Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Thread Like Summary - Bought the Meridian Ellipse …

After auditioning the Ellipse at a local dealer, I was so impressed by the sound staging and traded in my 16 year old F80 for it (F80 trade in value of approx £600).

My impressions so far after a few days at home -

• The unit I received has a slight quality control issue to the main chassis where one plate isn’t flush to another. A minor issue but once seen can’t be unseen.
• I connected a USB thumb drive with some MQA tracks and it seems the internal DAC doesn’t play MQA as the tracks appear as PCM on the control app.
• On several occasions I found that the Control app volume control doesn’t work.
• I’ve lost wifi connection to the unit a few times (something that doesn’t happen with my WiiM mini streamer which is in another room further away from the main router).
• When I play music from a USB stick, the Control app file Manager is unable to scroll down and show me all the folder contents so I can’t access more than about 50 tracks in any sub directory.
• When I play a song from a USB stick and bring up album art, each time I try and go back to the file manager, the app keeps buffering and crashing.
• The track navigation for USB connected drives is terrible. I can’t figure out how to go back to an album after playing a particular track - it sends me back to the top of the entire USB directory. The control app also doesn’t allow you to generate playlists?
• The main reason I bought the Ellipse was to access the Melco server of my main system over UPnP but the Meridian Control app doesn’t see the Melco server. The manual suggests using Bubble? UPnP but I can’t even find it in the App Store. I’ve downloaded Mconnect and will try that instead.
• The sound signature is more forward than for either my M80 or the traded in F80 and so immediately sounds more engaging initially but the Ellipse sounds far more distorted at very high volumes whereas the F/M80s never did.
• It’s a shame the Ellipse can’t handle DSD files in the manner the Ultra Dac was able to.
• I don’t use Roon but I’m wondering whether I need to subscribe to it to alleviate some of the issues I have encountered? Any thoughts and opinions are welcomed!

I will play around with the settings to tame the brightness to the sound and it’s possible that the app crashes might be because I haven’t downloaded the latest iOS (although this hasn’t caused a problem with my dCS and WiiM apps) but my feelings re the ellipse are a little mixed right now.

Roon would certainly help with file access, searching, making playlists and such from UPnP files. If you can supply a wired ethernet connection to the Ellipse, this will improve things a bit.

The brightness might just need a little burn-in, but distortion will never settle in. Is it possible you have a damaged unit (with the body panels not flush, etc.)? If it’s not been assembled correctly it might be rattling at high volumes which might sound like distortion…?

If your dealer is nearby, maybe it might be possible to compare it to another, or their demo model, to see if this is a general issue or confined to your unit. Honestly, I would want a replacement on build quality alone from what you’ve described.

The other app issues are a shame, but presumably fixable in software/firmware. Or, if you can get to the bottom of the brightness/distortion/build issues to the stage where you’re happy to keep the unit, Roon is really excellent, especially from a wired Ethernet connection.

Alan Boothroyd the great Design Director must be turning in his grave.
How did this design issue pass QC?
Another nail in the c..... !

I think that if these are the issues after a few days I would be seriously considering taking it back to the dealer and asking for my money back, it clearly is not suited to the way you want to use your music.

Rgds
Stuart

The dealer should replace it. I would.