Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Digital EQ, Why the Digital Room Correction Is The Most Important Issue in the 861

I am one of those who invested a large amount of money in Meridian gear based on the expectation that digital equalization would be added soon. I have been very disappointed that there is no viable solution to retain a pure digital path and get the hi-res equalization that should be possible. I'm expecting that the new upgrade to the 861 will contain the horsepower necessary to drive the room correction boards, otherwise why bother to update? User interface to the room correction software should be limited to the PC program, there is no decent way to handle it otherwise.

I've been building my theater for a year, and now that it is almost finished, I regret the commitment to Meridian based purely on the lack of room correction. If I had it to do over again, I would choose TaCT. If Meridian can bring their room correction to market it will allow me and many others to further our use of Meridian gear.

As a 500 series owner, I`ve been waiting for Room Correction/Digital EQ before I move to the 800 series. Without RC/EQ, the 861 is just not worth the price of admission (to me).

I`m also disappointed that the promise of the RC has been out there for years now with no delivery.

If I were to put out ~$10K today, I`d get a TACT TCS, and keep my 565 for it`s music modes.
I heard the TCS at CES this year, and man, it`s the most substantial audible improvement you`ve ever heard!
All other features pale in comparison.

I have a custom designed and built dedicated HT room, with RPG treatments and the whole nine yards, but I`m positive RC will be an audible improvement over what`s already there.
I`ve come real close to buying a couple of Tact RCS`s, but the promise of an 861 with RC keeps me waiting. But not for much longer…

That basically sums it up. I'm really sitting back and looking at what the 861 has to offer and upsampling DD and DTS to 24/96 really doesn't do anything for me, especially when DD and DTS are basically just lossy garbage and no amount of upsampling is going to change the original signal from its original limitations.

I am fairly underwhelmed with the 3.0 upgrades. We need more channels, room correction, etc.. The Digital DVD-A upgrade is certainly great and needed, but at this point the 861 is being surrpassed in major areas, and how long is it before we can actually catch up? These are major neccessities.

I don't know about you guys, but I'm also very demoralized by the chroma upsampling bug in the Meridian 800. I just got a cheap Panasonic RP-56 DVD player with SDI output which provides an all digital video output and no chroma upsampling bug... These are MAJOR increases in terms of performance. DVD-Audio is certainly very nice, and my choice over SACD, but the 800 needs to get the chroma upsampling issue resolved (and hopefully not by providing negative feedback which would add its own problems). I think we should all get together with Meridan and go out to LSI Logic (C-cube) headquarters, and start chanting and waiving posters until they fix the chroma upsampling problem in their MPEG decoder.

[This message has been edited by Health Nut (edited 12-30-2001).]

Right now as a 568 owner I will also sit back until there is a 861.3 shipping with RC cards! Then we will know the price and see how it measures up!
With a 568, I guess it is possible to use 4 Tact RCS 2.0's with the D/A options to get what we want from the Meridian RC cards but that is retail $3600 X 4!!!
If they would make the Tact TCS unit so that it could take the digital inputs from 4 SPDIF
signals simultaneously, and then do the room
correction on all 8 channels, then do the D/A
with 24/96 or better DAC, that would be a better solution but the last time I checked the TCS couldn't be configured that way. If someone is going to the 2002 CES, maybe they could check with Tact about converting a TCS for processing 8 channels of digital input ( not 4 stereo channels of selectable digital inputs)

I would also like to implore to Meridian to please include control down to 5 Hz. If that is not possible for some reason, at the very least 10 Hz. Since the 861 is supposed to represent the flagship model for the entire A/V industry, you need to have this level of control. I would prefer control down to 5 Hz, simply because there is no reason not to do so. If for some reason this is a problem, I implore that Meridian please have full EQ control down to 10 Hz at the very least. For serious installations, people who have large custom Infinite baffle subwoofers, etc... control down to the single digits is essential. I would certainly prefer to control custom subwoofer arrays in the digital domain, other than relying on analog EQ/Pole shifters.

We need to control below 20 Hz these days. Many CD's DVDs contain effects and information into the single digits: with a device like the 861 (flagship), we need to offer room correction control to 5 Hz--there simply is no reason not to do so. If you can provide One Hz increment crossover choices, we should be able to have digital EQ controls the reach down to 5 HZ. This would be greatly appreciated.

Does anyone know if TACT or Sig Tech allows control settings down to 5 Hz?

[This message has been edited by Health Nut (edited 01-01-2002).]

Chris, have you played with the current room correction setup software in Meridian.exe? At the moment it lets you set the center as low as low as 15 Hz.

Something tells me single digits would require ungodly amounts of DSP.

Neither of these options will work. I asked TaCT sometime ago about allowing 8 channels of digital inputs, but they are not interested. And you can't just buy a collections of 2-channel units, at least if you want to retain the 24/96 bit-depth and sampling rate. Meridian apparently sends those signals MHR-encrypted.

Not only does Meridian fail to produce their own room-correction engine, they won't allow you to use those of other manufacturers (at 24/96).

There is nothing different in DSP requirements for allowing direct control down to 5 Hz, it may just not have been thought warranted. It is not a DSP horsepower issue, the thought to make the software control down to 5 Hz might simply have not been thought necessary. I cannot tell you how much it would mean to me, and quite a few others out there. We are always looking for ways to flatten/EQ into the single digits. It is just a matter of writing the 'software' to include control down to 5 Hz, nothing more. I can't wait to work on the next 'project'. The Black Hole of INFINITY. (It will be a cost no object Infinite Baffle using the front wall of the theater which will be concrete or similar in the core, and a good sized room behind the front wall acting as the enclosure and storage house for the amplifiers). This is project will not take place for at least 4-5 years however, but it is next on the list and will require building a large dedicated A/V room in adddition to the room behind the front wall.

In any case, even now I can use that level of control, as I have enough headroom in my current system to equalize flat to 5 Hz and still stay within linear excursion while putting out reference level output (Black Hole Subs).

I guess in general I am starting to grow weary because the 4.0 upgrade, IMO is something that is already needed, and the room correction is how far away?

[This message has been edited by Health Nut (edited 01-01-2002).]

It is not Meridian, it is the content providers. If the content is not copy protected, you can output PCM at higher sampling rates otherwise you cannot.

How objectionable would it be to take the main right and left channel analogue outputs and send them to the new Tact 2.2X unit which has 24/192 A/D converters and then that unit will do the room correction, parametric eq, crossover options, and then use the internal 24/192 D/A into front right and left channel amplification? The A/D and D/A allows the Meridian volume control to effect all channels equally as opposed to trying to take digital output of the main right and left channels.

[This message has been edited by mburnstein (edited 01-02-2002).]

Just to add my two cents --
In addition to a 7.1 561/dsp5000 home theater, I have two dsp5500's set up as a stereo pair around the fireplace in my den. They have their comms linked to a 504 tuner and a medidian CD player (508?). the tuner and CD player feed a Tact 2.0 RCS (CD via digital and tuner via analog). I also have a Thorens tunrtable and a Nack Dragon feeding analog ports on the Tact unit. The Tact turns all the analog input into pcm digital output. The Tact digital PCM output then goes to the dsp5500 pair as if it were native out from the CD unit.

The RCS unit makes an incredible difference in the room, regardless of source. You can tell it to output 24/96 from the analog sources, and, if it senses 24/96 digital input, it will also output 24/96 from those sources. I plan to pugrade my 5500's to 24/96 this year, so I can take advantage of that.

Does that mean that a standard CD which is upsampled by an 800 or similar device will be transmitted at 24/96 without encryption? If I feed the 861 an unencrypted signal, it will pass unencrypted? That would probably be good enough for me, but it is the first I have heard...I wonder why nobody mentioned it before?