Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Streaming What-HiFi Explorer 2 Review

I remember very well, around 1990 or so, a friend asking for advice for his first serious hifi. Another guy wandered over & said "Get yourself a Marantz CD63, an Audiolab 8000 amp & a pair of Mission 753s".

Of course they were all WHF ***** products, so that was it! Would they have been any good together? Who cares?!

Well I just sold my 753's last year. And mighty fine speakers they were too. Of course totally eclipsed by Meridian DSP technology. Audiolab was a dream back in the day, I lusted after the 8000 but it was well outside of my price range at the time.

As I did with the Meridian 206 CD player; It was literally top of the food chain back in the day, and when I managed to acquire one from a 2nd hand hifi boutique I thought I had really made it.

Then I stumbled onto HH's and have sacrificed my kids inheritance ever since.........

Lee

I went through the Audiolab 8000C/P and Q/M cycle, you missed nothing IMHO though they were demonstrably better (well brighter and more dynamic) than the Arcam equivalents at the time.

The Q was particularly awful, flat and dull with no redeeming qualities; serves me right for buying used based on reviews and without a demo. I sold it within a couple of months and replaced it with a 565 and never looked back...

I do still run an 8000T tuner and 8000PPA phono stage, both of which are excellent.

Not totally unrelated to this evolved subject matter. Nice piece on the latest WhatHiFi newsfeed about vintage HiFi adverts. Some are crackers, and the sad thing is I can remember a few. Enjoy a trip down memory lane:

What HiFi - 10 strange and striking hi-fi ads from the 80's

Come on ,take it easy gents. What seems to be hard to bear is that the Audioquest in red seems to excel, at least according your beloved magazine.
In case we take it seriously, what might be the reason? The Dragonfly certainly has another DAC and does not apply upsampling like the E2. However, it seems to apply a minimum phase filter as well, taking into account phase shifts, potentially resulting in timing errors.
Maybe someone can get an a red Dragonfly for comparison purpose?

I don't know about the Audioquest, but I've just bought the Explorer2 (re-entering the fold since my 506.20 left me several years ago). I'd gone to Amazon to buy a Raspberry Pi to make a Roon bridge for my Cambridge Audio Stream Magic 6 (nice DAC, woeful app for streaming) and found an Explorer2 in my basket quite by accident. I was going to hang on to see what happened with MS600, but I decided I couldn't wait. It also seemed like a low risk strategy - and could be moved to the PC when I get a 'big DAC' or endpoint for the main system.

Now, I don't know about all this PRaT stuff (although I was dancing around to the League Unlimited Orchestra on Tidal the other day) but the Meridian wipes the floor with the Cambridge. The listen sessions are longer (sometimes extending into the small hours) as I feel I rediscover my collection. Roon may be a factor here, but it just seems to get better and better with the Explorer. I simply don't recognise the product described in the WHF review.

The Cambridge is up for sale, and the Explorer2 has found a semi-permanent home in my lounge system.

Yes, I'm am quite satisfied as well with it. I use it for "traditional " computer audio without Streaming service by Tidal or anyone else. Until now I have been using it in a bit perfect fashion with JPLAY as software. Interestingly I have just made the experience that by bypassing the unit's DSP ( do. Software based upsampling instead) you may get different results. It is still too early to make a profound judgement, but first attempts look promising...