Guy,
If you are at all technically minded, check out the following white paper by Bob Stuart on the Meridian web site. It describes quite clearly (within the first couple of pages) Meridian's approach to digital audio.
In short, get it digital as quickly (and correctly) as you can because, by definition, *all* analogue processing colours the signal. Once digital, as long as you process correctly at each stage, signal manipulation is completely transparent. Understanding the analogue stages in the chain is also essential, and Meridian clearly does.
In even shorter(!), reproduce the recorded event as faithfully as possible. Sounds simple, doesn't it...
http://www.Meridian-audio.com/w_paper/Coding2.PDF