meridian

Meridian digital hi-fi setup goes ruby-red

For well-heeled fans of British hi-fi brand Meridian, the limited-edition 40th Anniversary System could be a dream. With a unique ruby-red finish, the company's latest hi-fi system consists of a tweaked 808.3 Signature Reference CD Player and a pair of DSP8000 Digital Active Loudspeakers.

Both the speakers and CD player are the company's flagship models. While there are analog purists who prefer a full-analog hi-fi setup, Meridian caters to fans of pure digital. This set keeps your music in the digital format right up to the moment it reaches the speaker drivers.… Read more

Meridian's futuristic, lifestyle-friendly hi-fi system

I attended Meridian Audio's press event in its NYC office last Thursday, and came away impressed with the company's DSP3200 Digital Active Loudspeaker ($6,000 per pair).

The small, stand-mounted speaker was shown with a Sooloos Control 15 music server; the complete system was just a pair of speakers and the server. The elegant Control 15 touch-screen interface can access your collection of CDs and digital audio files, at full lossless quality.

High-end audio systems can be a little intimidating to use and can dominate a room, but the lifestyle-friendly Meridian-Sooloos combination is just the opposite. It's a music system, pure and simple. … Read more

Meridian's $16,000 CD player

Some Cravers out there had a few choice words for a $17,000 Blu-ray player we featured last week, so we can't wait to hear the opinions on this one.

Meridian Audio, also known for its Ferrari label products, now has a CD player that's selling for $16,000. That's right, just audio--no DVD video, no Blu-ray. You can read all the gory details here, though Luxurylaunches points out that the "808.2 Signature Reference" player has something called a "Resolution Enhancement System" and features "a novel digital speaker connector you can … Read more

Ferrari's media system takes second lap

Whether it's binoculars or Segways, Ferrari is a company that knows marketing. So to generate more interest in the Meridian F80 portable media system debuted earlier this year, it is relying on a standard branding practice: introducing new colors.

In addition to the lacquer finishes shown before--we were particularly fond of the yellow--Ferrari is introducing two special editions: The "Rubino Micallizzato" (red) and the "Grigio Silverstone" (graphite). They'll have the same features, according to Newlaunches, including a CD/DVD player, digital radio and 80-watt speakers. And don't worry, the price hasn't changed … Read more

Ferrari's $3,000 boombox

Crave appreciates fine sportscars as much as anybody, but even we thought it a bit odd that Ferrari was making an audio system that some people planned to keep in their garages. (To lull their Enzos to sleep, we assume.)

The company has decided, thankfully, to make something for the living room too by partnering with Meridian to create its F80 entertainment system. Its features don't exactly blow the doors off competing products--the F80 can play DVDs, CDs, MP3 files and AM/FM radio with 80 watts of power--but Shiny Shiny says it does have a "sleek high-lacquer … Read more

Follow the GPS, please

Two weekends ago, I went to my cousin's graduation, and afterwards we were supposed to have dinner at a restaurant that, supposedly, has great food. Unfortunately, we didn't get to find out how great the food was because my uncle couldn't find the place! We drove around for what felt like hours until we were so starving that we just pulled into the first decent-looking restaurant we could find. I suggested to my cousin that he should get a GPS system for his dad. The Lowrance iWay 500c got a pretty high rating from our editors, but … Read more