HiFi+ Roy Gregory's Meridian DSP8000 loudspeaker review

Roy Gregory did a nice long review of the big Meridian speakers.

It was a fairly well-balanced review – but he forgot to mention two of the major shortcomings of these speakers (although he does mention that they lack ‘intimacy and immediacy’).

First, the plusses [in my opinion, which more or less agrees with Mr. Gregory – read the review for yourself for details]:

The look nice, they can play loud, are easy to setup [for basic CD/DVD-driven systems], and they minimize cable riot (amp and DAC are inside the speaker).

Then the minuses [also in my opinion]:

They lack the ability to render anything other than simple harmonics and they cannot produce a correctly shaped note in the dynamic domain – which is to say that they sound like they are making a lot of square waves [they also collapse into a wall-of-sound at high volumes].

These speakers are targetted to the Home Theater market, where everyone seems to expect that the sound will likely suck, and if it ‘sucks less’, they got a winner – it is like some kind of nostalgia thing, I don’t know.

Perhaps Mr. Gregory felt that mentioning the ‘intimacy and immediacy’ and publically questioning whether an audiophile would be happy with these (saying yes, probably, particularly if they would otherwise get tangled up in upgrade hell with all the choices other speakers allow their owners) were enough ‘clues’ that these speakers have a certain market, and are not a ‘please everybody’ kind of product.

Personally, we both had Meridian CD players. a long time ago, that were better sounding than the competition because they were warmer(!) sounding – this was in the days of 16bit and 20bit DACs. Then they veered off into Technical Wizardy Over Musicality Land and left us behind.

If only, if only they, or someone else, built some digital active speakers that sounded really, really good to your typical audiophile type listener. In these days of outboard loudspeaker crossovers, most of the lines we carry are going in the other direction- instead of putting everything in the speaker, they are taking more and more of it out and putting it into yet more boxes. 🙂

But seriously, how many people (aka non-audiophiles) are going to want to mess with all the components that are required these days to setup a good sounding system? They have enough trouble just hooking up their new TiVo.

Then again, people who can setup their basic home theater 5.1 or 7.1 system with all of *its* options will think 2-channel is a piece of cake.

Hmmmm… perhaps is the inevitable merging of the two – seemingly what is required to get good sound AND video these days – which is confrontational and daunting.

Then add music servers… stir and bake for several hundred hours on low and take a few asprin.

I guess the point is, which seems to have been lost by this writer during this meandering post, is that the Meridian speaker’s claim to fame, as I see it, is that it is easy to setup and easy on the eyes – i.e. things that have to do with lifestyle and convenience and minimizing day-to-day fuss and bother and NOT much to do with high-end high fidelity audio.

Funny, high-end audio, in general, pays little attention to these lifestyle aspects of product design …. probably to its detriment. Kind of like all of high-end audio these days being like a old 911 Porsche, a very high performance drive – just don’t try to use the radio, or air conditioner, or automatic windows…

I know, I know, a lot of guys and gals LIKE it that way. 🙂

But what if, Lamm for instance, added a remote control for their preamp in a way that was not detrimental to the sound

– and perhaps Nordost made Valhalla 100% transparent VISUALLY [it is close now, but 100%? … we would have to watchout we don’t trip over it…],

– and what if ALL manufacturers hired an Industrrial Design consultant or two to spruce up the looks…

– and what if they also hired Human Interface engineers to make sure their products were very usuable and that the workflows to set them up were easy on the noggin…

…Oh! and what if they were all members of a AAA-like organization that came over if you called them with a ‘system emergency’ and helped you perform major system mods, diagnose problems, Move Heavy Equipment(!), …[Hmmmmm… maybe there should just be a Audio ‘Geeks On Call’?]

The point REALLY is how to make the crown jewels of high-end audio, and our audio passion in general, be more inclusive of those who are not technologically savvy, and who don’t want to be [or who are and don’t want to admit it to anybody :-)]..