Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Thread Like Summary - Meridian M2 questions

Hi all,

I've recently bought some M2s, which I'm thoroughly enjoying owning so far. I'd appreciate any thoughts from M2 owners past or present on the following:

Port straws: Mine don't have any. Is it worth reinstating them? If so how far back should they go in length?

Power lights: Both lights work, but one is much less visible than the other when the grilles are in place. Having looked more closely it seems that I am missing the bulb 'surrounds' on both speakers so this may be the culprit. Does anyone know where I might find some, or an equivalent part? Are they just plastic/rubber tubing, or something more complicated?

Thanks for any advice you might have.

Peter

Hi
Welcome to the forum.

I had a pair of piano black gloss, I think they were refurbed by HQ Lacquer in Chessington, same company that supplied Meridian.

I had them on stands, driven by a 562 or 568 I think, playing a 598 CD/DVD.

I loved their sound and only really used them in my study.

After downsizing about 10 years ago, I moved them on after using them in my office at work. I upgraded to a pair of DSP5ks.

Can't comment on the porting but I do seem to remember that the brightness of the lights differed, didn't effect the sound.

Enjoy your system.

Kind regards

Jon

Hi,

Depending on taste a Meridian Audio 101B Control unit would match well.

Regards I

Thankfully I was able to find someone competent locally to fix the fault with these, and I'm back up and running

I have found (as I've read many others have) that providing a balanced supply to the M2s works (and sounds) much better; my Musical Fidelity preamp only offered single-ended RCA so I have added a Canford "Pro interface" as a stop-gap while I look for another preamp. It's not ideal but works surprisingly well. To anyone reading this in the future I'd urge you to use the balanced inputs with a proper balanced supply to get the best out of these speakers.

I'm thinking a Meridian 502 would be the ideal preamp choice, giving me options to go balanced throughout the signal chain in future, so I'm on the hunt

Nice vinyl source.

502 has a nice feature which lets you adjust sensitivity per-source to account for different gain, etc.

If you do add a CD source, you could consider a Meridian 500 series (506, 508, 588, etc.) which were class leading in their day and still sound fantastic.

You might consider something like a 568 also, which acts as a sort of digital preamp - although it’s a surround controller, it can be used to great effect in a 2-channel system (I’ve done this). It takes multiple digital inputs and processes them with Meridian proprietary tech which improve sound quality - de-jittering, upsampling, apodising (if you have the right version). You could even run your turntable through this, as the preamp is built in, and they have balanced outputs for the front three channels.

It would also allow you to explore Trifield, if you ever found another M2.

Food for thought…

A 502 is also a lovely balanced preamp option, again, according to taste.