Sidebar 4: Manufacturers' Comments
Editor: Thank you for this opportunity to comment on the review of our Model 3A loudspeaker. The distorted, fluttery sound heard on the introductory drumstrokes of the Jurassic Park soundtrack was the active acoustic coupler reaching its excursion limits and hitting the rubberized stops built into the driver. These excursion stops prevent bottoming and greatly reduce the chance of the driver being damaged. We have found very few pieces of recorded music with bass levels capable of pushing the driver to its limits. To safely and properly reproduce the…
search
The High End is a tidily ordered world. There are CD players, transports, and processors used to play stereo recordings and drive stereo preamplifiers. There are stereo or mono amplifiers used to drive a pair of speakers. And then there is the British high-end company Meridian, run by one J. Robert Stuart, one of audio's deeper thinkers and a Fellow of the Audio Engineering Society. Meridian does it their way. They put their amplifiers inside their speakers. Heck, Meridian even puts their D/A processors inside their speakers when they can. And two speakers to play back stereo recordings?…
Before I discuss the results of my auditioning, I'll present the measured results. These were all taken in the digital domain using an Audio Precision System One fitted with the DSP option. The Meridian 518 was fed a data signal from the AP's AES/EBU output, set to a 20-bit word length. The 518's AES/EBU data output was looped back to the AP's digital input.
In the digital domain, the data word length is inexorably tied to the ultimate level of the noise floor. The longer the word, the lower the noise, with an approximate increase of 6dB in the system S/N ratio every time the word length…
The Meridian offers seven different noise-shaping algorithms, shown in Table 1. The spectral effects of each on the noise floor, hence the ultimate resolution, are shown in figs.8 through 14. (All of these were made using our old friend, the 1kHz tone at -90.31dB.) Which will be optimum depends on the nature of the original signal, the playback situation, and individual taste. For example, I ended up using Shape A on the Concert CD, which was originally recorded on analog tape. For Festival, for which I used a Nagra D 20-bit digital recorder, I used Shape C. And the late recording engineer…
Glitches: Any recording engineer using A/D converters with better than 16-bit resolution but storage media restricted to 16 bits—CD, CD-R, DAT, etc.—owes it to their sound-quality-conscious customers to use a Meridian 518. However, I did have one operational problem using the 518 in that I could not get my Panasonic 3700 professional DAT recorder to lock to its output, even with the channel bit set to "P" for "Professional." For the Festival project, I used a Meridian CDR as an interim storage medium (footnote 1), as this would lock onto the 518's data output with the channel bit set to "C"…
Sidebar 1: Description
Specifications: Digital processor, with infra-red remote control, capable of operating in three modes: "Type 0," Digital Control Center with digital source selection and digital volume control (1dB step size); "Type 1," Digital Resolution-Enhancement Device with user-selectable input/output data-word lengths, gain, and dither/noise-shaping (five algorithms available); "Type 2," Digital Mastering/Multimedia Processor. Digital inputs: three electrical S/PDIF (RCA); one S/PDIF optical (TosLink); one AES/EBU (XLR). Digital outputs: one AES/EBU (XLR); one S/PDIF (RCA).…
Fig.1 D/A Processor with 20-bit resolution, waveform of undithered 1kHz sinewave at -90.31dBFS (16-bit data, 120µV/vertical div.).
Fig.2 Meridian 518, spectrum of undithered 1kHz tone at -90.31dBFS, with noise and spuriae, 16-bit precision.
Fig.3 Meridian 518, spectrum of 1kHz tone at -90.31dBFS, with noise and spuriae, 20-bit precision.
Fig.4 Meridian 518, spectrum of 1kHz tone at -90.31dBFS, with noise and spuriae, 16-bit precision, calculated from 20-bit data with 518 set to "20C16" using the "Shape B" noise-shaping algorithm.
…
Fig.8 Meridian 518, spectrum of 1kHz tone at -90.31dBFS, with noise and spuriae, 16-bit precision, calculated from 20-bit data using the "Flat TPDF" noise-shaping algorithm (linear frequency scale).
Fig.9 Meridian 518, spectrum of 1kHz tone at -90.31dBFS, with noise and spuriae, 16-bit precision, calculated from 20-bit data using the "High-Pass TPDF" noise-shaping algorithm (linear frequency scale).
Fig.10 Meridian 518, spectrum of 1kHz tone at -90.31dBFS, with noise and spuriae, 16-bit precision, calculated from 20-bit data using the "Shape A" noise-…
Letters in response to this review appeared in March 1996 (Vol.19 No.3):
Goodbye
Editor: Thank you for a fun half-decade of sheer delight! It has been most enjoyable indeed. But I have purchased the Meridian 518 processor JA reviewed in January, some sound cards and music software for the ole PC, and am generally flying the flag of the Computer Camp. I'm not kidding myself, it's not hi-fi...yet, but it's one fun sandbox to play in! Anyway, it's not goodbye. I'm sure that I'll be seeing you guys again in five years when a fair portion of your advertisers will probably be selling…
John Atkinson wrote again on the Meridian 518 in July 1996 (Vol.19 No.7):
Reader Gregory Comnes of Tampa, Florida took exception to my January 1996 review of the $1650 Meridian 518 Digital Audio Processor (Vol.19 No.1, p.249): "Shame on you for missing the point..." he thundered. "You allude to Meridian's claim that, when used as a digital preamp, the 518 can sound 'frighteningly good,' but you didn't have time to use it as a preamp! How long could it have taken to hear what for most of is the most compelling reason for CD-only users to own this piece: the elimination of a compromising…