Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems CD to test amps and sepakers?

Hi Sanjay,

I am not an expert on sound or technical terms! But I will try to explain my experience so far with Meridian, B&W and Classe, Rotel equipment.

I am very much happy with my current system, could it be better? Sure it could be.!! How much and how? Well I would say that maybe 30% more with room acoustic treatment (around �1000?) and improvement in the power supply quality (�1000 for my HiFi system) and after that not more than 10% with more power in the amps.

Let me explain why. When I listened the 802Ds with Classe (CDP-100 CD Player, CP-500 Preamplifier, 2x CA--M400 Amps -400w/ch-(1 for each speaker 802D Bi-wired) and with Meridian (G08 CD player, G02 Controller and 2x G57 Amps -200w/ch(1 for each speaker 802D Bi-wired)I chose Meridian.

The reason is that I felt much more “liveliness”, more precision of the instruments, more resolution in the whole system. This is important because the Classe Amps have 200 watts more than the Meridian but in terms of sound, musicality, coherence, it is much better M. Then I tried the Meridian G57 amps in bridge mode and now I had 650w/ch at 8 ohms! They still were much better than Classe but, but they lost a bit of resolution and imaging. More bass (powerful) but not better (fast, deep).

After all that, I tried bi-amped. Now I can say that the best result was when I bi-amped my speakers with 2x Meridian G57 in normal mode (not bridged). This is my current set up. One channel to run LF and another channel to run HF in each speaker. Yes I`[ve got very clean, fast, deep bass.

200w/ch bi-ampying sounded much better that 650w/ch bi-wiring or 200 w/ch bi-wiring.

However, I wonder how would be teh effects of 2 additional Meridian G57 in bridge mode and bi-ampying to use 2 amps per speaker!!

Well, I supposed that the 800Ds would have much better bass that my 802D, but I think that with room acoustic treatment and better power supply will be cheaper and will give similar results, (all around �2.0K against �6 or 7K more for a pair of 800D!!).

I would say that in your upgrade from N804 you will notice a much better bass. Running a pair of 802D with 1x G57 is not the best given, as you say, the 3 ohms impedance. The amps will struggle so much, will heat and get so problems at high SPL. I appreciate that you will still gain a lot of bass with the 802D comparing to your current N804.

The bottom line is, I can live with Meridian 200w/ch per channel by-ampying a 802D speaker. This is a personal taste and opinion resulting of many months of tests in my particular room, however, I do not see many rooms different to mine!

Rgs

Jose