Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Huge Meridian News today - Acquisition of Sooloos!

I don't want to piss in the server fan-boy puddle, but I have a couple of observations. All or none of these may be relevant to the prospective purchaser.

1) Using EAC or dBpoweramp, I can't guarantee a perfect rip with a single drive. If I have a problem track, I can usually rip it perfectly by changing drives. How do these $$$ servers cope with problem discs? Are the rips guaranteed perfect or do I (an AR geek when it comes to this stuff) fall into a tiny minority.

2) Tagging. I want accuracy and consistency, so I *need* to review the track metadata manually. Even though dBpoweramp gives me access to four metadata sources, including the peer reviewed MusicBrainz, I find errors and inconsistencies and often end up choosing a mix of the different data. If I didn't do this manual correction, I'd end up with double-entries for certain bands ("The Fugees" or "Fugees"?)

3) Custom genres. As advised on this forum, I'm implementing custom genres such as "80s", "Mine", "SWMBO's", etc. Do these $$$ servers provide good flexibility in this area? Related to (2), I've found that the definition and determination of genre is very poor.

These servers aren't for me, because even if I was prepared to fork out for one, I'm also prepared to put in the effort to make other (cheaper) solutions work for me.

I guess multi-channel will happen, but a@a has a point: Is Meridian really going spend any more effort with DVD-A? I hope so, because in doing so it would put the whole thing to bed if there was an alternate solution to spinning DVD-As for users with significant collections; but I wouldn't bet on it.

I wonder if you can easily turn the 17" display on/off. My guess is that in a dark home theater a 17" display would produce WAY to much light.

But a large 17" display that is centrally located in the living/family room makes great sense. I was excited reading the TONEaudio review where he mentions having party guests walk up to the display and choosing songs as if it was a jukebox. That sounds like fun!

There's an on/off switch on the back within easy reach on the bottom left (when looking at the back) corner of the screen. You can easily find it "blind" by touch without having to look for it.

Jeff

I'm touched

First of all, I'm not trying to win an argument. Some, though not all, of us will want the physical disc at least for some of our movies. My DVD collection won't fit on 6TB of hard disc space, so I gave up on that idea quite a while back. Many of them are transfers from VHS to DVD. They never made it to DVD. I suspect many movies on DVD will never be offered on-line. I don't mind walking over to the shelf and selecting a DVD. No sense in making it more complicated than it needs to be. Music, however, is a different story.

Meridian will do well with this for a simple reason:- Its Cool......!!!

I am also sure they will bring alot to it with regard to functionality, intigration, upgradability, flexibility and style.........

At least it looks like they (Meridian) aint planning to go out of business,they seem to have long term plans which we all should be pleased about.
Perhaps we should allow these plans to play out.

Cheers, Chris

This is a very fair point and a smart one for any customer, frankly for any product. We should be thinking about our usage patterns and the expectations we have for operation. It also makes sense to investigate how features of any potential product may change our usage for the worse or for the better.

In the interests of answering how your points work for the Sooloos system, as some folks may have similar questions, I'll answer what I know about them.


Taken from the Tone Audio article about the Sooloos ripping process:

"When you insert a CD in the slot of the Control you will notice that it takes a few minutes longer to rip than on your standard PC, about six minutes compared to about three or four on my laptop. It takes a while because it has to do some specialized things."

"And as they are ripping, they do many things - hidden sector syn-chronization (jitter correction), detection of read errors, and heavy error correction at multiple speeds - to compensate for the
weaknesses of redbook cd players."

Of course, because you can also import content you have already ripped, folks can use their own ripping process and just import into the system from there.


Sooloos' Control:PC app lets you edit meta data as you see fit. The source they use for it is AMG. Again though, you can import ripped music with your already tweaked tags if you so desire.


This one is talking about a bit more. Ok, so the default meta data comes from AMG. Included in that data is more than just your standard single genre descriptor. They use Genre, Sub-Genre, Mood and Credits. I couldn't find readable screenshots online of the genre and sub-genre sections, but in person I've seen them and they are extensive. I don't know if they use the full compliment of genre and sub-genres that AMG does, but you can see what AMG uses in their online database in the example below:

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=73:20

And then there are moods. This is just another way of tagging tracks to try and easily build playlists based on a kind of music you want to hear:

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=75:

Lastly, there are credits. What we're talking about here is more than just the band and composer names. We're talking about producers, individual band member names, etc. There's a screenshot on the last page of the Tone Audio review:

http://www.Sooloos.com/www/press/Sooloos-ToneAudio.pdf

Now, to answer your question about creating your own should all of this not be sufficient, the good news is that you can. I don't know about genres and sub-genres, but I know that you definitely can create new moods and add new album credits.

The key to all of this extra data is how they implement it. If all they did was have this additional info to view on an "album details" screen, it might be interesting but not of much use. Instead, Sooloos' UI lets you sort and filter based on these various criteria. They call this "Focus". You basically choose criteria for the you want to focus on and the system shows you those albums which match the specified criteria. Sooloos has a list of examples in their knowledgebase and those are:

- Jazz, released in the 1940's and 1950's
- All albums released by Blue Note and Impulse!
- Every album where John Coltrane is listed as a credit (it's many more than have his name as the artist)
- British Rock from the 1960's and 1970's
- Every album where Eric Clapton is listed as a credit (it's many more than have his name as the artist)
- Rock, imported in the last 30 days (all your newest Rock albums)
- Album picks (focus only on album picks)
- Minimum rating of 4 stars (focus only on albums with a 4 star rating or higher)

The cool thing is that with the UI, creating any one of these is very easy with just a few screen taps. You can save the results as a collection to use again later if you like the resulting focus. I did find a screenshot of a Focus screen in the last page of Stereophile's review:



So now, you're talking about extensive default metadata, custom metadata additions and smart usage of that metadata via easy filtering.

Jeff

Nope, just your average consumer here. However, I will admit something that may get me labeled as a heretic. Rather than even being a Meridian owner, I have been a Mark Levinson/Lexicon.Revel guy. I own products from all 3 HSG divisions and really love them. Don't get me wrong, I like what Meridian does and have auditioned various components on several occasions from sources to DSPs to speakers. To this point I have not found something I liked more than the competition to buy.

As for Sooloos, it has been on my radar for over a year. I have investigated it pretty thoroughly and used it in person on quite a few occasions (I find myself drawn to it every time I'm at my local dealer's shop). My holdup has been on waiting for Rhapsody and, even more than that, the 12" wireless panel.

Jeff

Perhaps we should all refrain from the Sooloos bashing until M have had time to stamp their mark on the system. While I love my Squeezecenter-based system, I'm prepared to be open minded and indeed would pay over the odds (but not silly money) for a flexible, integrated alternative offering style, ease-of-use and performance.

Cliff

@Cliff. I'm not Sooloos bashing! I'm completely ignorant about Sooloos and wanted others with more knowledge than me to chip in.

@Jeff. Great info; the Sooloos looks *very* capable. The only thing I would say is that one of the dBpoweramp metadata sources is AMG and it's far from perfect. Having multiple metadata providers is the main reason I switched from EAC to dBpoweramp as my bit-perfect ripping utility.

Edit: Typed this drinking a glass of very nice Chardonnay and listening via SoftSqueeze on my PC

Daft question maybe but why would a company that has a fantastic product that is developed and is so good sell out to Meridian, unless it was not selling very well?
Then they would hope Meridian's name would help to push the product and keep the company afloat.
I suspect that they were in need of the money because its not selling very well as it is very expensive for what it is.
I can sit here looking at Album Art on my 17" Dell Laptop and select my music stored on a 5 bay 5TB raid drive and sift through my DVD's and Blu Rays on my �100 network player.
When I've selected my music I can surf the internet, type an email or just play a game all for a lot less than their setup! I can even watch a 1080p Bluray on the Dell 17" screen if I want or just send it to my Plasma.
Why?

Economies of scale from a joint distribution network. Plus, even if they are profitable, they probably need an injection of capital to fund further development and take the business to the next stage.