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Meridian G68ADV: were AV Processor Ever Good?

Billy Budapest

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When McLaren decided to do their own electronics for racing they poached Udo Zucher from Bosch who had been leading the team doing the electronic engine management system for the Porsche turbo F1 engine (funded by and labelled TAG).
Udo was a hifi fan and they ended up buying Audiolab from Philip Swift (who then bought Spendor) and renaming it TAG-McLaren, since he wanted to make hifi.
Apart from being wholly or partly owned by TAG, Heuer and McLaren electronics didn't have anything to do with each other and the whole shebang was in England, TAG McLaren Electronics at the McLaren technical centre and TAG McLaren hifi in Huntingdon where Audiolab (and loads of other UK hifi companies) are.
And they ended up selling it to IAG which restored the Audiolab name.
 

DonH56

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I keep reminding myself when listening to my POS Emotiva processor that not long ago high-end gear hitting 0.005% and less was outstanding. And that I can only pick out about 0.1% on sine wave tones in testing. I could probably train myself better and push that lower, but I think we are getting spoilt by all the very high numbers seen these days. Not that I wouldn't pick the one with the best numbers, all else equal, but giving up room correction, various processing modes, and HDTV to move from 90+ dB SINAD to 120 dB or whatever isn't a trade for me.

That said, hopefully Amir's work will drive some of these companies to clean up their act (no pun intended, but...)
 

Tks

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Just another reason DisplayPort should have won the popularity war.

Well, it won in the PC sphere.

DP dropped the ball sorta, lately.. Being outdone by HDMI (who like Intel was seemingly fucking asleep). But eventually HDMI 2.1 has finally graced us with its presence, and DP is scrambling to outdo it, but failing.

Also while DP is a step above the physical HDMI conenctor. The detech mechanism could use work in terms of tolerance. I can't tell you how many times I've fully pressed the connector to disengage the teeth. yet still taking effort to remove from the female.
 

xykreinov

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Well, it won in the PC sphere.

DP dropped the ball sorta, lately.. Being outdone by HDMI (who like Intel was seemingly fucking asleep). But eventually HDMI 2.1 has finally graced us with its presence, and DP is scrambling to outdo it, but failing.

Also while DP is a step above the physical HDMI conenctor. The detech mechanism could use work in terms of tolerance. I can't tell you how many times I've fully pressed the connector to disengage the teeth. yet still taking effort to remove from the female.

Why do you think the 2.1 iteration gives HDMI the edge, and in what way if not physical (obviously)?
 

ace_xp2

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We could blame HDMI for pushing a few small brands out. And also of being a not perfectly integrated connection (amir has already measured the side effects of HDMI vs other connections).

But remember that thanks to HDMI bandwidth we can enjoy the same LOSSLESS MASTER as the studio were the movies were mixed and produced, in the confort of our couch trough BluRay discs (aka DTS HD Master Audio, Dolby True HD, etc).

I'm still searching for it, but there's a great thread out there on the internets which pretty convincingly showed that the 1.5mbps DTS core and the 640kbps DD which are contained on those discs for non hdmi processes were essentially bit perfect (as both companies had once claimed before they rolled out the lossless master thing and conveniently forgot that such was their original claim).

Now DD can have a lesser then 640kbps core, but foregoing that the only thing both Lossless versions hold over their lossy cores are the additional rear surround channels where applicable.

On a separate subject, here's an avr from about the same era as this with at least some measurements (sadly via analogue in): https://hometheaterhifi.com/volume_12_3/harman-kardon-avr-7300-receiver-8-2005.html
 
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Tks

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In what way(s)?

Simplest being, in virtue of highest throughput. Off the top of my head, I think it was 33 Gbits/second, versus 48 Gbits/second of bandwidth. And a few latency/framerate managment features that came as a surprise when the full 2.1 spec was ratified.

I know DP scrambled to then ratify DP 2.0, but I've still yet to see any products (cables, nor any certified devices) that will come sporting it. Also, surprisingly they don't supercede HDMI 2.1 with bandwidth. I think the theoretical max is 40Gbits/second. Odd really.
 

xykreinov

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We could blame HDMI for pushing a few small brands out. And also of being a not perfectly integrated connection (amir has already measured the side effects of HDMI vs other connections).

But remember that thanks to HDMI bandwidth we can enjoy the same LOSSLESS MASTER as the studio were the movies were mixed and produced, in the confort of our couch trough BluRay discs (aka DTS HD Master Audio, Dolby True HD, etc).

DisplayPort had superior bandwidth around when BluRay came out, it should have won darn it!! (I know this a silly thing to take from what you said, I'm just salty)
 

xykreinov

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Simplest being, in virtue of highest throughput. Off the top of my head, I think it was 33 Gbits/second, versus 48 Gbits/second of bandwidth. And a few latency/framerate managment features that came as a surprise when the full 2.1 spec was ratified.

I know DP scrambled to then ratify DP 2.0, but I've still yet to see any products (cables, nor any certified devices) that will come sporting it. Also, surprisingly they don't supercede HDMI 2.1 with bandwidth. I think the theoretical max is 40Gbits/second. Odd really.

DisplayPort 2.0 does 88 Gbits/second. It does everything better in the media sphere than HDMI. Beyond that, there are many "future proofing" advantages DisplayPort 1.4 still has, like a better encoding scheme. Even if it didn't, 15gb more bandwidth is not enough for me to support something so much more needlessly proprietary than DisplayPort. I wonder what HDMI developers will do to match the gargantuan bandwidth improvement from DisplayPort 1.4 to DisplayPort 2
 

Tks

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DisplayPort had superior bandwidth around when BluRay came out, it should have won darn it!! (I know this a silly thing to take from what you said, I'm just salty)

They're not losing tbh. HDMI will remain for TVs (well, I actually think there will be a convergence, seeing as how TV's are doing double duty in attempts at asserting themselves as proper PC displays), so DisplayPort will still go on in the PC realm for sure. As I was talking with you I decided to see what's going on with DP 2.0, and now I see the spec has changed since I read about it vaguely back in the day. DP 2.0 is now actually set to obliterate HDMI 2.1 at least in raw data rates. 77.37 Gbit/second in fact. Just wow....

I think these two standards will live on battling each other. One for TV's mainly, while the other for PC devices. So I guess I should retract my statement somewhat, but as things stand, HDMI has the high ground (which DP held when 1.4 was out for the past year and a half I think).

Am I understanding that you wish Displayport would have won-out in the TV sphere?
 

Tks

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DisplayPort 2.0 does 88 Gbits/second. It does everything better in the media sphere than HDMI. Beyond that, there are many "future proofing" advantages DisplayPort 1.4 still has, like a better encoding scheme. Even if it didn't, 15gb more bandwidth is not enough for me to support something so much more needlessly proprietary than DisplayPort. I wonder what HDMI developers will do to match the gargantuan bandwidth improvement from DisplayPort 1.4 to DisplayPort 2

Meh I doubt HDMI will care. They're slow, and the HDMI 2.1 jump was big enough to warrant any monumental change for the foreseeable future (non lettered jump in standard, like HDMI 2.1a or 2.1b or something insignificant like that).

Bandwidth would only really need to change once 12-bit panels start hitting the market. 4K+ resolutions running 4:4:4 at that point in time is going to require maybe another big change. But panel makers are hitting hard walls as is seemingly every damn industry in electronics for almost everything (Intel with their 10nm node woes, and the clock wars ending for example elsewhere).
 

xykreinov

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They're not losing tbh. HDMI will remain for TVs (well, I actually think there will be a convergence, seeing as how TV's are doing double duty in attempts at asserting themselves as proper PC displays), so DisplayPort will still go on in the PC realm for sure. As I was talking with you I decided to see what's going on with DP 2.0, and now I see the spec has changed since I read about it vaguely back in the day. DP 2.0 is now actually set to obliterate HDMI 2.1 at least in raw data rates. 77.37 Gbit/second in fact. Just wow....

I think these two standards will live on battling each other. One for TV's mainly, while the other for PC devices. So I guess I should retract my statement somewhat, but as things stand, HDMI has the high ground (which DP held when 1.4 was out for the past year and a half I think).

Am I understanding that you wish Displayport would have won-out in the TV sphere?

Yes, that's part of it. But, mainly, I just wish HDMI died entirely because:
a. I hate redundancy and multiple ports that try to do the same thing on my machine are a prime example.
b. The licensing of HDMI is too proprietary and closed off for my liking.
 

Tks

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Yes, that's part of it. But, mainly, I just wish HDMI died entirely because:
a. I hate redundancy and multiple ports that try to do the same thing on my machine are a prime example.
b. The licensing of HDMI is too proprietary and closed off for my liking.

Oh I'm with you there. Actually the whole HDMI 2.1 fiasco is what really made me hate them. Dragging their feet to get this shit finally out the door. But the things you listed is my primary reason for disliking them. Though I hope they stay around (wouldn't want DP monopolizing and dictating terms and releasing slowly like slogs updated standards).
 

xykreinov

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Meh I doubt HDMI will care. They're slow, and the HDMI 2.1 jump was big enough to warrant any monumental change for the foreseeable future (non lettered jump in standard, like HDMI 2.1a or 2.1b or something insignificant like that).

Bandwidth would only really need to change once 12-bit panels start hitting the market. 4K+ resolutions running 4:4:4 at that point in time is going to require maybe another big change. But panel makers are hitting hard walls as is seemingly every damn industry in electronics for almost everything (Intel with their 10nm node woes, and the clock wars ending for example elsewhere).

Yeah, it's getting really tricky to improve in the display world. I mean, manufacturers can try to make car-payment 60 inch displays that are as high quality as a several thousand dollar CRT projector, but they won't get there soon.
 

xykreinov

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Oh I'm with you there. Actually the whole HDMI 2.1 fiasco is what really made me hate them. Dragging their feet to get this shit finally out the door. But the things you listed is my primary reason for disliking them. Though I hope they stay around (wouldn't want DP monopolizing and dictating terms and releasing slowly like slogs updated standards).

Yeah, it's like Intel or NVIDIA vs AMD. There has virtually never been a time where AMD wasn't way more ethical. But, boy, would there be a monopoly without NVIDIA or Intel.
 
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xhattan

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Maybe the DENON 5308CI would´ve had good measurements. That thing was a beast. Guess we´ll never know.
 
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amirm

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It's an interesting story. It doesn't quite explain why even large companies like Onkyo got so badly burned with defective HDMI boards. For that matter it seemed to be a problem for all the makers, albeit not to the same degree. Then there's the HDMI pass through fiasco. Let's sell AV receivers that actually require an EXTRA cable and can't even take advantage of the improvements from BluRay audio. My feeling is that the 'forced' introduction of HDMI crippled the market for surround sound from which it will likely not recover.
Well, that is because HDMI is the worst "standard" to have ever been released to the market. Calling it a standard is an insult to the word. Full of bugs and compatibility issues with no requirement for certification. Japanese companies like Onkyo also had their head in the sand only testing with Japanese products. I am amazed the stupid thing works as well it does today.

Intel took the initiative to add HDCP copy protection to HDMI and as a result, it was the only viable option at the time.
 
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