Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Would you buy a high-end CDP now?

have a read here

http://forums.slimdevices.com/index.php

Good question. I take the view that its a whole system. So you have got to realize I have a big investment into DSP speakers and the 861 processor. I'm not looking to replace the 800 today, but lets say I laid out my dream system today- what would it be. It would be the same DSP speakers and the same sound processor (861). I would want a projector that does 2.35:1 playback without sacrificing resolution and that does not cost $250k and that allows for flexibility in placement. Given the total coin being spent I would seriously consider the Kalidescape system. The flip side is I would go with a good DVD video player with digital output. Im not so sure whats the best out there because Ive stopped actively looking.

In the end though, when I consider the system I have, Im very happy with it, very happy and I have no regrets on the 800. But to advise today, well, I think you have to have special circumstances to make the 800 make sense.

best regards,
Jerry

Meridian must be having a fit right now. Time to come up with some new ideas folks - selling transports is only going to get harder, and selling processors will start to get a lot more difficult too.

Hi all,

I just wanted to add my opinion here and throw a few other things into the mix. The truth is that one isn`t necessarily better then the other. Maybe sonically, but it is still a matter of opinion based on what you deem an essential part of your setup. It is and will always be a personal opinion. If you are looking for the best end all solution period you need to actually implement both. Please read on and hopefully this will help your decision and enlighten you on a few other things as well.

I have run an 800/861 for years with active ATC speakers. I drool every time I watch a movie or listen to a CD. It is truly that good. However, now I have put a MAC into the equation and I love it very much. I love the convenience of having all of my music accessible in the snap of a finger. There are times you actually think, hmm I would like to hear this old CD but you do not feel like getting up and going to the case or shelf and trying to find it. No problem, with the MAC (Squeezebox included) that is fixed for a very small investment. Especially when considering the amount of $$ it costs for an 800/808 fully loaded. What a joy it is to be able to sit with a friend and randomly go through old CD's etc from our childhood days. I listen to music for enjoyment. My Meridian system brings me a very true feeling of serenity when needed. It can also lift me up and have me screaming for more within 10 seconds of an old track I haven't heard in years. The only problem is when the only thing you have is a transport you do not have the ability to "easily" jump around and instantly access any and all of your musical library. Does this matter to you? It matters to me. Now on to sound quality...

I have listened to the voices of the forum over time discussing the idea of a Squeezebox system (or other comparable solution) to replace or run in conjunction with a current audiophile level setup. Let me recap how some things work so we can get right into the goods. When you put in your CD into the transport and push play (any manufacturer, not just Meridian) the first thing you are essentially asking the transport to do is read the surface of the disk (which contains nothing but 0s and 1s). Now, of course the better the disc drive in the transport typically the better the laser pickup will be. This is important when dealing with scratches and blemishes as well as just plain ole being able to extract “exactly” what is on the disc without missing any bits. Any miss in bits and you have loss of quality etc, period. Once this happens the transport has to do something with this buffering and streaming data. Are you having the D/A handled in the transport? If so it pipes out the analog outputs. Unless you have a world class transport like an 800 you most probably would not be using this feature. Of course if you had a non Meridian transport dedicated DVD-A or SACD unit then for playback of those formats you will not have a choice but to use the analog outputs unless you are specifically using a matching transport and processor in which the company has developed a proprietary protection of some sort in the digital domain (Theta, Meridian etc). Perhaps you choose to use the digital output into an external DAC, Processor or Preamp. Now we need to begin to worry about “Jitter”. Jitter is basically the latency of packets (1`s and 0`s) from a device such as our transports to a DAC, processor or preamp. So essentially if the transport is cheap and can`t read very well into the sectors of a CD/DVD or encounters an issue reading a particular place on the surface it will cause a brief moment of either packet loss or delayed packet arrival at the preamp/processor. If it is serious enough you could quite literally hear a total loss of sound for a moment or a “blip” as we most often call it. Jitter is the devil to audio signals and is a very real and living thing within your system unless you have taken measure to get rid of it. If you are living with it and you don`t even know it but still love the way your system sounds, you would be amazed how much better it would sound if you were to invest in a way to remove jitter from your system entirely. Imagine you are an 861 and responsible for processing, decoding, and projecting the final image of the sound field to the speakers in a real-time based event. It would be very very difficult for you to do your job if the man passing you the information is hesitating and failing to give you the information you need in a timely fashion or at all for that matter if there is packet loss. Meridian has almost completely solved this between their units but you must be mated with another Meridian partner. They call this MHR. This protocol allows them to not only send almost 100% complete jitter free packets to a Meridian processor like the 861 but being that it is a proprietary protocol they can legally pass all information from the transport to the processor without any loss of resolution or down sampling. We see this in our 800`s or G98`s etc pushing full 24/96 information to a Meridian processor without worries and legality issues of copyright laws (it will be so nice once the world decides on one standard for this as well to add to the middle of a format war). So if you are asking yourself, why does my Meridian transport always seem to sound better then this or that other transport combo etc? These are some of the most significant reasons. They read near flawlessly in the transport at full resolution and are able to send the packets unaltered and almost completely jitter free to the processor. This is a major necessity to even be a competitor in the world top notch player arena. You even have the ability to have the Meridian transport up-sample the track from 44.1 to 88.2k and send it over the MHR connection adding even more space and depth, realism and quality to the overall sound. This also applies to movies when in a dual relationship Meridian setup.

If I were dealing with a system that was not a matched partner (pioneer transport to Meridian processor or theta transport to Bryston processor) we would need something in the middle re-clocking the system and eliminating the jitter. Anyone that has posted here about their Squeezebox or MAC solution would be well informed to know that they are still missing another level of performance and quality that the 800 is giving them but can be remedied very simply by putting in a re-clocker in the middle such as an Apogee Big Ben. I have seen it mentioned but I am not sure that everyone moving into the Squeezebox arena has implemented this into their process.

So now that we have all this information lets put it to use and come up with some scenarios to help people decide what is best for them.

I. Meridian transport to Meridian Processor
1. Full resolution and up-sampling through MHR of both movies and music.
2. Virtually jitter free
3. One easy to use remote for all situations (movies, music etc)
4. Have to manually put in CD`s
5. Access to musical library collection is limited to inserted disc only
6. Superior video processing during movies compared to other cheap transports.

II. Squeezebox or MAC into Meridian Processor
1. Instant access to complete musical library in lossless format at your fingertips.
2. 2 remotes instead of one
3. Jitter (it don`t matter what their jitter rating is, unless it is re-clocking there will be some amount of jitter present at the processor.
4. Network latency (wireless or wired matters not; there is still the chance to have latency in the packets from the NAS or PC/MAC to the squeezebox which can then add jitter latency going into the processor). Yes you can optimize this by going wired but still just need to keep in mind that the possibility is there.
5. No up-sampling

III. Squeezebox or MAC into Apogee Big Ben into Meridian Processor
1. Exactly the same as number II except now we eliminate jitter and get a much more accurate data stream to the processor. This will improve number II quite a bit.

IV. Squeezebox or MAC into Apogee Big Ben into Meridian Transport into Meridian Processor (Ultimate Setup)
1. Instant access to complete musical library in lossless format at your fingertips, up-sampled to 88.2k and sent MHR to processor.
2. Near perfect Jitter free system
3. Best of both worlds, perfect audiophile level solution with one of the best movie experience solutions in the world.
4. 2 remotes
5. Ability to play CD`s that have yet to make it into your media server at full up-sampled resolution. Such as a friend says hey demo this CD or hey pop this in and listen to this tune. No need to have to import the CD etc into the media server before listening.
6. Very little additional setup steps involved. Once you have setup your 800/861 through MHR and done your room corrections etc you simply plug the output of the MAC or Squeezebox into the Big Ben, then the Big Ben into an available digital input on the Meridian Transport. The 861 will simply see the traffic as if it`s the Meridian Transport since you will carry all the signals over the already connected digital cables from transport to processor.
7. Full resolution DVD-A
8. Up-sampled CD and DVD playback
9. Meridians great Video Processing for movies which has gotten much better and continues to improve.

I suppose you could add a 5th setup that had the Big Ben after the Transport however you may lose a few things. Since MHR on a version 3 or higher model transport/processor uses 3 coax digital cables there wouldn`t be a convenient way to really do this without multiple Big Bens. To be truthful I don`t even know if you can send MHR encrypted data over the Big Ben. I have never tried that.

Point of this is that it`s really up to you on what path you want, but I have laid out some paths for you. Do you consider movies as critical as music? I do. So for me number 4 is the way to go and provides the most accurate and audiophile level you are going to get from those little devices to date. Are you protected and can upgrade that system to accommodate future changes and formats? Sure can. If anyone else has anything further they want to add, chime on in. The floor is yours. Hope this helps some people.

Maestro2be

Wow that is a very nice post. Thank you for the insights. Can a Meridian 518 substitute for one of these big ben devices? I have one between my mac and my 861 and I do not hear a difference with it in or out of the loop- it just gives me more connection choices.

best regards,
Jerry

Jerry

The Big Ben is better than the 518 for jitter reduction, I waffled on a bit about it in this thread.

www.meridianunplugged.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=6;t=000945#000002

The Big Ben is not totally transparent so you might want to look out for one that's been modified (try Anthony at Aberdeen Components).

Regards
Gary

The Squuezebox uses the same IR codes as a JVC DVD player so can be easily programmed into an MSR+

Mr Perceptive

Maestro,

That's a helpful post. Regarding external DAC's, clocks, jitter etc, I found the following thread quite a good read.

http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=28126

Going back to the original question:

What's your budget?

At the high-end, top of my list would be one of these:

www.aplhifi.com/esoteric-product-page.htm

I haven't personally heard this player so can't comment but those that have think it's the best there is.

www.aplhifi.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=558

At the bottom end, a seperate DVD player and Squeezebox would be top of my list. The SB+ from At-Tunes ( www.at-view.co.uk/sb2.htm ) is pretty impressive, it comes in two versions, one with the standard DAC at �800 which is ideal as a transport in Meridian systems, the other, with an upgraded DAC at �1000, for people with analogue systems.

I have the �1000 version of the SB+ (with Black Ash end cheeks, very stylish!), in my system, with power conditioning and good quality power cables it's extremely good, much better than the Meriidan 602, 500 and G98 that I previously owned and very very close to my GNSC 'Statement' Wadia 861se. In fact its so good that using a Big Ben with it made the sound worse so I sold the Big Ben and finally sold off my reference DAC, the Black Gate Audio Synthesis DAX Decade.

One drawback with the SB+ for me is that it doesn't have an external digital input, this would be very useful as I use the L/R digital output on the 568.2 to feed my stereo system via the digital input on the Wadia for DVD playback.

In light of the ablove drawback I've bought a Slim Devices Transporter which does have a digital input so hopefully that will solve my problem but it's currently gathering dust in the USA with one of the well know modification companies while they figure out what modifications to do on it.

Going back to the SB+, it's got great potential for modification, it has the power supply enclosed in a seperate case with plenty of space for replacement components, if the Transporter isn't up to snuff in the audio department the SB+ will be undergoing the surgeon's knife!

Regards
Gary

Gary,

Let us know how you get along with the transporter. Esp what mods you will have had done and what it sounds like.

thanks.

maz

maz

I'll keep you posted, if you want to follow the progress of the mods check out this link:

www.audiocircle.com/circles/index.php?topic=31935.0

Regards
Gary

Hi Gary,

I think in those posts about the 518 and Big Ben that the Big Ben needed a clean digital signal to begin with. The 518 was better for use with satellite, cable and other poor sources. I also noted in the power supply posts that the analog power supply in the earlier 500 series products don't have any line filtering and really could have had a bigger main AC power supply instead of a transformer with separate taps. Power regeneration like a PS audio product for the 518 will make it way more transparent in my experience. Same goes for the 568.2 as you guys already know in some of my other posts.

Ron