Meridian G08 - Further thoughts (very long) - CSF

Digital Drive

Upsamplers, DACs, jitter, shakes and analogue withdrawals, this is it.

Meridian G08 - Further thoughts (very long)

Ok, time to follow up on the brief note I posted last week on the arrival of the Meridian G08. It's now had just over 150 hours continuous playing (music by day, Sheffield/XLO burn in track by night) so I guess it's about as run in as it's likely to be.
The build quality and physical design are superb. Very solid, (it weighs 9kgs) well put together and it looks great in silver. Functionally it's also top notch. The soft touch keys on the player itself (and the entire G series) are software controlled meaning that in the G08's case each key has up to four functions each, accessed via pushing the "more" key. This means that a lot of functions that previously were only accessible via the remote (repeat, high speed scanning, etc, etc) are now available from the player direct. The drawer, while still not being as solid as the 508's, is better than the 588 and of course it doesn't need to be solid, it's only getting the disc in and out of the cd/dvd rom drive. The new vacuum fluorescent display is excellent, being easily readable from long distances.
The remote is great. It has an inbuilt database of 100's (1000's ??) of cd players, dvd players, tv's, vcr's, cable, satellites, laser disc players, tape decks etc, etc. For all but the DVD player I found it more convenient to manually program the remote so I could combine features from different controllers. So finally the Meridian System Remote lives up to it's name and will actually control your system, not just Meridians. The only negative I can find is that there are no named programmable keys for source selection on a pre-amp. Hence I've had to assign different sources to numeric keys - a small annoyance.
Now for the guts of it all - what does it sound like? Well that depends on what you put in it really. Tonight I've thrown quite a lot at it - McCoy Tyner, Tomasz Stanko, Cassandra Wilson, Tony Joe White, Emmylou Harris, Offspring, Ben Vaughn, Casey Chambers, Lyle Lovett, Jimmy Webb, Doc Lawrence, Charles Mingus and Hugh Masekela - and the G08 has performed splendidly. (The rest of the system is Musical Fidelity A3CR pre/power, Epos M15 speakers, Slinkylink silver interconnects and speaker cables.)
What has struck me most from the first note that came from it when I first plugged it in is the utter ease and flow to the music. This is well beyond what I've heard before from any digital. I thought my old Meridian 508.24 was a smooth machine but it's got nothing on this. Coupled with this is the most grainless top to bottom sound I've ever encountered. Now don't let all this talk of smooth, easy and flowing lead you to believe that it's boring at all. The bottom end has a kick like the proverbial mule and it's very quick on it's feet. It also doesn't smother bad recordings in honey. I still wince at the hardness of Casey Chambers voice and rejoice in the roughness of Ben Vaughns recordings, but through it all the music wins out.
The soundstage is staggeringly wide, has good depth and excellent height. Imaging is precise with very full, 3D representations of the instruments populating the nicely layered stage. Tonally it's very neutral. Detail recovery is very, very good, causing me to double take on a few tracks that I thought I knew well when suddenly there was new stuff there. I need to specifically mention the bass here somewhere. Man this thing goes low (keep in mind my speakers only get to 45 htz or so) with power and control.
My impression compared to the 508.24? (I say impression as after a number of years good service I no longer have the 508 to do a direct comparison - take from this what you may.) I would suggest that there is no element of performance that the 508 comes all that close to the G08 in. That's a very big call as the 508 is still a very competitive machine despite it's age. For all that, the G08 is a much better machine all round. This has a rub for the 588 owners out there as I compared the 588 and 508 for a couple weeks some time back and thought that although the 588 was better, there wasn't enough in it to make me change. I have a funny feeling that the G08 is quite an advance over the 588 as well.
Will it be all things to all people - no. It doesnâ€™t get you as close to the stage as some players, lacking that really sharp leading edge to notes and possibly a bit of ultimate transient speed. It's much quicker than the 508 but there'll still be faster machines out there. (Speed as always is over-rated. Just because a BMW M3 is faster doesn't mean that the 530 is slow.)
What it will do is give the lucky owners an amazingly engaging experience. You'll be sucked in by the staggeringly effortless flow and organic feel to the music. When you want to rock out it'll go there with you, perhaps not as well as some, but a hell of a lot better than most. For the vast majority of my listening - acoustic jazz, folk, country - it's as good as I've heard for any price. Like all Meridian players I've heard there's no one thing that stands out, it just makes music. I'm sure there's better out there but I'm yet to hear it and I'm sure it would cost an awful lot more than this.
Cheers,
Craig.

This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:

Schiit Audio

Topic - Meridian G08 - Further thoughts (very long) - CSF 04:21:52 12/10/03 (3)

Doh!! I'll get back to you - CSF 02:28:44 12/11/03 (0)

Re: Meridian G08 - Further thoughts (very long) - Croc 07:21:31 12/10/03 (1)

Re: Meridian G08 - Further thoughts (very long) - CSF 10:39:58 12/10/03 (0)

You can not post to an archived thread.