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

Its all well and good saying how it will be a fix all in one box and if you need support then they will help. I've had numerous DVD players from Meridian over the years and every one has gone wrong through software problems. I've then waiting going on 2 years for all the fix's to stop it freezing, jumping, droping audio etc.
I never minded but my wife drove me nuts, expecially with the G91.
Now my question is, can you really see a plug and forget system that just does everything, especially if your doing it via wireless.
My wife used to comment that I've spent �3k on a DVD player that won't play discs and is always playing up, when I could have got one for �50 that played everything!
Can you really see the system working without issues? I can not and there is the point of wasting �10k on this system! Customers will be on the phone all the time, everytime they download music, every time they want to watch a movie. I have a popcorn hour A100 and it plays up just as much as my G91 did, but it only cost me �100.
If I'd spent �5k on it I'd be spitting feathers and I can see the Sooloos being the same albeit to a lesser degree.
On a side note it was never the dealer who helped me with my problems, it was always this forum!

I can't speak for Meridian as I have never been an owner of theirs, but I can say that my experience is that the world of servers and streamers operates differently from most hardware AV companies. As per the press release, Sooloos will keep its existing NY HQ (and likely their support structure). So, ongoing support will be from Sooloos and not Meridian for some period of time.

Why might that matter? Because I've found a far quicker response time to fixes from companies who produce products like this vs "standard" AV hardware makers. Firmware updates for the latter take ages to roll out and, depending on the hardware's required upgrade steps, may make the process a hassle. Companies like Sooloos often code on an ongoing basis. They are constantly working on tweaks, fixes, feature additions, etc. So, software upgrades come much more frequently to address field issues and teh updates happen automatically over the net. The feedback I've gotten from my dealer is that Sooloos' turnaround time on hardware issues is also very snappy. Now, not all companies in this segment are not equal and some are better than others (Kaleidescape is probably the best I know of - and for their price, you could say that they sure as heck should be), but again the feedback I've gotten is that Sooloos is pretty darn good.

You never know what might happen under new ownership, but going into it Sooloos is starting from a good place. All that being said, the initial comparison was between and all in one solution like Sooloos and a DIY system. Regardless of how good or bad Sooloos' support is, any organized support would be better for a non-tech customer than trying to troubleshoot themselves on a DIY system. And that would be true for any out of the box solution. That was the point. Of course you still want the chosen all in one solution to have good support, even when compared to others, and from what I've heard Sooloos does have that.

Jeff

Jeff

It looks good, I just hope it works well and they can get the price down a bit!

Regards Paul

All true, and I'll add that iTunes has limited tagging support, serious performance issues with very large libraries (50K tracks or so), and has a huge footprint on disk for such a functionally limited program. It seems like every week I get another Apple update notification wanting to download 80 MB worth of stuff to fix some iTunes bug or another (Apple just doesn't get the incremental patch thing).

In addition to the programs mentioned in the review linked to by George, I would suggest checking out J River Media Center, http://www.jrmediacenter.com/, which I find to have the most extensible tagging support of any library manager out there.

I still think that Sooloos, however great it is as a product, needs more core IP to survive long term with a high-end pricing model. Building user interfaces like Sooloos is almost trivially easy these days (actually, I liked the now defunct Fortuna Classical interface even better). The data, on the other hand, is much harder to get - and that data belongs to AMG.

If it were so easy, why are there so few products with excellent user interfaces like the Sooloos?

I guess I don't know what I'm missing, but iTunes has every feature that I have wanted so far and manages my 385GB music collection with aplomb. I have no reason to change. My wife and daughter love it. By the way, I don't download music from iTunes although my daughter does.

I've got a huge iTunes library and never had any problems with performance. It ticks all the right boxes for me...

It is certainly technically easy but it takes talent and intelligence to do it right.

Kal

Because almost nobody in the industry goes to the trouble and expense to get really rich metadata to work with. If the only metadata you have to work with is Album, Artist, Song, and maybe Composer, and the data is so inconsistent that you can't even assume that things like Artist name are represented the same across different discs, then you simply can't write a rich UI that cross references all kinds of different information. iTunes represents about the limit of what you can do, UI-wise, without better metadata.

I'm pretty harsh on iTunes because, as a software professional, I see how much better it could be, and because I'm a heavy classical music listener, and classical music gets short shrift in pretty much all these library managers. But it's a perfectly satisfactory product for what it is intended to do - serve as a software hub for Apple's very good (and profitable) media products. I'd bet 90% of its users are quite happy with it, as you are.

It is certainly technically easy but it takes talent and intelligence to do it right.

Kal [/quote]

Exactly true. But, perhaps because I'm a programmer myself, I'd think it takes far less talent and intelligence than, say, assembling DSP hardware and firmware that supports Trifield, apodizing, room correction, etc in a usable package. That stuff seems like magic to me, magic that only a few people know how to pull off.

I have used I-Tunes and a multiple sonus system for the last 6 months and have been very happy with it, also has been great to be able to stream music and internet radio around the house. I still use CD for some active listening but not sure I can really notice the difference. I also play a lot of DVD-A and this plus a SACD option would be the only reasons to change to an M server unless there was a clear audible benefit.

What M need to realise is that they are always late to the party. If there had been an M server solution 6 months ago I may have paid the premium just to keep the faith. New kit becomes very expensive when you have to dump old kit.

My patience is also wearing thin re the apodising filters for the 5500's that Bob told me I would have by the late summer.

If the HDMI solution doesn't appear by the spring then I give up and go a third party route. In marketing (as well as everthing else) timing is everything.


David

I agree. Now that Meridian has quickly caught up they will have to keep pushing the added IP. I think they could introduce some of their existing technology (apodizing, upsampling, multi-channel MHR, single control point for system and music etc.) to give it added value but then beyond that Sooloos and Meridian will have to continue to push the IP. They are both companies that have done it but it isn't easy staying in front.