Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion HiFi & HT Chat Kef vs Meridian

My bad, it was LS50 Wireless II + KC62 sub I heard, not the passive LS50. That and the LS60.

I would not trade even a legacy Meridian speaker for either.

8KSE are probably a very hard speaker to beat for all round performance.

I think you can go for a different “flavour” without necessarily being better…

No Contest, M still rules.
Kefridian is a mute point.

Hector

Nice to see this old thread of mine generated some interesting comments. I have a pair of the LS50 Wireless speakers which I enjoy, streaming to them from a HD / Roon setup. I find them excellent on vocals and they're surprisingly meaty, given their size, but they now operate (in our new home) in quite a large space & they struggle slightly at high volume with challenging material. I suppose I could add a sub or two, or replace them with some 7200s or something but then I'd lose the excellent connectivity that comes with more modern active speakers.

I found even my 3100s bested them, 7200s are on a different planet.

If the budget for a pair of 7200s aren’t a problem, that’s a no-brainer. Just add a 210, or another add-on streamer, to put back the modern connectivity… in fact, a point against solutions like the Kef Wireless, having such protocols built into the speakers themselves, was a negative to me - these things progress fast, and often require FW upgrades. You never know what’s around the corner with the first, or how long a manufacturer will continue to provide the latter.

On a lower budget, you might just pick up some 5200s, or a decent pair of legacy DSPs + 210…

Thanks for the thoughts. Another factor, for me, is that they operate in the main living area & their uncluttered appearance gives the KEFs a high WAF which 7200s would also do but adding separate boxes might be a tough ask. Unless I could tuck a 210 in a drawer or something.

You have to sink alot of money into high end electronics to make Kefs sound anything close to Meridian. And I am a Kef dealer. As Meridian fans, we know that DSP speakers punch well above their weight class when compared to a similar sized passive speakers.

Bruce, that is a really good point which often seems overlooked when discussing Meridian DSPs - the value proposition.

I explore going passive again, occasionally, and there are speakers out there I like (different flavour, not better overall) but every time I’m struck by the level, and cost, of sources and amps needed to bring the passives up to a performance level I would be happy with after years of Meridian DSP ownership.

The last instance, I would have wanted at least a DCS Rossini and a MacIntosh pre/power to feed the passives. The cost of the electronics alone (without the speakers) would have been nearly £10,000 more than 7200SE and almost 4x the cost of 5200SE… I owned 7200.2 at the time and they were better than the passives anyway.

Also, the above was for a simple 2-way speaker with a single stereo amp. If one were to multi-amp, as in a DSP, costs would quickly skyrocket to 8000 territory or beyond…

Alot of people don't get the value proposition of Meridian until it is laid out for them. Otherwise they are perceived as very expensive speakers. With the IA21 analog input module, it makes even more sense.

Hi Bruce,

Sorry, but I hate to ask ...

I can appreciate the value proposition for a pair of Meridian speakers generally, but I'm not sure how the IA21 module fits in as it's only of use on the two most expensive Meridian speakers.

Given that the IA21 feeds mono into a single XE speaker I can't see how an IA21 option would/could apply to the other DSP speakers, given that they in turn are based around operating as part of a DSP speaker pair.

Brian

The IA21 should be able to be used with any speakerlink speaker once the module is available separately. One per speaker, signal sensing turns the speaker on and off. Beauty of it is that it allows the DSP speaker to be used with a analog preamp or output from a high end DAC which opens up DSP speaker use in more systems.