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

I think your lack of bleeding might have been a giveaway that you weren't there

I hit the jackpot tonight.

I ordered like 8 BD and SACD discs. Five came in today.

1) BD Patriot. Same exact experience I had at Ron's house. LPCM Mix shines and DD from player not quite as good as Meridian doing DD. Extremely good sound effects. I even played with boosting levels in case that is the difference and it was not.

2) BD Celine Dion Live in Las Vegas. This has some high bandwith formats (2 Channel 24/96 PCM, TrueHD 5.1 24/96 and DD 5.1 448). The recording is a little bass light compared to studio recordings. But for a Live recording it is very very good otherwise.

3) BD Blue Man Group How To Be a Megastar Live. Similar Celine Dion. Light on bass compared to studio recordings but otherwise good. Not sure I'd call it reference though. Need to listen more. But watching these guys is fun. If you have never seen them get it.

4) BD Indiana Jones - Kindom of the Crystal Skull. Not sure yet on the audio quality. I was disappointed that the really cool THX Logo was not in TrueHD even though it sounds like it is even though it's DD.

5) SACD The Who - Tommy (SACD 5.1, SACD 2.0, CD all on one disc) Ron had recommended this DVDA a while back to me and on the board. I always listen to samples before buying anything. And it just didn't tempt me at the time. When I saw the SACD I listened to samples again and thought what was I thinking. It's fantastic. When I switched back to the CD version I was amazed how good this mix is. I love the HYBRID SACD's because they are trivial to rip to SqueezeBox.

A few times the G68 went into Music2 mode and I got no center or surrounds and I had to reselect the source on G68 and/or stop and start the disk. Once locked into 5.1 it never went into 2.0 on it's own. It was only when loading discs or selecting soures.

George:

I "complained" about that quite a while back.

The default mode for an MC-In should be discrete IMO.

Cheers,

Hmm. If anyone here in the US wants this, I have two sealed copies which I have no intention of opening. Will swap for almost anything MCH and classical.

Kal

Kal:

You don't like torture? Bahhh..

Remind me to buy you a drink again at CES if you're making the trip

Best,

Sounds good but I will not bring those BRDs.

Kal

Bingo I just prooved the Clux with Shawns Mod is "Bit Perfect".

I wanted to some how send a "bitstream" through it. If I could get a bitstream through the mod and get the Meridian to decode it I know everything is dead on. But when the PS3 sees a DD or DTS BitStream it either decodes it into PCM or tags it as bitstream and the Clux reroutes it to the TosLink (if set to bitstream) or ingnores it if set to LPCM.

So then I had an idea. The same way to verify a your ripping and squeezebox is bitperfect. Use a DTS CD.

First I verified the PS3 could play DTS out it's TosLink output. So I switched to TosLink and set Toslink output to 2 Channel PCM 44.1 and 48Khz and selected that source on the G68. And the DTS Played perfectly.

Then I tested through the modified Clux.

So I set the PS3 to pass only 2 Channel PCM at 44.1Khz or 48Khz over HDMI.

I setup a phantom device on the G68 on the "Fake G98 (Clux/PS3)" and connected that phantom to just D1. Then I selected that new Phantom Source on the G68.

Bingo it played !!!

Initially I had the PS3 to include 88.1Khz and 96Khz PCM so when it saw that I think the PS3 tried to upsample the 44.1 DTS Bitstream and I got Digital Hash.

Good work. You have geek credentials of the highest order!

George,

"But when the PS3 sees a DD or DTS BitStream it either decodes it into PCM or tags it as bitstream and the Clux reroutes it to the TosLink (if set to bitstream) or ingnores it if set to LPCM. "

I just received my order of CLUXs so I popped the top of one to take a look at this. The Toslink output is fed from a different point on the CLUX board so when the CLUX is thinking it is receiving bitstream the bitstream serial data isn't even getting to my board. The toslink output is fed from the pin located between the master clock and the SD Front connection. Even if it was getting the bitstream audio the resulting SPDIF output might not be flagged properly (non-audio, etc..) for proper recognition by a decoder.

"So then I had an idea. The same way to verify a your ripping and squeezebox is bitperfect. Use a DTS CD."

That is a good trick. Since DTS music discs hide their bitstream as regular PCM the flagging and such is the same as for regular audio.

That is also a good test to be sure the source isn't screwing around with the data.

Shawn

Exactly, it verifies the whole path from the spinning disc to the Meridian.

Oh and I also verified the Meridian is displaying "DTS 3/2 44.1". Not PCM.

For those that were interested in the modded CLUXs I have a 4x available now and will have more available as the week goes on. I just need to know if one wants it with the 3x or 4x board installed. These have RCAs for their outputs and have universal power supplies with interchangeable plugs.

Thanks,

Shawn

Just a heads up on the CLUX in that there appears to be an EDID problem with:

Toshiba HD-A35->CLUX->JVC RS1

A user is only getting 2 channel audio in this setup. I tried to duplicate the problem and can't get any audio from the above chain. The A35 works fine with HD-A35->Radiance->CLUX->Radiance.

If I find any other compatibility issues I'll post them.

Shawn