Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems HD621 Set Up Questions

I've been living with the HD621 for some weeks now and can report it is an excellent unit which does everything required of it in spades. The audio with the new HD codecs is awesome - smooth and detailed sound top to bottom.

I have 3 inputs used, the Bluray player, a digital TV HDD recorder and a DVDR. I'm surprised at the improved audio from the TV recorder - the bass in particular.

So, if anyone is hesitating and has the finances, I suggest you go ahead and buy. Well done Meridian!

John

Is your HD621 passing DD bitstream for your TV HDD and DVR?

So my BR, SACD player is set to output DSD for SACD. When I play it through the HD621 the G68 applies the Discrete DSP. Is the HD621 or 68 converting the DSD stream to PCM so it can process it?

If you can hear it, the player is converting it to PCM.
If the player knows you can't handle DSD it may be reverting to the PCM layer of the disc.

Neither the HD621 or G68 can handle DSD.

Well that's interesting. I didn't think my BR player was that smart. Must be part of the handshaking, audio EDID process that takes place between the BR and the HD621.

Are you 100% sure your playing the DSD layer?
Are you 100% sure your player is setup correctly (although if it did send dsd it wouldn't work)?
Are you 100% sure they send DSD over HDMI (since most systems cannot handle it they often send PCM)?

It is passing the audio to multilink on the 861 which is PCM???

Not sure I follow your question George as the HD621 has HDMI video out and no DVDR has HDMI input AFAIK and, because of copy protection, is never likely to.

The HDMI video out -> iScan VP50 -> Sony VW200 projector.

John

I'm guessing your BR is only reading the CD layer of the SACD disc so is not so clever!

John

I'm questioning your report of improved audio on DD Bitstream sources.

It's still not clear if an HD621 passes DD Bitstream or not. I'm guessing it does and all the HD621 can do for it, is add yet another jitter reduction in front of your G68 jitter reduction. I find it difficult accept it would add any audible improvement to a DVR or HD TV outputting DD Bitstream.

The only type of audio it can help improve is PCM (input !) it would at best just pass dejittered bitstream (note jitter was likely ADDED by sending it over HDMI in the first place).

I'm not 100 percent sure about anything but...

Yes I'm sure it's playing the SACD layer because the G68 says it's receiving multi-channel and applies a mc music DSP.

I know the player is set to do DSD for SACD but it must be that it is smart enough to override that setting during the handshake.

All I know is that you can configure the player to do DSD or pcm over SACD. I chose DSD, obviously not knowing enough about the G68's capability in this area.

It sounds like your right in that some how it knows the downstream can't handle the DSD and switched to PCM.

But I'd depend more on the player saying your playing the DSD layer or not than the Meridian.

I'm not sure how to test that because the HD audio will not come ex the toslink and the only MC decoder I have is the 861. In turn the only way for me to get HD MC to the 861 (using their 3 digital links) is via the HD621.

So I'm unsure what sort of bits are floating around.

But the basic promise of the HD621 is to split off the audio from the video, then buffer it to remove jitter. Do you mean by more jitter is added because of an extra HDMI cable using the HDMI splitter box? That assumes that more jitter is added each time audio is transmitted this way and I'm not sure if it compounds in that way. So far these ears have not detected that.

John