Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems CLUX-11SA HDMI to analogue converter

John,

The micro-controller they are using (Myson Century) has a built in ISP and there are two 4 pin headers right near it one of which is likely for that. But I think Cypress has simply sent out new chips for those that have done firmware upgrades.

Fortunately that won't be needed....

Shawn

Well, that's about where I am - too few HDMI inputs...

Excellent news Shawn!

For a micro-second, you had me...

I watched Kingdom of Heaven last night on Blu-Ray using my PS3 and the CLUX. The DTS-HD MA soundtrack sounded simply superb! There's just more of everything - clarity, details and ambiance. And not a single glitch. Best of all, after five minutes, I simply became absorbed by the movie; as it should be!

Using the CLUX with the Radiance and Oppo 980 for DVD-A (and SACD) is a bit of a pain as I have to switch the Oppo resolution to 720 or 1080 in order to get enough HDMI bandwidth for the audio. Dare I say it, but it might be worth modding the Oppo separately. However, even if I just keep the CLUX for HD DVD and Blu-Ray, it will easily have been worth it.

And I already thought the DTS core track of Kingdom of Heaven sounds awesome! Good to hear you have not experienced any glitch anymore!

Yes it does. I wasn't A/B'ing the two, but I'll probably have a go in the next couple of days. The full lossless Master Audio soundtrack is magnificent though.

Summary so far:

1) FIFO seems stable with PS3 and XA1.
2) Only the single glitch so far with the Oppo 980 on a DVDA, but it could have been caused by a number of things. I haven't listened to any DVDAs for a couple of days.
3) PS3 playback seems flawless.
4) I need to sort out EDID with my XA1/Radiance, but CLUX EDID seemed to work fine when I took the Radiance out of the loop. Like the PS3, seems glitch-free.
5) Pops/clicks when changing sources etc. are non-existent or (so far) minimal, and this *is* a Meridian system we're talking about!

"Using the CLUX with the Radiance and Oppo 980 for DVD-A (and SACD) is a bit of a pain as I have to switch the Oppo resolution to 720 or 1080 in order to get enough HDMI bandwidth for the audio. Dare I say it, but it might be worth modding the Oppo separately."

Actually it wouldn't be worth it for that, the Oppos have the same restriction internally. If they are at 480i/p on DVD-A they won't feed the DACs above 48kHz. You have to switch it to 720p or higher to get 96/192kHz playback to the DACs.

It will feed the DACs at 88.2kHz (DSD->PCM) at 480i/p.

Shawn

Hi Shawn,

Not sure how to contact you direct, Could you offer me one of these magic boxes?

how much would it be and how long would the lead time be?

delivery to UK....

I cannot wait to try out lossless from my PS3 to 8000's...

James

Thanks Shawn. That thought got killed in its tracks!

I wonder if the Oppos can be "persuaded" to output, say, 1080p via EDID? It would be cool if Lumagen could then allow a different EDID setting for a virtual HDMI source. i.e. I'd get 480i/576i for DVD-V, but for DVD-A I'd get 1080p automatically.

Having said that, I'm probably past the point where I really need to invest in a decent programmable remote solution. It's a shame that Sterling has taken a nose-dive as the Philips TSU9600 solution is that much more expensive now...

You know you have been doing this too long when you can look at the L/R clock and the serial data up on a scope at the same time and recognize what format the data is in....

Shawn

"how much would it be and how long would the lead time be?"

I am expecting the CLUX+4x SPDIF+installation to be $525 and with the 3x SPDIF board to be $485 plus shipping. I was told about 2 weeks to get my order of CLUXs. If that is accurate I will have some available shortly after that.

Do you just feed your DSP speakers directly without a processor? How do you control levels and so on? If that is a viable way of running the speakers that would be one way of using all 4x SPDIF outputs in a 7.1 system.

Thanks,

Shawn

"I wonder if the Oppos can be "persuaded" to output, say, 1080p via EDID? It would be cool if Lumagen could then allow a different EDID setting for a virtual HDMI source. i.e. I'd get 480i/576i for DVD-V, but for DVD-A I'd get 1080p automatically."

It would be worth a try but be sure you have the latest firmware in the Oppo as they added this in:

4. "Auto" Output Resolution

The player's default output resolution is now set to "Auto". With this setting, the player checks with the display device to determine the best output resolution over HDMI output. Experienced users, users who play both PAL and NTSC contents, and users who use the component output should still manually select an output resolution to ensure the best picture quality.


Shawn

I spotted that too after my last post Shawn. I've emailed Oppo support to find out if there are discrete IR commands for setting resolution and I've posted on the Radiance beta forum to find out if it's possible to have a different EDID for a virtual HDMI input vs. the EDID for the physical input.