I was getting ready to listen to a CD last night, going through my usual ritual of determining which setting - Stereo, Trifield or Music - sounded best for the particular recording, when it dawned on me how much we take for granted.

It's hard to imagine just how brilliant Bob Stuart and his colleagues at Meridian are - first to understand psychoacoustics, second to figure out how to apply the scientific principals to develop a methodology for taking a two channel analog or digital source, and extract and rearrange the information in a manner which enhances the sense of "being there", and third to design and implement the technology in a 12" x 12" black box (at least for us 500 series owners) with six or eight buttons, so all we have to do is press Source, Preset, Play and Volume, and then sit back and enjoy it.

I'm for one am willing to cut them a little slack if the remote is a little quirky.

561, DSP5500s, DSP5000C, analog sides and rears