First for reference I have an extremely good HT setup that I have a Transporter hooked to and really enjoy at home. Let's just say many 10's of $1000's.
I also have a small two channel system with DSP-5000 MK-II's I also enjoy. This setup I know the speakers are poorly placed. But I decided to buy a cheap old pair of Meridian speakers for work. They cost me $600.00. They are DSP-5000's MK-I "18-Bit DACs". The grills are falling apart and they are 240V so I have to run them on a 120V to 240V step up transformer. It would cost more than the speakers for just the parts to switch them over to 120V. I think they are like 10 years old. So I hooked the SB3 to them (via S/PDIF COAX). I almost fell off my chair. They sound so good it isn't funny. The room is all bare walls, bare windows and paper thin carpet. It is quite a privilege to be able to have speakers like this at work and sometimes I wonder if it's all psychological that I feel they sound as good as the home system sometimes. It also helps sitting practically between the speakers :) I am so productive when I have these things playing. This is the setup before I hooked up the SB3. http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3236/2803974111_5c2309261f_b.jpg Even the old Meridian stuff sounds positively amazing and just blows the doors off so much other equipment that you can pay $1000’s and $1000’s for. And you can’t get much more elegantly simple. Plug in the squeezebox and you are done. The Speakers are the DAC, Crossovers (Digitally), Preamp, Amps (Tri-Amped actually) and Drivers in One. For $600.00 !! That was an exceptionally good deal usually MK-I 18-Bit are around $1200.00 a pair. They accept up to 24bit/48KHz but the DACs are “18-Bit”. They were introduced like in 1993 !! Also, and this is just as important, it just amazes me how much a room and placement effects the sound. Like I said, I have the newest version of the 5000’s as well and they sound NOTHING like the old ones at work. It's not the speakers that are different, the new speakers ARE BETTER. It's the room. The room doesn’t always need fancy acoustic treatment either. The speakers just click in my office at work and location I put them. They are not boomy at all. If you ever have the chance to try hooking a squeezebox to a pair of Meridians you’d be blown away. With used prices in this economy there are some amazing deals out there. I could never go back to conventional speakers. -- mswlogo Thinkpad XP SS > Cat5 > Transporter > SPDIF-COAX > Meridian G68ADV (Trifield, Room corrected, Upsampled) > DSP6000 Mains, DSP5500HC Center, DSP33 Rears ------------------------------------------------------------------------ mswlogo's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9090 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=53750 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
