Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Ramblings from Bristol

Sorry, its all a bit of a ramble, but there may be some interesting snippets that the kind folk at Meridian made public to a greater or lesser extent at the Bristol show today. Hopefully others will follow on with their interpretations - I think some things are said in a deliberately woolly manner as it is known that they will be reported back here at some point.

Firstly, congrats to James, Tuscan, Simon Mirren and pagfreen x 2 (?) for making it to the Meridian literature - Meridian News Spring 2008 - I hope you all got a worthwhile appearance fee!

i80 iPod dock for F80 - I've seen one in the flesh, a nice compact unit but its price TBA in the current price list. Reason, Apple are having to take a look and if they don't like what they see, its back to the drawing board. Delayed, April, possibly May - but definately 'this year'. F80 needs a firmware update to work with it - didn't discuss the intricacies of doing this but I guess its a dealer thing - also they will need to supply the appropriate coloured snap on cover - basically, it comes in any colour that you like as long as its black. But newer F80's will be shipped with a i80 dock cover to match the unit to make them match. I guess, us early adopters will also be sorted too.

Lack of DVD-A - its not a drive or mpeeg decoder thing, but another component that would appear to be in limited supply. So, from now on, I guess what ever the secret thing is, it will not be present in newer models unless its an 800 series player. So if you want DVD-A, you go 800 series or stick with existing models.

808.2 and G08.2 (or was it the G06.2) have a new filter design that dramatically improves the quality of audio upsampling. It make the difference between CD and DVD-A pretty tight. Its pretty resource hungry taking most of the MIPS from the 808.2's processor. I could not get a straight answer whether it could be applied by firmware to existing kit. If it could, its not going to be optimal as the required resources will not be available. I get the impression that its going to be done in the source and speakers - possibly not a technology for the processor, or may be I just mis understood.

7200 and 808.2 have the new RJ45 'Speakerlink'. See another thread about 7200 press release as i've got to go and have tea and my misses is ribbing me about ignoring her, but, to put the cat amongst the pidgeons, well, digital audio is digital audio isn't it? Apparently the performance of the Speakerlink surprised the M boffins, so maybe there are things that science cannot explain, and there is something in this digital speaker cable after all. So, the RJ45 connector will be the way to go.

What on earth is this?!!!

DVD-A releases? DVD-A customers?

Probably lack of support VK.


Holtz'.

Meridian News Spring 2008 is a newsletter.

The thing in limited supply would appear to be a vital component - with only enough supply to satisfy the 8xx market. Its definitely not the ROM drive nor the MPEG decoder - ziva chip/c-cube or whatever it is called. But no further details were revealed. Of course, reading between the lines, it could be DVD-A media itself, but then why would there be supply for 800 series owners.

To be honest, its nice to see a number of things appearing in the 800 series that are not part of the G series. If I was a 800 series owner, I would be mighty peeved about G series owners getting first pickings.

Also, apparently Bob and co were disappointed about our lack of delving questions for CES so I think they have made up their own Q&A and will be posting soon

Oh and the bit Ian missed out - the 808.2 and DSP7200s sounded sublime!

Who from Mother was at the show?

All the usual suspects were there for day 1
Bob put on a good audio only show comprising F80 on a central podium ,flanked by
prototypical DSP7200'S.
The F80 proved a coherent stereo source for all the room which in the past has been problematic with bass bloom.
DSP7200's sounded really sweet especially on choral and piano (levels a little high)
Bass control and timing now excellent, previously they have bass trapped and MRC'd the square paneled room which is 40x40'ish
I congratulated Bob and asked if DSP could produce coherenent stereo from a point source (F80) could they not do similar with one DSP 7200 !!
He said they were working on it.....
Cat5 now the digi interconnect of choice.
V good dem
PS Kef's flagship Muendo (�70k!) was fantastic also

Roger
imho

Wow. A full-range F80! That would solve problems in so many homes and it would sell...

I heard the F80 for the first time today at the show - very very impressive! It wouldn't replace my main listening system though. I'm most surprised how Meridian it sounds for a unit so small and genuinely surprised how loud and controlled it is.

I listened to the 7200s too. The choral track was just incredible. And the vocal track proved that CD can sound smooth - something I don't have in my system right now.

After the demo, I walked around some other vendors - Naim, Spendor, that ridiculous KEF rig, Dali, Monitor Audio - they all sounded the same to me. Overly bright sounding, fatiguing and most of them were demoing plinky guitar music.

I had to go back to the Meridian demonstration to have myself cleansed! The second time Bob demo'd and was amused to learn that it was our second visit. But I'm glad I did - and he said it himself, Meridian is the best sounding system in the building - and he was right.

I get DSP now - I'm going to start saving my pennies for 5200s.

I don't plan to go this year but what you've done is pretty much what I've found w.r.t. Meridian room vs the best of the rest each year for the last 5 or 6.

The 8k's blew me away a few years back and it resulted in me getting them. Outrageous is what most people think (i.e. the cost) but I choose to not bother with a flash car instead (been there done that) !!! No contest.

A brief report from my visit today...

Bob seemed to be doing a number of the demos today and in the first one started by thanking us for coming to Meridian first and then invited us to be disappointed as we visited the rest of show - and to be honest he wasn't wrong.

The F80 sounded great and a radio that size has no right to fill the room the way it did. (Aside: the F80 appears to be selling extremely well and may well be giving M the problem of being able to sell all they make!)

The DSP7200s with 808.2 sounded great - very clear, very precise, especially the bass in The Wall excerpt really impressed me. My feeling is that they are much closer to the 8ks than the 7ks were.

Bob indicated the 808.2 had the new apodising (or apodizing not "iPod"ising ) filter which corrects errors in the digital stream - even those encoded onto the disc.It's clearly some very clever math and DSP coding and way beyond my tiny brain. Oh, and it's pure Meridian, you won't see it anywhere else (unless they license it I guess). If I understand correctly it's also in the G08.2 and the 7200. Apparently other speakers could be firmware upgraded but I think it depends on them having enough MIPS available (I think this sounds like a good chance for 8ks but I guess lower down the scale the processing power may be missing.

Bob also indicated the 7200 were the first speakers to be "time aligned" (my words) and I understand this was the main feature of the recent firmware upgrades for the 3-way speakers to get the bass & treble all firing at same time.

I asked Stuart Russell (I think, my memory for names is appalling these days), who was manning the static display, about another Hitchhikers day and it appears it's still in their minds to do one but many new projects (for example the leather special edition F80s Bob mentioned at the first HH day) are keeping them very busy.

Stuart also mentioned that Meridian gear was due to appear in many movies over the next few months as a result of the MUSE link up. It appears that the F80 success and the MUSE situation really is driving Meridian into a new era of growth.

As Bob had indicated I would be, I was disappointed in the rest of the show. Nothing (not even the 70k Muons - which would be fabulous as an art form in the right room or the Wilson Benesch demo) came close to making want me to move away from Meridian.

I felt there wasn't much new or particularly interesting to see - although it is interesting to note the number of iPod docks and media servers making an appearance. Everyone seemed happy that "the war is over" but I seriously doubt that Blu-ray has won... I suspect it just hasn't lost yet and downloading to media servers is going to win! To my mind it's just a matter of the time it takes to get hi-def done efficiently via itunes & appleTV or equivalent. If it's quick it will steamroller blu-ray - but if blu-ray can get established in say 2 years before the downloads get sorted maybe it'll live on for a bit.

Now I'm starting to ramble so I think it's time to stop and go to bed!

Chris

The mention of the latest in Meridian wizardry with the handling of 1's and 0's (808.2 filters etc) makes me ever more optimistic that M will release a client or server/client architecure that allows us to get the very, very best of the 1's and 0's stored on our HDD's.

Whilst I love my SB+ and all that it brings, I would be amazed if M could not make better of that approach. If they did I would be buying.

Come on M.....:D