The Japanese engineered products have a short product cycle, usually 18-months to two years, and new hardware and DSP technology is implemented and licensed. The Meridian hardware is designed to have a much longer "shelf life". That theoretically makes it more valuable.

Bob and Allen have always striven to build the best sounding, best looking, long lasting audio products. Lately Bob has been innovating with MQA - and selling truly cutting-edge technology to build in latest audio research into his newest products.

Imagine designing and selling a DSP speaker that had a bunch of hidden technology built into it... They built a brand new SE engineered speaker technology (and new tweeters) and then didn't "let the cat out of the bag" until the public demonstration in California. Even then, we didn't realize what Bob was demo'ing. Crucially, the stereophile reviewer who was there heard it and enthusiastically reported on it...

Meridian's hardware implementation of MQA requires some new components. Hopefully, we'll finally find out next week if our investments in SE DSP speakers and newer processors live up to the hype. Eventually, a newer 861 upgrade with MQA built-in will be announced. I may even upgrade my 861v6 if there is enough good stuff included!


Primary: 818v3+ID41, M6 stereo pair, M SpeakerLink cabling, Sonos+96kHz Cullen, silver DSW
HT: Marantz prepro, 271, DSP3300, 8K SE FL/FR pair, DSP M6x2, DSP320x4 (ceiling), black DSW, 520 RL/RR rear in-walls
Living Room: G65, 640 L/R in-walls, UHD722, MS600
Vac. Home: G61, HD621, 4xDSP3100, DSP3100HC
MDMS:NUC/ROCK+TrueNAS Core 12.0 ZFS file server