Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Meridian CEDIA 2007 HH Q&A Session

My questions are more of a philosophical / marketing bent (although I care about all the engineering issues as well - MRC, HDMI, HDDVD/BRD):

In a time when Meridian's flagship products (specifically the 800 DVD) can be pretty easily surpased in terms of video quality, and approached in audio quality (for significantly less $$$$)...what does M see as the value proposition for the brand now? Has it changed at all given the trends in the audio/video market in the last 2 years?

I'm pretty happy (minus video quality) with the performance of my 861/800. I am not yet satisfied with the reliability of them (still have them lock up occaisonally, won't play discs, etc.). I will give kudos to M for the work they've done over the years to help me out personally in getting the machines much much better in this regard. My question is this - are they actively doing maintenance / bug fixing on these products or have they moved on to new releases only? Along these lines - any possibility of making 800 firmware upgrades available to end-users?

Try as we might, I don't get the impression (nor the personal feeling) that we have mastered how to setup and tune our M equipment. I believe this is a combination of the following: lack of information around what each setting impacts, guidance on general good practices, lack of consistent repeatability for things like MRC. There's a lot of annecdotal knowledge on this board, combined with some tests and theory. My question then, is this: Would M consider doing an an advanced user manual with siginificantly more insight into how our equipment works? (Things like common gotcha's, best practices, etc.)

Crion...

A couple of these I'm going to answer ahead of time.




No. It's the bit depth not the sampling rate that controls the processing headroom. You have however quadrupled (give or take) your DSP requirements.


It's a matter of where the DSP horsepower is used. For all of the processors the digital receiver (or on an 861 each digital receiver card) can either upsample a PCM stream or decode a bitstream format. The remainder of the core is locked to their roles of either BM/TA/Post Processing (cores C+D) or MRC (cores E+F). This is an overall architectural decision. So it would require a dramatic rewrite of the base code to even consider accomplishing this.

If you're familiar with distributed systems and processing then it becomes a lot clearer exactly what Meridian is doing.



This is reliant on > 8 channel support. Without it; it's either 5 + multiple subs or 7 + one sub.

Best,

Philosophically speaking; 1.1 is fine as PCM is the best choice for an M processor. Practically speaking; 1.3 or better is what is needed

Cheers,

Not according to my 'deaf' next door neighbour

Would there be room in the product line up for something like (based on the 581 video switcher) a G81 that would incorporate video switching (all formats including SCART and HDMI), transcoding (including RGB) and a high quality scaler and deinterlacer? And of course, extracting audio from audio/video formats (SCART and HDMI) and providing multi channel digital audio output to connect to a processor.

ie. A video centric version of the 562 with high quality scaler.

All in a slimline (DVD player height or less) G width and matching case. I have seen elsewhere someone requesting a Faroudja/Meridian scaler in a G series cabinet.

Assuming the quality was on a par with other quality scaler products and was as configurable, the ability to extract multi channel digital audio from an HDMI source would be highly desirable even to non M customers.

It's called the Lumagen Radiance.

Do you envisage four pairs of DACs in such a device? Otherwise, only Meridian products could handle anything digital other than HDMI out as MHR encryption would need to be used.

Joel, very accurately responded to and stated!

Yes. I was putting the view that some people had requested a quality Meridian scaler in G series clothes. Plus, it would integrate into the standard Meridian comms.

No. I envisage digital only out. MHR would possibly not be required if the digital output was downsampled or transcoded to another multi channel digital output such as Denon Link. For Meridian owners, this would give them an off board HDMI solution, including one for owners of 568.2MM.

Some people are running close/beyond to the 12 (?) source logical source limit. Any plans to increase this?

That's a very good question which we've discussed before here.

Having Meridian sources telling the processor that the stream is Music/Movie 2/6 is great as the processor can switch automatically between different presets. However, most sources are not Meridian and we have to work around this problem (music and movies from the same component) using phantom sources. As Ian says, many people are pushing close to the 12 boundary (I know I am) and for some, 12 logical sources are not enough.

Two questions arise from this:

1a) Would Meridian consider the implementation of manual selection of the pre-defined Music/Movie 2/6 per-source presets for non-SmartLink sources? Perhaps these could be accessed, for instance, via the coloured dot buttons on the MSR+?

1b) If (1a) was implemented, could one define different physical inputs from the same source? For instance, CD-coax-Music2, SACD-m/c analogue-Music6, Bluray-HDMI-Movie6.

2) Will "SmartLink" be extended to HDMI sources?

OK gang; this marks the cutoff point for questions so that I can build the list and forward it off to the mothership.

Cheers,

The job front is now resolved I'll be starting up with a new company right after CEDIA.

Cheers,