Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Trinnov and Meridian at Audio Images

Rick, you can count me as someone interested in this as well. But I live in New York, you know the colonies across the pond, so I don't know if I can make it for a listen, but I would be very curious to know what you've done. I've often looked at the Trinnov products and thought- why can't we figure out how to make it work with the Meridian speakers.

Indeed, I agree with the other members here, if Meridian is not going to do a full on 861 update, then maybe the best move would be for them to make some kind of interface box that would allow us to work with the other processors out there- thus keeping the DSPs relevant.

+1, except for the New York part.
The room interface is too important to ignore, even if Meridian's DSPs sound pretty darn good in a compromised room!

Put me on the list of very interested!

John

For those already using the Trinnov processors with Meridian digital speakers, how are you handling the interface from the processor to the DSPs?

It seems the processor does not have SPDIF outputs and the digital out is handled via a different connection.

It can be configured to have digital out via the D-type connecting blocks. They are just not in the form of usual phono/RCA type.

As I was not too familiar with the Trinnov Altitude I did a little research on it and there is a good review of it in Widescreen Review magazine July/August 2016 edition issue 208 ( sorry I don't have a link as I get the paper copies).
Needless to say it is quite a processor with many advanced capabilities and I agree that instead of M developing their own unit ( which will be difficult to compete in this price range) a licensing agreement would make sense.
I am also very interested in the results Rick finds out ( although I think I already can suspect how great it will be)- wish I could come and listen.

It looks that Meridian decided that the Home Theater Market is not their priority. They have invested in MQA 2 channel at the moment.

Some of us loved Meridian processors (565, G61R, 861v4) for their ability to process:

a) 2 channel into 5 channel music.
and
b) all available multi channel formats that existed at the time (from Laser Disk and DVD).

But since the introduction of HD621 there are no news from Meridian for their Home Theater lovers. Hence it was only a matter of time that companies like Trinnov and Anthem will be there to fill in the gap. Trinnov supports Roon and Anthem supports Tidal integration. I would be very interested to see what Trinnov can do with Roon (without additional endpoint) and how can be integrated with Meridian Digital speakers. It might be worth the trip for me.

Regards
George

More options are a good thing and I wish I could drop by and listen

Of course there are integration questions to be explored but fundamentally I wish I could be there to listen to the sound quality between the two processor architectures.

Given that the Trinnov is based on a "potentially noisier" PC based Platform and uses 3rd party chipsets I would like to hear opinions from those that do get to listen regarding sound quality compared to a Meridian processor. The Trinnov products have a great feature so it would be interesting to compare their architectural decisions to Meridian's more bespoke architecture.

Each approach has advantages and tradeoffs but how do those decisions affect sound quality?

The Trinnov DAC's are not of the quality of M's. They are not running 818 like D/A conversion. My experience is that the quality of the RC makes up for it, and then some. I would note that the Altitude uses flash memory, so there is no spinning hard drive, often the biggest producer of digital noise. Like most A/V manufacturers, Trinnov doesn't subscribe to M's views on total isolation. As evidenced by their inclusion of the HDMI connections in the same box.

Does anyone know if the Trinnov uses a SMPS or a linear power supply?

I know the Altitude has separate PSUs for the digital and analogue stages. Not sure if the latter is linear. Personally, I'm not concerned. YMMD.