UnitiServe into Meridian

Posted by: nudgerwilliams on 03 April 2013

Hello All

I've just moved house and acquired a Meridian home cinema system which the previous owner (who was down-sizing) left behind.

Am interested on how this compares to the Naim world if anybody has experience.

I now have my UnitiServe plumbed (via optical cable) into a G68 processor and the stereo speaker pair are DSP5500s. From the info I have the kit seems to be 7+ years old.

Compared to my system at my last house (Uniti and Quad 12Ls) the sound is certainly a major step up in many ways - scale of the image, bass depth, dynamic range, detail, etc. But I find the presentation a bit polite and lacking a sense of pace.

If I were to replace the G68 and speakers with Naim gear and conventional speakers, any thoughts on what I should be looking at to get a "Naim sound" but with the other attributes of the Meridian gear? Could I go with my Uniti plus NAP200 and c. £2k on some floor-standing speakers? Or am I going to need to look further up the food chain at SuperUniti or streamer / pre / power plus speakers?

I'm not massively into home cinema so that aspect of things is of much less interest than stereo music.

Appreciate this is a very vague question but would appreciate thoughts of anybody with experience of Meridian gear.

Regards

David

Posted on: 03 April 2013 by jobseeker

I use a Meridian G61 (effectively the same as you have) togther with a Superuniti. That's a hell of a system you've been left. Those speakers are mean beasts and the processor is no slouch. Meridian's philosophy is different to Naim's, so in some ways you're comparing to different things. However, I'm very happy with my particular 'marriage'. If the G68 and the DSP5500's have not been updated to the most recent firmware, you can get more from them by doing so.

The speakers can operate on their own as a stereo system with 2 digital sources. You don't say what type of G68 you have (there were several, some of which can only be used with Meridian DSP speakers and others which will run analogue speakers too). I love Meridian's Trifield algorithm, which uses a centre speaker for augmented stereo.