Sony demonstrated a new rear projection LCD that should be coming out next year, very cool!
Kenwood demonstarted their new players. The 5700 should start shipping next week. Of course I have had one for a couple of weeks and we will post an update to the 2nd shootout soon. (after cedia)
Oh wait, you probably want Meridian news. Well, just paypal me some money and I will email that to you. (Just Kidding) The show floor was closed today as they are setting up. However I managed to bump into Duncan and Colin. Duncan was dressed up for the occasion. I think that was called british formal wear.
Bob was actually presenting a class on digital stuff. I would have sat in but I did last year and wanted to get over to the Kenwood event.
No real Meridian news today. I paid a visit but did not have time to see demo do to press conferences.
They now have 8ks in many colors. They had them all on display. They are $1k more than the black ones. Green, purple, red, yellow, blue, and black.
The press conference for them is tomorrow morning, so I will have something tomorrow night.
Dwin had a new DLP, the transvision 2. It is using the 1280x720 DLP with 6 element wheel. It has no digital keystone, it has a [censored] lens. Very cool idea. It should be out quarter one.
Sony showed off the superbit DVDs, very cool. They are the first to be encoded with a "seamless" layer break. This means no pause. I will for warn you that not all DVD player can do this and may crash. They did demo the difference between old and new Fifth element and Airforce one. The white gunk around letters was gone as was the I-frame pulsing with low bitrate scenes, and macroblocking in the background. They have half bitrate DTS and DD 448. When asked about full bitrate DTS, they explained that would have made the bitrate for the video content lower than the current DVDs. The original Fifth and Airforce one used 384 DD.
THX has a new program called Ultra 2. They now deal with multichannel music. They have also changed the layout for EX. The two rears are now placed side-by-side. (yes, next to each other.) There is some near boudary gain mode to remove boomy bass when speakers are placed close to the wall. (you can turn it on/off.) Pioneer has two ultra2 receivers coming.
There is the new buttkicker II. It is smaller, more powerful, more efficient, and cheaper! This one will fit in a 2x6 while the other required a 2x8.
Krell, EAD, Panasonic, and Kenwood have all said no when asked if they plan to support SACD. I will ask others tomorrow and post the results of that too.
Vigatec had their Dune processor connected to a G15 with ISCO anamorphic lens being fed by a PMDT with SDI output.
Got some good info today. I ran into a couple of hitchhikers today who were both very nice. Actually one I had met before. (hello Bill and Greg.)
-Meridian will NOT offer analog bypass. -No 500 series announced at cedia, looks like something may come at CES. However, perhaps some visiting hitchhikers will get something out of them tomorrow. -The upgrade will handle 8-channels at 96 kHz and all internal processing is 48-bit. That means you can upsample or feed native. -If you have the 800, you will also get upsampled DTS and DD. -It will decode PL II 2.0 and upsample to 96 kHz. -They have a new analog input card that is high quality It will process analog at 96 kHz 48-bit resolution. (you can get balanced or unbalanced.) -New multichannel digital input card. -New analog output cards. -Most current cards in 800/861 use through hole parts while new cards all use SMB. In theory, this will have lower noise throughout. -You can actually hookup 10 outputs with the upgrade but only 8 will be active at any one time. (you can switch between sides and height for 2+2+2 recordings)
At a future point (probably around 4.0) you will be able to add new processor cards. At this point they can support 12-channels of 192/24 (processed at 48-bit). 4.0 is probably a ways off.
It sounds like they are getting the new hardare out with new code. Once this is done, they can begin to take advantage of the new hardware.
For the demo they had 3 8ks up front, 2 8ks in the rear, two 5k5s on the side, and a pair of DSP 33s for height channels. The Chesky height stuff was pretty impressive. I want to play around with that more.
They played a nice selection of music though the deep purple was a little loud.
Thanks for your efforts. I'm just about to buy a load of Meridian kit and want to make sure I don't make a mistake, so I have a few areas I'd like to clarify if I may?:
1) No word on a street date, or price for the 598/564 then?
2) Will the 564 have a digital out for FM? Will it still include a DAC?
2) You say they will have a new analog input card (96 kHz 48-bit resolution). Presumably this will replace the IA00 (20bit?). Will it still have 6 pairs of RCA inputs?
3) You alse mention they will have a new analog output card. Presumably this will replace the OA02? If so I understand that the OA02 is 24/96, so what the difference with this new card?
4) Could you clarify what the difference is between the "through hole parts and SMB"? Are ALL of their cards upgraded to SMB then, or just these new cards?
5) What's the IE96 I've read on Jaco's post?
6) What will be Meridian's policy if people already have one of the current card generations, e.g. IA00, OA02 and want to upgrade to the new card (IA01???/OA03???) Will there be an upgrade price? If so what?
7) And finally...when are we likely to see these new cards/upgrades?
Many thanks once again. Hope you enjoy what's left of the show.
There is the new buttkicker II. It is smaller, more powerful, more efficient, and cheaper! This one will fit in a 2x6 while the other required a 2x8
Thanks Stacey. I'll have to give Marvin a call on Monday. This may be the time to purchase 4 new ones to replace the other 2 buttkickers. Headroom is nice to have on any device that pushes the extremes on occasion. I'll probably stack two on the left side of the plaform and two on the right (side by side) and in stereo. I wonder if they are shipping yet?
They are probably still 4 ohm loads, so it might be tough to get the bridged 2000 watt mono to drive a 2 ohm load properly. In general, I am anxious to discuss the physics with him. The Crown K2 amps are still the best way to go IMO, as they are fanless. I'll probably sell the Carvin's and grab a couple K2 amps. I need to look into the QSC Audio amps first to make a decision.
For those who don't know, Eminence Speaker Corp is the OEM for the Buttkicker.
On a further note, I'm a little weary about the new one. I was just thinking about what you just said. Physics dictates that the decrease in size and increase in efficiency may indeed change the resonance frequency. You don't get something for nothing. Hoffman's Iron law for subwoofers applies to tactile transducers. Something tells me that since the efficiency is increased and they are smaller, they probably have a much higher resonance frequency. This means they might have traded off some deep bass extension capability. I am not going to be quick to jump just yet. The smaller size itself is inconsequential and not of benefit to me. I will probably make my next platform in the future closer to 12 inches high instead of the current 9.5 inches in height.
Sony should have not used half-rate DTS. glad they bumped DD up to 448kbps. They should have used full rate DTS with a DD 2.0 track or no DTS at all. That's my opinion of course. I don't believe that they would have had less video headroom using DTS at 1.4 mbps simply because All my sources said the original Fifth used 5 Mbps video at peak rate. Using full rate DTS should still allow them to increase the peak video bit rate to 8.0 Mbps. In any case, since they are not using full rate DTS, I would have preferred just a 448 DD track assuming they can get the mix flags correct. Warner can't seem to get a clue these days. It doesn't suprize me that Warner DVDs don't use the proper mix flags. In any case, Superbit DVDs are an improvement and hopefully we can see more such DVDs.
Wonder how the 800 will handle seamless layer change? Nothing a software update can't handle in the worst case scenerio.
[This message has been edited by Health Nut (edited 09-09-2001).]
THX has a new program called Ultra 2. They now deal with multichannel music. They have also changed the layout for EX. The two rears are now placed side-by-side. (yes, next to each other.) There is some near boudary gain mode to remove boomy bass when speakers are placed close to the wall. (you can turn it on/off.) Pioneer has two ultra2 receivers coming.
I still think Meridian 7.1 is superior to any 6.1 format that Hollywood has implemented. I am still not quite sure of the psychoacoustic advantages/disadvantage of a single discrete rear center speaker because of conflicting information. I refuse to lose stereo surrounds, and now I'm not currently convinced that any rear center channel is advantageous, unless there was some way to preserve the discrete stereo surrounds. I very much enjoy when something can fade off into the rear left, or rear right of the room such as the case with 5.1 or Meridian 7.1. Every 6.1 setup seems to involve overuseage of the rear center channel. Further, dual mono surrounds is not acceptable. I believe dual mono surrounds (EX/ES/EZ) can be perceived as better because you get MORE surround, but I refuse to give up the wonderful fade effect present with 5.1 or 7.1 discrete stereo surrounds. I have been harping on getting support for a single discrete center channel for a while now, but I see now proper implementation without ruining the wonderful discrete stereo capabilty present in 5.1 or Meridian 7.1.
THX and multichannel music? Like I am going to change my speaker configuration to comply with EX? OH PLEASE! Do they really think anyone upgrading to DVD-Audio and actually concerned with EX? I must be missing something. They seem to be making a cheesy, futile attempt at making compatable speaker placements for EX and multichannel music. They must have lost their minds. Did they ever think about coming out with something better than EX? Oh the horror.... If only commercial theaters could be more easilty upgraded to new formats, or if the home market could get its own format and mixes.
Any word on when the new cards for the 800/861 will be available? Can the dealer do all of the upgrading without having to ship the unit to Meridian--That would certianly be more time and cost effective.
What was the deal with the room correction card again?
[This message has been edited by Health Nut (edited 09-09-2001).]
"4) Could you clarify what the difference is between the "through hole parts and SMB"? Are ALL of their cards upgraded to SMB then, or just these new cards?"
I think Stacey means "SMT", surface-mount technology, where parts have extremely short leads --- basically solder pads instead of leads on the component. Look inside your PC, and virtually everything is SMT. Through-hole is where parts have leads coming out, and you need to drill a hole, and plate the hole all the way through to mount and solder the component to the board. The advantage of SMT is reduced parasitic effects, especially inductance, due to the leads, and the ability to put components closer, thereby reducing the parasitic effects of the circuit board traces as well. SMT construction is necessary, along with multi-layer printed circuit boards, to control high-speed currents and RF noise within a design. SMT has been used for high-speed electronics outside of audio for quite a while. The cost of doing SMT can be lower than a through-hole design, and there's really no reason other than ignorance not to do an SMT design. You may be wondering where the high-speed signals are in audio to benefit from SMT --- any DAC has to transmit square waves in excess of dozens of megahertz, if not for the bit rate, then the harmonics of the square wave. Combine this in a chassis with analog signals (like a DAC), and you need to be very careful in design to control the noise pollution between the digital and analog sides. SMT makes this easier to do.
I'm quite surprised it's taken Meridian this long to do this. If you look at well-designed audio equipment, like the TAG McLaren AV32R or Wadia CD players and DACs, they've been using SMT since the beginning.
Sony should have not used half-rate DTS. glad they bumped DD up to 448kbps. They should have used full rate DTS with a DD 2.0 track or no DTS at all. That's my opinion of course.
Gary Reber, the biggest DTS supporter, is the one who asked the question about half bitrate. The head of Sony's DVD authoring group is one smart guy, they do have the highest quality DVDs, and after his answer, Gary did not go any further. However I agree, they should have just dropped the DTS track. ;-) At any rate, when you use full rate, it takes up a lot more storage space on the disc. They are already spreading across two layers and unless you want to have a flipper or two dics, you hurt the video. You can probably email Sony and get a better answer.
Is the 564 the DAB? This is not a product for the US market so it was not shown.
Meridian also introduced a new 2-channel amplifier that is based on the same design as those found in the DSP 8000. A new CD player, the 507, was also introduced.
Yes, SMT not SMB. Guess I should stop making posts in the early AM with only a few hours of sleep each night. Thank you Andrew.
I believe they used a combo of SMT and through-hole in the past, but the new cards looked to be 100% SMT. I would have to look at some of the cards again.
yes, the 568 will get the same processing power as the 800. however, it will probably only be fitted with one card. (the 861 can support up to 8)
This release is really the plumbing for things to come.
The new analog output cards will have 192 kHz DACs. I do not believe they are required for DVD-A.
I think they plan to keep the IA40 and also offer the new IA4n's. The IA40 has two 6-channel inputs the new cards only have have 6-channel input. They removed the switching to keep the card as clean as possible. The IA00 will probably also remain current for normal sources.
Jaco was absent today. Hey Jaco, I hear had four virtual tickets.
The IE96 was a prototype card. I don't believe the new card uses that same number. They new digital input card has 6 s/pdifs. You can do two multi channel inputs, three single inputs and one multichannel input, or 6 single inputs.
Quote
This may be the time to purchase 4 new ones to replace the other 2 buttkickers.
Dude, your a freak! I will probably just get two, but if you are getting four, I will get eight! LOL. What are your thoughts on top mounting, so I can have a lower base, vs. mounting under a base. I will probably get two of them shortly.
They don't take back old cards. They may have some type of package to purchase the inputs/outputs, but no final pricing was done. They also said it should all be out before years end. That sounds like within the next 90 days. Again, no exact date was given.
598 will come after, after. Once they get the 800 out, they can then finalize the 500 series stuff.
Looks like PlatoonSgt will get his DTS soon.
And no Jerry, I did not have to take the stand.
BTW George, they did find it amusing that Meridian is a junior member of the Hitchhikers forum.
Frank should be posting the full details from the event since Jaco flaked out.
I had mentioned no analog bypass prior as a no go, I forgot to mention that SACD is a no go too. This should come to no suprise, well except for maybe one or two.
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