I believe that the 561 suffers the same fate as the 565 - it is not economically feasable to upgrade it from a hardware standpoint. It does not have a processor upgrade slot and has the 20-bit DACs which together are not going to let you do the things that can be done with either the current or upgraded 568. I know that this is a sore spot with many 561 owners. It does have the advantage over the 565 that it can be upgraded to DPLII via software. Meridian reiterated that they would not be providing DPLII for the 565. As I recall, one of the Meridian team said the 565 had insufficent memory to handle the processing.

I do not recall the 561 being displayed at CEDIA (they had just about everything else), but it was listed in Andrew's presentation as Meridian's entry level processor.

[This message has been edited by Frank (edited 09-10-2001).]

561, DSP5500s, DSP5000C, analog sides and rears