Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Streaming Meridian 210 Streamer - Released!

I'm currently playing music located on a USB stick, plugged into the USB port on a 210, through some DSP speakers ... and at the same time playing different music, from the same USB stick plugged into the 210, on my Android phone speaker.

Control from the PlugPlayer app on the Android phone.

No other core or server necessary.

The 210 works as a stand-alone UPnP Media Server and Media Player.
It is shown under both device types in the PlugPlayer app.
For it to work as a server the music storage must be connected to the 210 USB input, it can't be on a NAS or other network storage device.

Would you like to buy one!?

Rick

I have already: it’s on its way to me.

So the 210 is a full UPnP server when a hard drive or USB stick is connected to it and UPnP endpoint if your music is on a NAS (most of which could run as a UPnP server) that’s great Rick, thanks very much for the clarification.

My initial use of Meridian 210. With the 210 connected to my 218, I hooked-up a spare Toshiba portable USB HDD to the 210, which contained my music library. My comments relate to using an iPad.

By experimentation, I spent several hours downloading and evaluating multiple iOS UPnP apps. First conclusion, Linn Kazoo doesn’t work at all with the 210. However, the freely available Arcam Music Life does. PlugPlayer is no longer available in iOS.

The most satisfying app is ‘mcontrol’ (iOS and Android). This is my recommended app. It’s intuitive interface easily facilitates choosing the Meridian 210 as the audio output, and my HDD as the music source. On playing a given track the album artwork is displayed on my iPad. Volume control of the 210 is available within the app while playing any given track. The one app will stream to multiple audio output zones.

Standard and HD versions of mcontrol are available: the former works in portrait mode and the latter in landscape orientation. On the developer’s website, the impression is that mcontrol is intended for their own hardware. Nonetheless, it fully works with the Meridian 210. It equally works on my iPad and iPhone.

The mcontrol app enables Tidal, Spotify, Deezer, and Qobuz connectivity. Plus, it connects to Dropbox, OneDrive, iCloud - and v.Tuner.

The developer also offers ‘mconnect’ - in Lite, Standard, and HD versions. The first is free, limited and advertisement supported, and doesn’t show album artwork. The others are paid-for apps. All three are restricted to Tidal and Qobuz connectivity - but still support Dropbox, OneDrive, and iCloud.

Within the settings pane of the Meridian IP app (for the 218), entering ‘mcontrol://‘ in the app switching URL window enables changing over to mcontrol. In this respect, to maintain the landscape viewing of 218, one might prefer installing the HD version of mcontrol or mconnect.

Even so, while I’m very grateful for mcontrol, I do believe it shortsighted of Meridian not to include this kind of UPnP functionality within their own 210 control app.

Alright, feedback on 210 in regards of connecting it to an F80.

It works, next step is to do remote control in a somewhat streamlined way I haven't gotten around to yet. I just wanted to state how I connected it to an F80 and let a TV with optical out be a source over the SL input to a 210 with the help of a reviver and a couple of optical converters.


TV optical out -> ifi SPDIF ipurifier optical in-coax out -> RCA female-RCA female adapter -> Reviver coax input-SL output -> 210 SL input-coax output -> RCA male-RCA male shortlength cable -> ifi SPDIF ipurifier coax in-optical out -> F80 optical in.

Configuration:
non-MHR setup (Non Meridian Equipment) in 210 BT Control app.

Technical Feedback:
1. 210 Won't join a wifi 6 asus AX88 router on 5GHz band, just using the 2.4GHz band for now until Meridian fix 5GHz connectivity on wifi 6.
2. iPhone does not show a BT output on the phone running the Meridian Control app. I can stream BT from another phone but not the same phone running the 210 app.
3. BT connectivity might be a bit "flimsy" compared to an LG PK7, I haven't tested if this is because of too small BT buffers or weak signal. But I triggered it on an iPad air 2 just by rotating the screen from wide to portrait while streaming Tidal to BT on 210. I haven't checked if 210 uses AAC codec over BT (correct) when connected to an iPhone/iPad or if it uses SBC.
4. Digital attenuation or compression on BT input? Measurements needed..
5.

BT sound into an F80? Early days and not everything physically setup tidy behind TV screen but it does not sound not like normal BT sound. More like music, maybe a bit polite and smoother, therefore perhaps my concern about possible digital attenuation or codecs used. But I see this as early days and everything can get better, resilient and more tweaked. Especially with a few informed feedbacks to/from Meridian.

From your feedback...

I tried Bluetooth connection on my iPhoneSE, streaming to the 210: it works, no problem.

Via Bluetooth, I successfully streamed Spotify and iTunes content from my iPhone. No problems encountered.

As for Wi-Fi streaming, you need a UPnP capable app - such as ‘mcontrol’ (free) on iOS or Android.

The issue was with having the 210 Control app running then starting a BT stream from the same phone. Did not work yesterday at least.

Forgive me stating the obvious: within the Meridian Control app; did you pair your phone with the app?

That is, it’s not sufficient to pair your phone with the Meridian 210 solely in your phone’s settings - without then doing the same within the app’s configuration page.

I was pressed on time so maybe it was a mistake on my part then.

I have to say that the BT sound is really good. Did expect it to do it right but it's much better flow than I thought BT could have on the subjective side of things.

From the user manual; if you’re streaming Spotify via Bluetooth from your phone, for example, the 210 is actually making a direct connection to Spotify (rather than your phone).

Cool, using Tidal here for reference.

On your Tidal phone app, are you able to choose the 210 as the output device (as you can in Spotify)?