Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems A Meeting for Hikers in Huntingdon: Interest Check

No, it wasn't MQA.

Meridian were not asked to talk of future plans as it’s something they don’t do so we didn’t ask.

We did discuss the wider market, the changing market etc including automotive and Meridians position here.That’s a big subject.

Concerns about dealers was discussed and Rick came out very well here. Apparently Ferrari don’t have dealers in every town either.

Questions and contact is very welcome via the Meridian website.

Concerns over the future of DSP products was answered with ‘Why would we abandon that’? and further reassurance.
This is not to quote anyone but my impressions.

The look of the 200 products was debated but Meridian think it looks cool.

Chris

I suppose it may fall under the roadmap category but was anything discussed about integrating RC with MQA?

Ken

This was not discussed with John Buchanon as he freely admitted to not being a technical person.

Hmm, neither am I but...

Ken

I am not sure if I was present at the same meeting, but here we go anyway.

In JB's presentation of Meridian there was no reference to customer service or customer support, other than the devolved responsibility of dealers, to existing purchasers. Rick of AI was doing a good job to support this strategy, but in my opinion this is not enough.

I found this a difficult point to take on board as many competitors offer direct contact support and very fast response to issues encountered by their customers.

Sooloos did not even get a mention in the presentation, and Roon was hardly recognised as a partner.

JB stated that Meridian are now profitable, however it was not clear if this is due to increased sales or reduced costs. I suspect a bit of both.

The use of the term that Meridian "Disrupt" the market was in my opinion possibly disingenuous and inappropriate. Nothing is secret!

Just my interpretation of what I heard in the morning session but maybe influenced by my recent craniotomy.

I left feeling like a "Legacy Customer"

Comments welcome

Hector

Hi Hector

The presentation was not specific about support or Sooloos. In the Q&A afterwards, there was a discussion about the lack of consistent support. One of the things that came out was that Meridian would take support requests via email and Facebook and would respond within a reasonable time.

At least that was my take on it. If the forum wanted to make a point, I guess it (us) could log each support request that is made on the board via Facebook.

Cheers
Tom

I recently tried sending an e-mail to support@Meridian-public.com as suggested by the Meridian configuration application. After five days it was returned with a "Failed; 4.4.7 (delivery time expired)" message. I did not want to embarrass JB on the day so did not raise that example but perhaps he should eat his own dog food once in a while?

I think we would all be reasonably satisfied with an asynchronous, web-based support facility. Facebook is far to public a place for such things. There is of course an existing platform known to many Meridian owners and dealers which could be leveraged for that purpose...

Regarding RC and MQA co-existing, there was a hint that the licence granted by MQA to Meridian was very tight and that other licensees may have a less constraining contract enabling them to do more in the post MQA digital domain.

Thanks to Nick, who made that meeting possible, his allways great support-helping hands - and professional organization.
A big thanks to Rick not only for the invitation to the dinner,
but also to his outstanding support and open mind for both sides- Meridian and HH-
and to give both the best support.
And last but not least, to all nice HH , my staying at the meeting was as to meet old friends again. Thanks Chris, for the pictures from the the "equipment" ;-))

Iam in a greater hope now, that the future way of Merdian will get stronger focused to the "shiny" products, that we all (HH/ambassadors) have bought and made enable Meridian to sell the other product line from .
And hopefully, that M is not to shy to think over or better work together with Trinnov to satiesfied both pure audio freaks and cinema fans as try to cook their own soup in ranges where are they not up to date.
DSP presets like "Trifield"-"Music" and the beauty sound, together with multichannel MQA(where are the masters are MCh) and state of art room/equipment correction from Trinnov would be my personal dream.
All that can be done step by step in a way to not to dissapoint us and in a way not to buying endless upgrades and spending to much money.
Why not implement simply a network card in every high grade DSP with "RoonReady" sw where the "zones" or here the "speakers" are synchronized .There are free space for easy swap such a card in a 8k where now all the (unnecassary)
cables are connected...
We need more then "thoughts assumptions" between the spoken words from M at the meeting and M at all,
just "simply" produce upgradeable future proof product with open mind for that companies that doing some things much better.
A very positive example for doing that was buying Sooloos and making Roon and selling MQA.

Sounds like it was a great couple of days. I was sorry not to have been able
to attend but, alas, work would not permit.

A couple of things, having read the comments -

Firstly, I’m not surprised Rick and Co. at Audio Images have a lot of happy customers either, having been one of them for many years. It’s a mark of how good they are that I travel a large distance in order to continue to do business with them.

Secondly, I’m as keen as I’m sure everyone is for Meridian to flourish, but if you think this -



Is in any way as aesthetically cool as this -



You have a severe problem in your design department.

Don’t even get me started on how cool this is (even now) -



My take on the newer gear is that it might be technically brilliant, but it belongs only in hidden installations. At £750 people expect aesthetic appeal, not the assthetic appeal of a piece of office equipment.

Whilst I agree that the 218 is not as aesthetically beautiful as the earlier 200 series products – I think this misses the point. The new 218 is essentially a network device that is designed to be as small as possible and to be tucked away behind a TV etc.

If the 218 had a fancier case it would be a) larger and b) more expensive. I may be in the minority, however, I believe the 218 design is absolutely appropriate and very similar to existing, eg Netgear, Ethernet switches etc.

Perhaps the innards of the 218 could usefully appear in a later product that is designed for show – only Meridian can answer this. For the moment the 218 serves its purpose.

The Huntingdon meeting was the first time I had seen the 218 in the flesh – I was surprised at just how light it was.

John

No, that literally was my point, that it looks like a piece of office gear and can only be hidden away.

But, in context, it was a response to an earlier post with a comment from Meridian that they thought it looked cool (or words to that effect).

If it’s for installation purposes only, then fine, but it reinforces a fear among some that Meridian will only be focusing on that segment from now on.