Its over 10 years since Meridian attended a UK hifi show - a bizarre choice I never quite understood. Perhaps they were doing OK without too much publicity, but it does seem like an odd policy. Maybe now the MQA cash cow has (thankfully) died a death, they need to go back to their roots and make money out of hifi products again?
When we entered the room, the flagship DSP8000 XE streaming active speakers were playing - they're the piano black behemoths in the picture above. They weigh in at 95kg each and the class D amps for the bass drivers are capable of just under 1kW. Class A-B amps drive the tweeters and the mids in the separated top cabinets.
Although this was a large demo room, Meridian had effectively split it into 2 smaller rooms with one open side by putting a pair of speakers firing across each half of the room. So this might not have been the ideal set up for this large flagship speaker, but they certainly demonstrated huge power, scale, dynamics and detail. Everything hit home but there was a sense of complete ease about the presentation - how they balance such impact with such a sense of musicality is very impressive - they're not shouty, they're not harsh, they don't do detail at the expense of musical engagement, they just do the lot. The only reservation I have, and it may be that they just need more room to work in, is that the scale of things was unrealistic. Sure a big bass drum or a full orchestra should sound big, but when the vocals and the smaller instruments like violins sounded 3 or 4 times larger than the real thing, that let the side down a bit. Would like to hear them in a better situation. £80k the pair.
Then we moved over to the other half of the room to sit in front of the second tier offering - the DSP9, here presented in a very sophsticated mid-blue metallic. Any RAL colour is on offer, of course. At £65k a pair they're not exactly a bargain, but they are source, amps and speakers all in one, and its not hard to spend £65k on an amp alone of course...
At first listen these appeared to be a disappointment. But our room host was playing a bit of a trick on us as he'd actually started playing the little ELlipse all-in-one unit seen at the back between the large speakers. At which point it became very clear that this is a very impressive unit indeed. Worth a listen if you've got £1900 to spend on something for the kitchen / office / etc.
But back to the DSP9 - well, its pretty much as impressive as the bigger sibling. A touch less weight, but that really is only apparent in direct comparison - I'm pretty sure that if I'd arrived cold to these they'd still be taking breaths away. They do all the same stuff as the larger ones - that uncanny ability to drive, punch, excite, inform but also engage, avoiding any edginess, no harshness, everything presented beautifully - but with one major difference. Here the orchestra is huge, but the violin is a sensible size in the image. Maybe they're better suited to the room, but for me this was the better, more enjoyable speaker because that over sized effect wasn't there to distract. Truly an excellent product.
Welcome back to the shows Meridian, a great return.
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