600 and MS200 and the DSP loudspeakers are designed as they are.

So John's announcement reflects our central values and signposts a determination for two things:

1) an architecture shift that enables lower entry cost to a Sooloos system - or looked at another way - enables a bigger percentage of the budget where it really counts, in trouble-free higher-performance audio.

2) a signal that Meridian is busy innovating in high-quality and high-resolution music playback and is lining this system up to excite you even more in the months to come. Yet always with a clear path for current owners, whom we always want to bring along.

So, in that context I'd like to pick up on a few questions that were asked here.

Q Will TouchPC enable audio in the host computer?

A. Absolutely not! PC audio in this context is much too unpredictable. TouchPC is a family friendly control client which gives access to useful content management features. It's delightful to use and the price is right: it's complimentary, to improve your listening experience. It downloads from the Core just like ControlPC. It will not run a Core, uses approximately 1GB of RAM per 15,000 albums, can rip CDs if the computer has a drive. Suitable touch computers can be found in the £500 - £1k range in the UK. More detail when it's close to release.

Qs about Core on Qnap

A. The Core and Storage plug-in will be released soon, also free-of-charge. Qnap have a wide range including some powerful new models that can support a large number of zones with high-resolution. We will publish more details soon, but for example our demo system at Munich will be running from a TS-251 with 4GBRAM.





Last edited by BobS; 2015-05-12 17:15.