Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Meridian UHD722 Trade-up promotion announced

It sounds like it wouldn't compromise your system but for me and I expect a number of people that have bought into the Meridian philosophy, will feel that it is a compromise. If your preference is video rather than music then it may be less important.

This exert is from meridian-digital-signal-processing-dsp-path-white-paper

Digital audio technology is now widely regarded by industry experts as the best means to hear music in the home. Because music recorded digitally can be transmitted, even over long distances, and played back with no change from the original, like Morse code over a telegraph line.

Why is this important? Traditional analogue systems behave much like the childhood game in which each player repeats a whispered message into the next player’s ear, and so on down a chain. Each analogue link – turntable, amplifier, cable, speaker – whispers an analogy of what it hears to the next, but something is always lost or added. What emerges at the end, while charming, may not resemble the original message.

By contrast, digital audio first encodes music as digits – ones and zeros – in patterns describing specific sound waves. This is the binary language of computers, and it’s very difficult to mistake a one for a zero. No matter how long the chain, at its end, digital equipment listens only for patterns of those two digits, which it reassembles into music, ignoring all other whispered information as noise. Hence the crystal clarity of good digital sound: no detail lost, no noise added.

Paramount among audiophile truths is that music’s electronic journey to our ears should be as short and unadorned as possible; this preserves the fragile nuances of live performance. This is why, for example, audiophiles have long rejected analogue tone controls, correctly seeing them as electrical mazes where musical subtleties are lost or rearranged.

Yet the typical ‘purist hi-fi’ is hardly pure. Rather, it’s a confusion of components with varying reactive properties, tangled together through a rat’s nest of electrically whimsical cables. Each piece lengthens the path and damages delicate harmonic, phase and other relationships that contour music. The amusing irony is, these boxes and cables are generally assembled for tone control: each piece chosen for how its voice changes the message. Why not simply replace the whole corrupt chain with one transparent digital link, particularly if the music source is digital already?

At Meridian, that’s exactly what we did. In essence, we decided to convert the signal from a source into digital form as early as possible and at the highest level of quality (if it wasn’t already), then maintain that signal in digital form as long as possible before converting back to analogue (although the part of our hearing system from middle ear to brain is actually digital, analogue pressure waves carry the sound from a loudspeaker, through the air, to the ear). So in a complete Meridian system, the signal is only converted from digital to analogue immediately before it enters the amplifier.

Cheers
Tom

The problem is Tom, Meridian's tight lipped approach to future products and where that leaves customers with a rather sizeable investment, starts to get seriously frustrating.
Many of us can only afford to move to the next item if the last one still has some decent value on the used market, currently the lack of confidence is seeing much of the Meridian product almost worthless.

Not sure if you were talking about the Tidal subscriptions?
But I was never knocking Tidal or Roon, far from it, I love them and happy to pay for it, my concern was, after buying some kit and using 'other' hifi forums I soon realised that I am a minority, many are not happy to pay for Roon or even pay for Tidal to get lossless. I was amazed at this.

I didn't realise the 271 was £1500, that is actually quite a keen price. Like you though I much prefer to keep it all digital, so prefer the idea of an HD722, although... having said that, when I got the HD621 I actually preferred the sound into my G68 via the analogue out of my Denon player over going digital-HD621-G68.
But, I would want to hear if there was any loss going from another brands pre out into a 271. My gut feeling is a little bit of the Meridian magic would be lost?

Did anyone manage to find out the spec of the HDMI inputs/outputs? Are they 2.0 or will they be the newly released 2.1?

Hi Guy

I can understand that frustration and no not a reference to your Tidal comments. If you go on the Roon forum every day someone says something like 'I can't believe Chromecast is not supported, I will be demanding my money back' or making the play button larger will push me into buying a lifetime subscription etc. After a while it starts to feel like the spoilt kid at school that threatens to go home if he doesn't get his way whilst not realising that nobody gives a [censored] if they go! (Not that I thought this of Anthony, just got me in a grump)

Cheers
Tom

Haha, "play button bigger".

I don't need to be patronised thanks. I bought into the Meridian ideology so don't need to be sold it. I already have it.

The fact that the 271 exists and has analogue inputs says much. I would rather an all digital solution but that is not exactly comparable in terms of costs and so is not affordable. So where is the compromise in the real world? I would suggest that aside from the obvious theoretical, which may or may not translate into something tangible in the real world, that any perceived compromise is just that until one can directly compare the two solutions. Has anybody outside of Meridian and maybe a few select partners/individuals done that?

I certainly have not but I am not naive enough to think that the G61RSL is so fantastic that any compromises caused by a DA/AD can't be made up for by other things in the system. Technology moves on and the G61RSL probably can't be considered either state of the art or class leading anymore. If there is a compromise then maybe it is more of an issue with an 861? Then again in 861 territory I wouldn't be considering a Marantz....

As it stands there are 5 options as I see it:

1. Keep things as they are.
2. Make HDMI 2.0 / 4K sources work with the G61RSL and forgo the audio formats that they bring in which case I can it much cheaper than a UHD722 unless I don't have an HD621 which I, and I suspect most other Meridian processor owners, do.
3. Put the UHD722 cost into an analogue 'compromised' 271 solution but gain lots of functionality if nothing else.
4. Put the UHD722 into a digital solution.
5. Move away from Meridian altogether.

If I want 3D audio then only options 3-5 are in the running. 4 is too expensive and 5 is undesirable which leaves option 3. What are the real world compromises with this? I doubt many can answer with experience including me but I suspect they are less than some would think and I lose nothing by having a listen. In any case this is way off the point now so I will stop but I still contend that the UHD722 looks damn expensive when the practical alternatives are considered. Like I said I can do similar UHD722 functionality much cheaper but if I want to spend that kind of money then a 271 opens up a world of 3D audio and is a different beast altogether. Why would I spend the money on a UHD722 to be constrained by my legacy EoL processor with its support of legacy formats? Lets be honest here when to get things like MQA I have to bypass it altogether I have to question its future so why would I want to buy into a UHD722 at the cost that it is just to try and keep it going a little longer? If I am happy to be stuck in a non 3D audio world my outlook might be different......

Many thanks,

Anthony.

Anthony

Apologies again if you feel patronised that wasn't my intention. When you questioned the compromise I thought it would be easier to make my point by quoting the paper. As I said I don't think it will be a compromise to your system as it seems that your priorities are different to mine. I am not interested in 3D sound and I'm not certain that all potential UHD722 customers are either. I wouldn't read to much into the 271 having analogue inputs - these would have been primarily added for compatibility issues rather than to give the customer the option to take an analogue connection from a device that also has a digital one.

Maybe others will chip in.

Cheers
Tom

If we take the heat out of this conversation (God help us), it's a great example of us all having different priorities for our systems.

For my purposes:
1. When watching video, I'm currently 100% happy with the sound quality I get out of my system, and am not concerned about a lack of support for the newer formats. They might very well offer greater emotional engagement, but I don't feel a lack in that currently, so I'd welcome new formats, but won't be concerned if they don't arrive for a very long (i.e. typically M frame) period.

2. For music, I feel like we are still lightyears away from fully engaging home reproduction, with MQA being a very bright light that we're just beginning to benefit from. For me, gizzE's comment about M's silence really hits home as MQA support for the 861 is where I need M to go to make the platform worthwhile for the long term.

Regarding the above discussion, I'm not clear why you would need the 722 if going down the 271 route. Surely you would partner the 271 with a processor which has all the functionality of the 722? I am surprised at the cost of the 722 given how little it does - you could get a Lumagen Pro model for not much more.

Edit: Sorry, I misread your post - I missed the 'cost' bit

The 271 has analogue inputs because the vast majority of partner processors don't have digital outputs. FWIW, in the instances where I have added an A-D conversion in the chain, I found the SQ impact to be negligible.

I'd quite like to know if Meridian is doing any analysis of the analogue inputs (e.g. noise floor detection to recognize the (off-the-shelf) DAC used) to correct for that when re-digitizing. After all, they are very much the experts in this area. If they are, they should publish that info!

It amazes me sometimes that some may feel hard done by the cost of the upgrade by comparing it with cheaper available alternatives, yet at other times they may have justified their choices of high end products based on sometimes marginal sound quality improvements.

The only investment in Meridian audio products is the time and emotion in getting it setup, looking nice and sounding in a way to justify the financial expense - you cannot even justify the looking nice with some kit now unless you install it neatly out of sight. Anything monetary should be treated as if throwing it down a wishing well.

The big difference though was, we paid Meridian money to be at the forefront of digital technology, it was a price you paid if you wanted to be at the cutting edge.

Now we are paying for...........?


I'm not saying we are not getting something special, just that it would be nice if they told us we were or not.