Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Why has the Meridian Music Server die?

I dont' quite buy the vinyl comparison. While I understand that many prefer the sound characteristics of vinyl (maybe for nostalgic reasons), I can't understand why somebody today should want to buy an PC with 1992 specifications at a 1992 price...

The high end disc spinners are identical to the low end ones - if you take away the analogue stage. It is the analogue stage that costs money, because of components that are not mass produced and therefore expensive in the first place. And a lot of R&D goes into tweaking those components to function optimally.

The R&D in the digial domain is NOT done in small companies in the US and UK. It is done in big corporations and in uviversities all over the world. The results are used in mass production, mainly in Asia. These cheap, mass produced products are the very same that used in both in next to nothing no name DVD players and in the megabuck high end players. And in PCs, music network systems and what have you.

Why someone should be nostalgic or prefer older versions of a disc drive (I've noticed that some manufactureres even use old stock of Philips drives, presumably because they "sound better"), is beyond me. The new DVD drives are far more accurate - for the simple reason that they have to read more data than the old CD drives.

The reason a DVD player usually don't sound as good as a dedicated CD player is found in the analogue stage alone.

My old Meridian 502.20 (used as transport only with DSP6000s) used to skip a lot. Several fixes done by my local M. technician (the disc drive was re-lubricated, and even replaced completely) did not help much.

I was so annoyed that I went out and bought a (then) $200 taiwanese never heard of before-name DVD player. And lo and behold - it played all my CDs flawlessly. Through the analogue outputs it was a joke, of course. But through the coax I noticed no difference from 508 - to my big surpise (I was a believer until then...).

Later I took it further, and installed a Mac min as my Main source, with an external USB soundcard and SPDIF output. It was noisy and unreliable (after all, it was a PC, regardless of what Apple calls it), and it sounded worse than my CD/DVD spinners. This might be because of iTunes, or because og the USB/SPDIF interface not being implemented optimally - most likely a software issue.

I then invested in a Sonos music network (more money, alas...) and placed the Mac in a room far from my main system. The noise is gone, and the sound from my hard drive via CAT5 cable (wireless is not sufficient for huge files) is as good as from the discs I spin in my G91 (nice to have, but there are cheaper digital switches out there).


Have we (I include myself) wasted our money? Well. It probably made sense to buy a 800 without analogue cards ten years ago. Today it is madness. And M. recognizes this, too. As I previously wrote, they make no dedicated drives any more, just players with analogue stages built in. Neither do the other main players (with one or two exceptions) in the high end field. This is a clear signal as good as anything.