Meridian's Digital Loudspeakers

Meridian was showing three of their current line of DSP loudspeakers: the $20,000/pair DSP 5200; the $46,000/pair DSP 7200, and the $80,000/pair DSP 8000. These loudspeakers have in common an all-digital input, internal digital signal processing circuitry, and a crossover implemented in the digital domain.

The largest speaker has a sealed enclosure with five internal amplifiers and eight drivers. The DSP 7200 has two woofers, one midrange unit, and one tweeter, and has a bass-reflex configuration; and the smallest 5200 is a 2.5-way loudspeaker with a bass-reflex enclosure. The special editions shown at CES feature beryllium-dome tweeters and aluminum clamps on the midranges and woofers.

All of these speakers are now Master Quality Authenticated (MQA)-ready. As Meridian's Richard Hollinshead (Director of Engineering) explained to me, this capability means that the loudspeakers can decode streaming digital signals encoded in Meridian's proprietary format to obtain the highest performance musical source material with a time-domain performance equivalent to the ear's resolving ability. For those interested, John Atkinson wrote very positively in December 2014 on the Stereophile website about the implications and potential of Meridian's MQA hi-rez format, "I've Heard the Future of Streaming: Meridian's MQA."

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