Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Meridian at CEDIA

JK -

Understanding the need to vette with Meridian (presumably a couple of weeks?), can we expect any HDMI-related insights further than have been cobbled together on this thread, or do we already have the essence of it - details beyond which will have to wait until the presumed eventual official release sometime late-2008/early-2009?

Does anybody else here feel patronized? Or politely ignored?

Ken

I do. But then I may be paranoid, as I am starting to think having bought into 800 series and DSP speakers chains me to an organisation that exploits difficulties in changing or upgrading.

I was heartened by news of the box, but I think we will all be waiting weeks for more vague smugness, chuckles, and ambiguity. I just feel they are now out of touch with their traditional customers, so why tell them anything clearly. Or at all.

Am I also the only one who would have liked some suggestion of a product that could use what they know to network storage or internet radio? Something that indicated they know the future direction of media replay?

Richard

Meridian's Audio Product development has always been their biggest Strength

Communication with their Customers has always been their biggest Weakness (New Product Info, Manuals, Web Site etc.)

Beats me why Meridian are SO Reluctant to discuss this product. Why is the Box "Off Site" rather than at the Show?? Qtr 1, 2009 means end of March at best (look at actual delivery time for DSP7200's RELEASED at Cedia last September)

I'm very glad that this box exists, but I just don't understand why Meridian won't discuss this Product and its Time Scale openly.

Meridian make mostly great products but are suspect at many other things

[rant]

So. After 25 pages of further speculation we know that there is some form of box and that Meridian don't discuss future products.

I can't see why people are getting so upset. People are spitting the dummy over a product whose specification is still pure speculation/ambiguous. Nothing has changed from 6 months ago. We know M are working on HDMI and I am sure they will tell us something official when they are ready.

I wonder if I am the only person who has made plans then changed them? They are only firm when they are issue.

The internet is its own worse enemy. Not long ago, an annual catalogue would be issued with Q2, Q3, Q4 on it. M did it, Hornby and Scalextric still do. As a kid, it was great to look forward to new releases, Qx would come and go and products may or may not have been released or they may differ from what was in the catalogue.

It goes both ways. Look at the i80 iPod dock for F80. It was officially announced last year, personally viewed in the wild as a finished product in Feb this year and, even though it was due for release end last December, then Jan, then Feb etc, only now does it seem imminent after being demoed in dealer show rooms. The reason for the delay, speculatively speaking, was a redesign of power supply as Apple changed the design requirements then waiting to get official signoff from Apple.

HDMI licensing is a far trickier task. M are pretty unique in their product range. I don't care which other manufacturers have HDMI solutions in place for their products, it is not the same thing. M are having to do something different because their digital architecture is different.

If M announced a product and then the HDMI LLC said that they could not produce it, how pissed off would people be then? I can see why M are playing this hand close to their chest. We know that M are working on HDMI and that its likely to be a non trivial product in both technical and legal aspects.

The internet is a dangerous place. People get their hopes raised by speculation, mis-interpretation and gossip reproduced as fact [as an example, someone please find something from Meridian that proves that the G68 was to be hardware upgradable]. Don't get me wrong, its good to hear tidbits of something new, but it seems that too much emphasis is being placed on them as fact and people are getting upset by it all.

We know that M are working on HDMI, we know they will announce something when they feel that they are in a ready position, we know that it is likely that products will be delayed, and we know that it will be expensive and any upgrade is likely to cost more than a whole standalone product by another company. But we also know that it will sound great. Its not as if M kit is inoperable with blu-ray players and the like.

As Meridian keep saying. Buy for now, not for what may be the future.
[/rant]

Would you buy into Meridian right now ?

When i bought my 861 it was top of the line in regards to technical possibilitys. It looks different to me right now.

No I would not.

Yesterday I bought an Apple AirPort Express instead of the i80 iPod dock for F80 that I had been promising myself since the end of last year. If I can get it to sound as good as other say it should, I will be wishing that I had bought one earlier rather than waited on information that in the end, due to the product being announced before all the wrangling with Apple licensing, was totally inaccurate.

Meridian are damned if they do and damned if they don't. Buying for now is the only safe way to make a product decision. Anything in the future is pure speculation be it specification, price, delivery dates or even ones own personal requirements.

At the end of the day, its Meridian that will be losing out with lost sales. Everyone else apparently has loads of new products to choose from, or the option of sitting tight but still having a pretty decent sounding system with the possibility that at some point an HDMI solution in some form, offering even better performance may come along.

Can someone clarify the following for me please.

If you take the Denon 3800BDCI Bluray player, it says that it outputs HighDef formats out over 7.1 analog outputs and bitstream over HDMI. On that basis does one need HDMI to get the benefit of high res sound?

In that the HighDef formats are lossless, what can an independent processor add by decoding the bitstream rather than taking the output from the player. In that nothing is lost, decoding algorithms would not seem to help. I can only think of jitter!

Rob

According to http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1050507 you *do* need HDMI for *full* codec support.

The lossy DD+ and DTS-HD HR formats cannot be decoded by the player (I'm very surprised at this for a $2000 player) and require an audio receiver/processor capable of decoding these bitstreams when they are output over HDMI. The Meridian solution will not help here.

However, for the lossless formats - Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio - you can use the analogue outputs from the player.

...but the thing is that the player should then use it's DACs to convert the signal to analogue, followed by an analogue-to-digital conversion in the ADCs inside the Meridian processor. Followed by a final digital-to-analogue conversion in the DSP speakers - or earlier, if you don't use DSP speakers.

With a digital path into the Meridian processors, the first two of the three conversions aren't done.

VirusKiller

Great help. I can now keep my 861. Looked a bit further on the Bluray site and analogue highdef audio isn't down converted. In that I don't use Meridian speakers I just need to know that the player has a good DAC. Presumably the HDMI box is really more for those who want a digital path into Meridian's own speakers!

Thanks again

Rob

Well, I think it is still of considerable value for those who want to keep the signal all digital until the final DACs, whether they are in the processor or in DSP speakers. As Tommy says, you avoid additional conversions from digital to analogue (in the player) and back to digital (in the processor).

I've long been sold on the idea of a disc spinner as a digital transport. I haven't worried about a player's DACs for a very long time; on the contrary, I try to make sure that I'm not paying for them! Unfortunately, this model of digital transport has stalled with multi-channel lossless as there was no Meridian means of getting those channels into a Meridian processor digitally. There still isn't, but it looks like a solution is closer.