Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems 800 vs. SB+

Ronnie,

The 800 was set to up with multichannel out, 96k (max rate) using MHR, decode in player - so I guess that's a yes on upsampling.

Chris

Sorry Ian
I arrived at the $1,500 price (and the DOLLAR sign is NOT a typo) for the Meridian SB based on the general comments on this thread about how much of a premium they MIGHT pay over and above the standard $300 SB, which they say sounds the same (some say superior?) to the $15,000++ Meridian CD Players

Certainly if the Meridian price was to be $5,000 (and I agree with your pricing logic) then

a) Meridian would need to sell less players to "break even"

b) BUT, even more people here (never mind the other 98%++) would find it difficult to justify the cost over the "same" sounding standard SB

I'm just trying to illustrate the difficult business decisions that Meridian face, even if Bob had an SB+++ tucked up his sleeve right now!! They will want to charge for it and most here have asked "Why pay more for similar performance". Not easy decisions

Thanks Chris

but you have to factor in c) which is (the assumption) that M can actually make a SB+++ player that sounds as good as an 808.2 and that is better than a SB3, Transporter etc. The question is just how much would 'we' be prepared to pay.

For those that want to spend $300 then they will keep buying SB3.

For those that can and want to pay a premium of some sort, they will - as we practically all have on here. The question is how much??

That filtering has to make it into the 861 at some point. Then I simply put my SB through it

Mark

And easier to use. And the release SC7 is a lot faster than the debug builds.

I've just downloaded SC7 and its very different. Didn;t seem to preserve my old settings so it was a matter of remembering how I had set things up and setting everything up by scratch again.

Question: Where do I get cover artwork from other than scanning it in myself? Do I have to sign up for something? I noticed something in iTunes about this and it said that I had to sign up to the iTunes store but, whilst I use iTunes to rip my CD's, my slimserver, sorry squeezecenter, does not iTunes to pick up the iTunes library - its all about my music library being on a NAS box and having to be shared across 3 PC's so it was easier to have slimserver, now squeezecenter map on to the iTunes file structure and not have to worry about concurrent access to a single iTunes library.

With the delays in the i80 iPod dock for the F80, im looking again at adding a Squeezebox Duet to my existing SB - or more likely, just the box without remote control as it can be controlled from my PC and its one less remote, albeit a fancy one, to loose on my desk.

I download most of my cover art from google/yahoo image searches or amazon's sites...

eg:

[http]http://images.google.com/imag...mp;sa=N&tab=wi]Dark Side of the Moon

Mark

For album art, I use this little utility which is excellent for most modern music

http://team.thenexusnet.com/nexus/AAA/

Not that good for classical stuff though.

Cliff

I also use that and whilst not perfect it finds a lot of stuff. If you play with artist or title it sometimes helps.

Hi Tim

Are you running the Transporter directly to your DSPs or via a processor? Were the two 800s direct to DSP as well? I've wondered if there would be any mileage in upgrading from the SB3 to the Transporter, but since I'm not using the DAC and going directly to the 8ks, is there much difference between the SB3 and Transporter when using the only digital output?

Cheers

George

Hi there,

As always I'm running the Transporter and or 800 direct into the DSP's. The SB+ digital is also worth a demo I think Patrick would let you borrow one?

Is there a difference between the SB3 and Transporter a resounding yes as far as my ears are concerned the bass is better and the sound stage is greatly improved and as I`ve said to me it is better than the 800, plus the whole convenience of SC7, but I`ve still kept the 800 V3 and I`m in the process of ordering an 808.2i (I need the Pre-Amp section).

The reason for the Transporter and the 808.2i for me is the balanced outputs thus enabling me to use them in the other systems I keep playing with.

Tim.