I've used hifi equipment from most of the major suppliers at the budget end of the market (arcam, kef, b&w, mission, rotel, marantz) and over the years refined the systems to my preferences and ears.

As I moved from low to mid-fi I demo'd lots of 'hi-fi' (the likes of Sonus Faber, Mark Levinson, AVI, Conrad-Johnson, etc etc) and found that very similar performance could be had at the mid-fi level (law of dimishing returns and all that). However the speakers remained the element which showed-up the most when compromising on price/performance (as every unit ultimately is, it just depends on your preferences) and - in defining the benchmarks for speakers the route towards active, then digital - seemed to always head in the direction of Meridian.

Meanwhile I moved into the world of 5.1 AV and demo'd alot of processors and found most of them wanting (sorry but Tag, Lexicon and Theta all give me a hard 'digital' edge) but the Meridian units were head-&-shoulders-better (and still are to my mind) the only ones with an almost 'analogue' sound to their processing. I therefore went for the 562v/565 combo and haven't regretted it for a moment.

The same couldn't be said of the Meridian speakers (dsp5k) which I eventually bought. Despite them being what I had always wanted (and the reason I demo'd their processors) I could only live with them for a year. The slam, impact, bass, and POWER were all there in abundance but I missed the high frequency detail, soundstaging and sense of 'space' I had become accustomed to from my 'hi-end' listening. I therefore returned to analogue for the amp/speaker combo (in my case rotel/martin logan's with a view to going bryston eventually) and the difference was night-and-day.

With that caveat - ie.Meridian SPEAKERS are not necessarily as good as other equipment in their price bracket - I would say that their processors remain the VERY BEST available on the market, and their transports are definitely up there AMONG the best.

Happy listening !

[This message has been edited by ijw (edited 05-11-2001).]