Hey, it's me again.

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.

Stacey Spears
Co-Creator, Spears & Munsil High Definition Benchmark, Blu-ray Edition and Lighthouses of the Pacific Northwest.