Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Is it the right time to buy a 861v8?

Technical problem, of course not. Hopefully not everything is set in stone. Flexibility has always been key for survival.

It seems many of us needs to take 3 deep breaths and know that 861v9 is coming within 18 months and it will support immersive audio and possibly MQA MCH. Minimum 16 channels. I take this from the rep's steadfast talk that the faux-immersive 7 x 2 = 14 "will always" be supported, plus one or two subs = 16ch, Minimum.

There is also the famous quote from the HH gathering: "Do you think we're stupid?".

I think we all know that this is not the case, however many are anxious about their investment in recent 861 architecture and DSP speakers and they know a lot needs to be "upped" with lots under the hood improvement in both a new ID4x card that can handle MCH. 16ch+ architecture, although we know that the backplane was initially designed with 64ch compatibility.

So let the anticipation go to the 861v9 anticipation thread and release that anxious stress at your nearest Yoga practise and all will eventually be well.

OT, wonder what will come first, a Meridian 861v9 or my GF's Tesla Model 3?

I often wonder just how good sytems need to be? You can buy a system today from Meridian that would keep the average Music enthusiast content for a lifetime. Even a legacy system.

If you wish to stay on the leading edge, and I wish I could afford this, you know it's going to be expensive.
It's the same with cars and guitars and probably anything else aspirational.

The problem is to keep the aspiration alive amongst the faithful. This requires ever more innovation and design from clever people like Bob and his team.

With the pace of life prevelant today I can see the difficulties in physically keeping pace as creating this stuff at this level takes time.
I can see the day when technology is obsolete almost before it is released (as far as the cutting edge is concerned).
Luckily all this technology will trickle down to the rest of us and financial constraints force me to enjoy the humble system I have today.

Just thoughts as I wait for a funeral. Chris 😊

Thanks for all the replies. Things aren’t getting easier for me, though.

At the moment I have a setup (I don't know if this is the right word) for two-channel music and a setup for movies. The two are connected to each other and the L/R loudspeakers for music are used as front loudspeakers for movies.

For music I have a Moon CD player and a Moon stereo amplifier.

For movies I have a Primare Blu-ray player and a Primare five-channel A/V amplifier.

Although I am really pleased with the sound quality there is always something to wish for…

1: The Blu-ray player is quite good with DVDs and Blu-rays but not so for CDs. As a streamer it is a bit primitive in use; besides that it doesn’t play gapless.

2. The sound quality for movies is not as good as for music.

3. It isn’t a very convenient solution: two players. two amplifiers, with cables all over the place.

That’s why I was thinking of the following setup: an universal player for CDs, DVDs, Blurays with excellent streaming capabilities (gapless!), a processor and a multi-channel power amplifier.

I don’t care for the new codecs, so the 861v8 should be fine. Choosing a power amplifier shouldn’t be too difficult, but I am not very enthusiastic about the HD621 and the ID41 card for Sooloos. Both need an upgrade IMHO: HD621 for HDMI 1.4 or higher, the ID41 needs multi-channel.

I am not sure about 4K; there is room for a TV of 50, perhaps 55 inch and probably 4K won’t make much of a difference. So an Oppo BDP-105D sounds like a good idea.

My dealer will be visiting the High End Show in Munich and he will keep his eyes open for new developments. To make things even more difficult, he is also a divider for Trinnov. Right or not, I have a soft spot for Meridian however.

Regards,

Willy

Quite a bold statement VK.

Don't take my word for it. Take it from the original Sooloos developers who freely admit that they were constrained by the hardware of the time (a decade ago). Why else would Sooloos need to make a *copy* of your music to put it in a fast indexing directory structure? Have you tried Roon?

It may be a bold statement but I think it is a true one.

Russ

Gianni,

I run them in parallel, meaning that they are not connected to each other but feed two different inputs on the master 8K speaker.

G65--->SpeakerLink to center (can add surround speakers later)
818--->SpeakerLink--->AC12--->SPDIF input in 8K Master--SpeakerLink to 8K slave

818v3 feeds the 8Ks via SpeakerLink to 8K Master (daisy chained though as the SpeakerLink input on one of the speakers is used when sound comes from G65)

I wanted to avoid having a 818v3 before the G65 for having a purer stereo set-up and also the MQA compatibility.

@DMI - thanks