Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems call me a cynic but....

Jaco,

i agree completely - lossless music and HD material is available all over the net; it was funny to here Bob say that the video iPod was a great bit of kit (re the dock) and to seemingly dismiss the whole home server/wireless seemed out of sorts.... to me a Meridian branded Apple TV would be the dogs bits right now!!

Spot on. That's why I think they are going to have to look to their core competences and work out other markets that they can apply them too.

Logitech recently purchased Slim Devices.

High quality lossless music devices like the SB/Transporter will be mainstream sooner than Bob thinks.

I recall Bob stating that some of the new Meridian adverts feature the Slim Devices Slimp3 in some of the pictures.

May be mistaken but I am sure thats what he said!

Originally quoted by Viruskiller

Good point made and missed. I could see alot of disappointed faces were Meridian to release a storage device. It is of course a client that's wanted, such as the Squeezebox/Sonox.

Jezclayton

It seems our comments on CD and download have been taken outside the intended context.

At the HH day (which we enjoyed hugely) Bob was making points about content, access and durability. The plain fact is that if you are a music lover, chances are the only place you will find the bulk of content you seek is on CD and not a higher-resolution format or as a download. The probability of finding what you want as a high-resolution download is still very low.

That fact, combined with what our owner surveys perceive as the 'riskiness' of owning a catalogue with no 'archive-standard' or 'hard' backup, has, at least for Meridian, resulted in continuing demand, not to say substantial growth in demand, for our terrific CD players -- long may that continue!

Bob was not making any link between the importance of CD as a distribution and archive medium and users wanting to put the content on a server. In fact, he didn't make any connection between CD and the use of servers. The question was asked and postponed to the Q&A, and unfortunately we never got back to it.

The plain fact is that Meridian systems can make the very best from a number of portable servers (e.g. iPod) and from a wide variety of server-client systems because they accept analogue and digital feeds from clients. To extend this functionality to our speakers and some other products we already announced MPMax221

F80 was carefully assessed in this respect, which is why it has so many analogue and digital inputs.

Whilst we recognise that Meridian can't even introduce a remote control without being flamed ( .. for its lack of HDMI switching, not being an audio client or a software update ..) we do hope that were able to show that we do actually think quite seriously about each and every product offering.

Meridian has nothing against audio clients, they are a totally legitimate source alongside everything else. However, it is an incorrect (and offensive) assertion that not offering a player for any of the popular or proprietary systems means we are out of touch. We do have a strict policy of not discussing future plans -- or plans for plans, or even the existence of plans!

As you might expect however, downloads that only offer the lower quality of lossy compression do not necessarily light our fire ... music is too wonderful and life too short to waste it listening to low quality sound.

Excellent point. I guess this is one of the reasons the 880 could have been put on hold, and if that was the case I am glad they did because I am absolutely not interested in anything other than a client (and make it compatible with Apple Lossless and iTunes please!).

Nor mine. Lossless on the other hand...
The implication that the only choice is between a quality disc based system and lossy server based system is a bit of a false dichotomy.

I agree. Further, I would suggest that the vast majority of media client users are not, in fact, downloading lossy material (or even lossless for that matter), but are playing existing CD libraries via the client.

The bizarre thing is that, potentially, this system of replay should be capable of offering higher quality than CD (even on a Meridian player), because a good ripping tool (e.g. EAC) can spend all of the time it likes ensuring it gets a perfect rip. Even Meridian players are limited by real-time replay. Further, with the ability to compare the checksum of your ripped track to that obtained by others, you can know that it's perfect (for common discs at least).

Edit: Reached 985 posts again. Time for my account to corrupt!

Oh dear. Our post was not intended to imply that server-clients cannot deliver (nominally) lossless audio. We edited it to make that clearer.

Meridian,

Thanks for joining the debate.

I realise that answering the following question may stray into the no-no area, however, it would be interesting to know what challenges you thought there were for achieving a reference level performance from a server source. That is afterall what the Meridian/server converts are looking for.

e.g. how much do the codecs influence the output? You noted that some lossless is perhaps 'nominal' only.

e.g. wired vs wireless. Does it matter ?

e.g. accepting that the 808 is your reference due to it's lack of video etc in the chassis to interfere with SQ (amongst other things), what potential is there for a streaming client to be stripped down even further without disc drive, big power supplies, etc


On another related issue, the topic of CD durability/longevity etc is worth a mention. Last weekend, I decided to rip a large box of CD singles that I collected back in the late 80's / early 90's. Several were showing clear signs of corrosion or other substance failure. Whilst we might consider CD's to be the rightful 'hard' backup, it's not necessarily safe to assume that will always be the case.

If you then consider what backup medium to use, the server is potentially favourite as it does not involve variations in CD burning quality - either quality of blank media or burner.

My first CD player was a McIntosh MCD7000 (late 1980s). It had a light on the front with a sample and hold circuit that illuminated EVERY TIME it detected a CD error and had to correct it. During my listening sessions, I was forever watching the light to see how many errors it found. In the two years I owned it, I probably saw the light go on a dozen times. That's all. Every one of these incidents was due to a severely damaged disc. I spoke to the people at Mc about it and they said that error correction, for well-maintained discs, was just not that big a deal.

CDs have very robust error-correction, that allows for small scratches to be rendered moot (the data is spread across the disc and is recoverable without interpolation (the player guessing what was missing). Since I'm the only one who ever handles my discs, they don't typically get scratched at all.

Flash forward 20 years. I have to now ask - why is everyone so worried about getting an accurate rip from a CD. I have ripped thousands (literally) of my own CDs and, whenever I test them, bit for bit, against the original, they invariably pass as perfect copies. (I don't test them all, but have probably tested 100, due to the neurosis we call audiophilia).

I don't use an exotic ripping engine - I use iTunes and have error correction turned on.

Frankly, I tested EAC against iTunes, setting EAC for maximum accuracy, etc. iTunes was more than 5x faster, and just as accurate. I think a lot of audiophiles are wasting a tremendous amount of time obsessing on a non-issue. The level of pain they associate with CD ripping leads many to avoid starting the process with their own collections.

The accuracy of modern CD readers and iTunes-like programs are some of the reasons why I am unconcerned about Meridian coming out with a server. I'm perfectly happy to use my PC or a NAS device to serve music. Storing Gigabytes of data accurately and serving music at 1.5MB/s is child's play for even the least-expensive boxes built today. Ethernet (packet-based) transmission of data eliminates the need for "audiophile" transmission systems, cables, etc.

What we need is a client to properly deliver the music to our systems - with a great interface. If my 568.2 (or your G68 or 861) had an Ethernet input (or WiFi receiver) and was controlled by my Sonos remote, it would be the ultimate audio device.