Meridian Audio Speaker manual The Meridian Papers, The traditional approach

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The Meridian Papers - 1

The Meridian Papers - 1

Meridian Loudspeakers: The DSP Path

Meridian Audio has taken an almost unique course in the design of its hi-fi systems, and particularly in its loudspeaker design, where the signal remains in the digital domain until the very last moment, and the loudspeakers include digital crossovers and signal processing.

In the first of a series of articles on Meridian audio products and technology, Richard Elen looks at the company’s DSP loudspeaker philosophy.

Meridian’s top-of-the-line DSP8000 speakers, the essence of high performance

Fig. 1: The conventional arrangement of a sin- gle power amplifier driving a two-way loud- speaker system with a passive crossover.

In each article in this series, we will be looking at a different aspect of the hi-fi signal chain – from source to speaker. In view of its importance in the overall reproduction of the sound, we are first going to consider what happens at the end of the line – the amplification sys- tem and the loudspeakers themselves, for it is here that Meridian has very much charted its own course among consumer audio manufacturers, coming up with a solution that is both elegant, efficient and capable of extremely high audio quality.

The traditional approach

The traditional method of designing a hi-fi system has been with us for a long time, and has hardly changed over the years. Signal from a source – such as a CD player – is fed into a preamplifier or controller, and from there at line level to an amplifier.

From this central cluster of equipment, the now high-level signal is fed via extensive cables to the loudspeakers themselves.

CABLES

EXTERNAL POWER AMPLIFIER

PASSIVE CROSSOVER

LOUDSPEAKER

ENCLOSURE

HF DRIVER

LF DRIVER

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Meridian Audio Speaker manual The Meridian Papers, The traditional approach, Meridian Loudspeakers The DSP Path