TRULY GRAND PERFORMANCE
Every aspect of Meridian's flagship DSP8000 design is in the service of reproducing music. The unique construction of a separate head provides convincingly natural voice reproduction, while the discrete bass cabinet provides effortless deep bass. Its cabinet material, “Meridium,” was carefully chosen to have no influence on its reproduced sound. Even its beautiful lacquer finish enhances its performance. The DSP8000, like a fine musical instrument, is designed for a lifetime of enjoyment.
GRACE UNDER PRESSURE
The DSP8000’s engineered curved cabinet provides a graceful and perfect home for the high performance electronics. Designed as a complete system, the DSP8000’s five independent amplifiers are tuned precisely for the bandwidth and drive units they are attached to. This allows the DSP8000’s to play at concert levels without stress while achieving an efficiency that lesser designs strive to attain. Finished as standard in high-gloss black or white, the DSP8000 is also available in any of the 270 Meridian Select colours.
DESIGN
The Meridian DSP8000 is the ultimate expression of the art and science of loudspeaker design. Meridian’s flagship digital active loudspeaker sets completely new standards for clarity, dynamics, imaging and realism. It is, for example, one of few loudspeakers in the world that can accurately reproduce both the power and subtlety of a concert grand piano.
The DSP8000 is designed to reproduce sounds at up to full natural level while providing all the resolution required by high-definition audio sources up to 24-bit. Such demanding dynamics required a new approach to cabinet construction and selection of advanced drive units.
DSP8000 is constructed from the finest materials, including a cabinet made from "Meridium" – a special wood/metal laminate – and all electronic parts are carefully chosen for sound quality. The result is beyond words – listen for yourself.
AVAILABLE IN OVER 270 COLOURS
TECHNOLOGY
Each DSP8000 loudspeaker uses six high-efficiency long-throw custom bass drive units. The bass units are mounted symmetrically in pairs on the sides of the bass cabinet, cancelling vibration in order to minimise interference with the mid-range and treble units. The treble and mid-range drivers are mounted in a separate sealed head assembly.
The treble unit is a semi-horn-loaded composite dome design with a silver voice coil. The mid-range unit incorporates a cone made from a uniquely light and stiff combination of polymers to give unparalleled transparency.
POWER AMPLIFIERS
The drivers are fed by five independent high-power low-feedback power amplifiers mounted on a multi-finned extruded heatsink. 150W amplifiers are used to drive each of the three pairs of horizontally-opposed bass units, while separate 150W amplifiers drive midrange and tweeter.
The combination of idealised magnetic design, careful star earthing, and very fast output devices gives the amplifiers extremely low noise, high detail, and fast bass. The whole electronic assembly is supplied from two substantial toroidal transformers feeding high-quality audiophile-grade capacitors.
ADVANCED DIGITAL PROCESSING
The DSP8000 features a new digital upsampling filter system that delivers an impressive improvement in the sound of standard sample rate (44.1/48 kHz) recordings. The filter is so advanced it can even clear up some flaws in the original recording. In addition, there is a new buffering system for even lower jitter. Overall the result is superb imaging and transparency.
THE CABINET
Each DSP8000 loudspeaker is built around a precision manufactured cabinet, which uses innovative design techniques to give exceptionally low coloration and amazing mid-range transparency. The head assembly is a sealed enclosure fabricated from curved pressure- laminated panels, each using multiple layers of selected woods and metal to provide high stiffness and damping. Its narrow tapered shape offers optimum dispersion across a wide listening area. It is supported on the bass enclosure by three machined feet. Like the head unit, the bass cabinet is constructed from interlaminated panels with extensive bracing. The front panel is 6mm glass and incorporates a window for the matrix display and infrared remote control sensor.
DSP LOUDSPEAKERS
The traditional setup – amplifiers driving passive loudspeakers – is inefficient, limiting sound quality. Meridian loudspeakers contain a complete, matched audio system with efficient DSP crossovers, multiple DACs and driver-specific amplifiers, giving higher overall quality, less power use, and the performance of a traditional loudspeaker eight times the physical volume.
MERIDIUM
Loudspeaker enclosures often vibrate, colouring the sound, making it less lifelike. Our most advanced loudspeakers use a cabinet construction material unique to Meridian: Meridium features highest-grade laminated plywood layers bonded to an aluminium core, allowing the loudspeaker to reproduce music accurately without adding its own sound.
MERIDIAN HIGH RESOLUTION (MHR)
MHR was the first approved encryption method for transferring high definition digital audio between components. Previously, it had to be in the analogue domain, reducing quality. MHR allows secure movement of high resolution digital audio within a Meridian system, without compromise, improving quality by reducing cyclic repetition.
SPEAKERLINK
Traditional audio systems often require large, expensive cables to maintain their performance. Meridian's SpeakerLink uses an “Ethernet style” cable that delivers pristine digital sound and control down single cable between Meridian components. The result is simple, unobtrusive, and cost-effective cables that are easy to install.
TRIPLE FIFO BUFFERING
Each sample of a digital recording must remain evenly spaced in time. Unfortunately, timing can vary, especially when reading discs. This is “jitter”, degrading music's sense of space and diminishing realism. Meridian's multiple “First In, First Out” buffering system minimises jitter, ensuring perfect timing and improved clarity. You enjoy a clearer feeling of the instruments and their interrelationship.
MERIDIAN APODISING FILTER
Filters are critical in digital audio. Commonly they introduce distortion and harshness because of "pre-ringing". Early digital recordings suffer from harshness too, due to primitive filters. After painstaking research, Meridian developed a special filter that avoids pre-ringing, so it can be steeper, cleaning up the effects of early filters. The result: a better, cleaner sound from recordings old and new.
PERFORMANCE
INPUTS
AUDIO PROCESSING
CONSTRUCTION
CONTROL
FRONT DISPLAY
POWER
DIMENSIONS
WEIGHT
