2007 CEDIA Expo, Denver, Colorado – Britain’s Meridian Audio Limited, recognized around the world for its leadership in digital audio technologies for music and home-theater systems, is introducing its latest "DSP Loudspeaker." Meridian’s new DSP7200 model is a substantially upgraded version of the highly acclaimed DSP7000 first introduced four years ago.
DSP7200 is best described as a `scaled down’ version of the company’s unparalleled top-of-the-line loudspeaker, the DSP8000. The new model features heavily re-worked internal electronics and software along with upgraded drive units and power amplifiers to bring it closer than ever to the remarkable level of performance of the company’s legendary DSP8000 flagship. DSP7200 is also the first of Meridian’s DSP Loudspeaker models to include the company’s latest architecture of input board featuring RJ45 connectors for simplicity and elegance of installation via CAT5 cabling.
"With the DSP7200 we are evolving our state-of-the-art digital-speaker effort in an important way," says Meridian Chairman Bob Stuart. "Our concept of the digital-active DSP loudspeaker is well-proven as the most musically and dynamically accurate and effective way by far to tackle sound reproduction. With the DSP7200 we have a new model that is ideally suited to even the most demanding playback systems."
As do all of Meridian’s DSP Loudspeakers, the DSP7200’s design rests on the pillars of digital signal processing for crossover filtering and all other signal manipulation, and multi-amplified active-speaker topology in which each individual driver is served by a dedicated amplifier channel. The advantages of these concepts are irrefutable: employing ultra-accurate DSP makes possible crossover characteristics and precision that would be inconceivable for any passive, analog-domain system, for a perfection of driver-integration that is otherwise unobtainable. Additionally, individually powering each driver after the dividing network pays dramatic dividends in enhanced dynamic potential, reduced distortion, and idealized time-domain behavior.
Each DSP7200 accepts a digital bitstream directly from a Meridian preamp, CD, DVD player, or system-controller, accommodating bitstreams up to 96/24 including the company’s proprietary Meridian High Resolution (MHR) up-sampled, enhanced-resolution format. This arrangement eliminates analog speaker cabling and its associated losses, colorations, and clutter. And with the latest addition of RJ45 connectors in the `7200’s newly-designed connector panel (which is now recessed to hide unsightly cable entry), all high resolution audio data, together with Meridian Comms and RS232 for control, can be run down a single CAT5 cable to provide the last word in elegance and simplicity of installation. Most importantly, a DSP loudspeaker brings unique opportunities for optimization of driver/amplifier/enclosure systems, while giving listeners unprecedented control over music and cinema-sound playback. Whether in a two-channel system or as part of a multichannel home-theater array, the DSP7200 enables precision command of frequency balance, listening axis and time-compensated balance, and, of course, master volume — all implemented utterly transparently using DSP.
The DSP7200 features a host of design upgrades to enhance performance over the DSP7000 that it supersedes. Its four internal 100-watt amplifiers are now the balanced-input, high-current designs employed in the flagship DSP8000, engineered for the new model with heatsinking on the extruded back panel. Two amps drive a pair of refined 8-inch, long-throw bass units with newly modified basket design, separately housed in their own optimized enclosure in the base of the speaker system. Meanwhile the 6-inch midrange unit is now the same driver used in the DSP8000, employing a cone made from a uniquely light and stiff combination of polymers to give unparalleled transparency. This midrange unit and the 1-inch composite-dome tweeter, (the latter deployed with Meridian’s "short-horn" loading), are each driven by their own amplifiers and operate from a second, completely separate enclosure atop the bass/electronics module. Both cabinet structures are crafted from Meridian’s innovative, multi-layered "sandwich" of selected woods and metal, formed in curved, pressure-laminated panels that produce almost perfectly vibration- and resonance-free enclosures, for unmatched freedom from coloration. The exteriors of these unique cabinets are painstakingly finished in Meridian’s trademark gloss piano-black lacquer or silver lacquer colors.
Availability: November 2007
For more information and high resolution photography please visit the Meridian Media Center:
http://media.meridian-audio.com.
Source: http://virtualpressoffice.com
