Breathtaking Performance

Digital Signal Processing

As pioneers and leaders in the field of Digital Signal Processing (DSP) technology, Meridian is able to deliver your music authentically to recreate the passion and involvement of your musical moments. Power-efficient, active DSP crossovers are individually tailored to distribute music to each speaker, bringing your music to life.

DSP Loudspeakers

The traditional setup – amplifiers driving passive loudspeakers – is inefficient, limiting sound quality. Meridian loudspeakers contain a complete, matched audio system with efficient DSP crossovers, multiple DACs and driver-specific amplifiers, giving higher overall quality, less power use, and the performance of a traditional loudspeaker eight times the physical volume.

Speakerlink

Traditional audio systems often require large, expensive cables to maintain their performance. Meridian's SpeakerLink uses an “Ethernet style” cable that delivers pristine digital sound and control down a single cable between Meridian components. The result is simple, unobtrusive, and cost-effective cables that are easy to install

Meridium

Loudspeaker enclosures often vibrate, colouring the sound, making it less lifelike. Our most advanced loudspeakers use a cabinet construction material unique to Meridian: Meridium features highest-grade laminated plywood layers bonded to an aluminium core, allowing the loudspeaker to reproduce music accurately without adding its own sound.

FIFO Buffering

Each sample of a digital recording must remain evenly spaced in time. Unfortunately, timing can vary, especially when reading discs. This is “jitter”, degrading music's sense of space and diminishing realism. Meridian's multiple “First In, First Out” buffering system minimises jitter, ensuring perfect timing and improved clarity. You enjoy a clearer feeling of the instruments and their interrelationship.

Meridian Apodising Filter

Filters are critical in digital audio. Commonly they introduce distortion and harshness because of "pre-ringing". Early digital recordings suffer from harshness too, due to primitive filters. After painstaking research, Meridian developed a special filter that avoids pre-ringing, so it can be steeper, cleaning up the effects of early filters. The result: a better, cleaner sound from recordings old and new.

Enhanced Bass Alignment

High or low, all sounds travel at the same speed, so all the sounds from a live musical event arrive at your ear at the same time, whatever frequencies they contain. Loudspeakers, however, have a problem when playing low frequency sounds at the same time as mid and high frequencies – the bass arrives late, and the deeper the sound, the later it arrives. This delayed bass causes music to lose its impact and reduces the sense of the recorded space – it is often described as “boomy”.

The goal is to have time-accurate loudspeakers, where all reproduced frequencies start and end at the same time. In a loudspeaker, this timing is affected by the crossover, driver, and enclosure 
type. To eliminate the delay between low, and mid and high frequencies, Meridian has designed a combination of digital filters and time delays for the mid and high frequencies. This solution enables the mid and high frequencies to “wait” for the low frequencies, delivering perfectly-timed music playback.

Mid and high frequencies are delayed to time-align them, while upper bass is delayed with a special type of patented filter. These features must 
be implemented entirely in the digital domain, making them impossible to achieve in any passive or analogue-active loudspeaker design.

Enhanced Bass Alignment provides accurate time-alignment of the drivers in the system, delivering exceptional imaging and a clear, transparent, more life like sound.

MQA

MQA is a technology that captures the full magic of an original studio performance. Using pioneering scientific research into how people hear, MQA delivers master quality audio in a file that’s small enough to stream or download – the days of sacrificing quality for convenience are over. Visit mqa.co.uk for more information.

Upsampling

Uses a complex digital filter to double the rate of samples from the source to improve resolution of the finer details in the record. This means that even with a standard source such as CD using our upsampling technology we are able to significantly enhance the listening experience.

Meridian High Resolution

A patented Meridian audio format that combines high bandwidth, security and low jitter. MHR gets the highest possible sound quality in playback systems that use Meridian and enables the encoded transmission of PCM, MQA and DSD.

Specifications

AUDIO INPUTS

Meridian Speakerlink (RJ45) & S/PDIF digital input, , 32kHz–96kHz sampling rates at up to 24 bit with MHR support (phono)AUDIO

AUDIO OUTPUTS

1x RJ45 with balanced digital audio and control for 2nd loudspeaker. Carries infra-red pickup for system automation

PERFORMANCE

Peak SPL: 118dB at 1m (music material)
Noise less than 15dB spl.
Overall distortion typically <0.02% at any frequency or level Frequency response In room within 3dB: 35Hz - over 32kHz

AMPLIFIERS

4 x 150w (600w)

BASS DRIVERS

2 x 200mm polypropylene long-throw

MID DRIVERS

1 x 160mm

BERYLLIUM DOME TWEETER

1 x 25mm (1”) Meridian piston in short horn, beryllium dome with silver voice-coil.

DSP SPECIFICATION

2 x Freescale 56367 running at 150MHz
2 x 24-bit Multi-bit delta-sigma DACs with 128x oversampling
Crossover minimum-phase at 2.6kHz
Bass protection
Response correction for the whole system
User tone controls. Analogue/digital volume and phase control

DISPLAY

Eight-character display with system lights, can be blanked

DIMENSIONS / WEIGHT

HEIGHT; 1072mm [42.2in] (Without feet/spikes)
WIDTH: 178mm [7in] tapering to 350mm [13.8in]
DEPTH: 220mm [8.7in] tapering to 422mm [16.6in]
FOOTPRINT (W x D): 350mm [13.8in] x 422mm [16.6in]
WEIGHT: 55kg [121lbs]

POWER

20VA standby; 600VA max