From a theoretical standpoint, I believe Meridian has the right approach with keeping the DAC and amplifers as close as possible to the speakers.

As a practical matter, however, by making the DACs internal, the cost to upgrade is increased. The cost to upgrade even the lowly DSP5000 to 24-bit status is $1595 per pair. Owners incurred similar costs when they upgraded to 20-bit status a couple of years ago, so they get tagged twice. And of course you need to do the upgrade if you want to take advantage of 568 upsampling. So instead of just buying a 568, you have to buy a 568, plus upgrade your speakers, and if you want three channel upsampling (and who doesn't - heck we're complaining there's not upsampling for the rears due to inadequate DSP horsepower), you have to upgrade your center channel as well at another $795 a pop. So to take advantage of one of the primary benefits of the 568, you have to cough up $2390 on top of the $5995 you spent on the 568. Meanwhile, the 24-bit DACs in your 568 sit idle. If you had analog amps and speakers, no additional cost would be involved.

That aside, each manufacture voices its speakers differently. Listen to twenty speakers and none sound the same. I'd much rather audition them and find one that suits me. I find the Meridian forward, certainly dynamic, but forward; I prefer something a little more laid back. To each his own.

Meridian extols the virtue of a single digital cable carrying the signal instead of a "rat's nest" of electically dissimilar cables, and in its literature makes fun of audiophles who use cables as tone controls. Did you ever notice that Meridian uses Transparent digital cables at its demonstrations at the major shows. I wonder why they don't use the stock cable they include with their products in the demonstations. Perhaps they think that cables do make a diference.

So for me, it's not entirely a lovefest. I am quite enamored of their electronic though. :-)

561, DSP5500s, DSP5000C, analog sides and rears