Connection of Future Digital Amplifiers

Posted by Andre Yew [IP: 208.8.104.2] on April 15, 1999 at 11:18:37
Using Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows 98):

In Reply to: Connection of Future Digital Amplifiers posted by Scott Boyd on April 14, 1999 at 11:26:40:

I must come to the defense of digital speakers, in the sense that Meridian have implemented them. They have several advantages:

1. They are truly actively tri-amped, with separate amps and active xovers for each driver unit. As such, the amps are not very large (75W/driver), and they gain all the advantages of active xovers. Of course, analog active xovers can also achieve this, but it is also an advantage of the Meridian implementation.

2. Their xovers are digital. They can not only be steeper and more precise, but adjustable. The Meridian speakers apparently adjust xover settings based on levels to protect themselves. This is another advantage of a fully-integrated actively xover'ed system --- the designer has complete knowledge of the speaker/amp combo and can provide things like fully calibrated readouts (the Meridians will tell you how loud they are playing in dBSPL), protection that is appropriate to the speaker, and so on. A digital-input system is also more reliable to interconnect in terms of quality as well as ease than an analog system, and has many more advantages, like point #3 below.

3. System integration of the Meridian is very slick. Running one cable between speakers lets the Meridian system unit automatically control all of them as well as determine what kind of configuration it needs to set up. For example, how many speakers do I have, and what are their low-bass capabilities?

4. The Meridian system sounds good. While not to everyone's tastes, the system sounds very good for a 7-year old computer-based system. 7 years ago, we were fawning over 66MHz 486DX2s, which are completely obsolete by now, but the Meridian speakers keep going.

5. We get the system as an integrated whole, which is what counts, since it's the sound of the whole system that we are listening to, and not one piece like an amp. I think the ability to mix and match amps and components is overrated, overabused, and a Pandora's box. With an integrated system, we get what the designer intends us to hear. We may not like it, but at least we know we are hearing his ideas directly.

I personally think that Meridian-style speakers are the way to go in the future, and that it was way ahead of its time. Just recently has Microsoft and Philips introduced a USB-based speaker that is operating on similar principles to the Meridian system.

--Andre

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• Connection of Future Digital Amplifiers - SMR [WizOp] 00:46:48 04/16/99 (0)

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