Let's begin on an encouraging note, possibly the most encouraging note one of our 'Beautiful System' reviews has ever begun on. It's a quote from Meridian Audio Ltd's chairman and chief designer, Bob Stuart. "The 808," says Bob, "is the best-sounding CD player we've ever made."
From a man who can justly claim to have invented the concept of the ‘audiophile-grade' CD player and who now fronts a company that has built its considerable reputation on what many believe to be its unrivalled mastery of the digital domain, it's a statement that borders on the thrilling. Just how good, you wonder to yourself, must it be? Patience, dear reader, patience.
DIGITAL DARK AGES
First, the back story. Rewind 22 years. It's 1984, the dawn of compact disc and, almost immediately, the marketing lie of the decade, if not the century – ‘perfect sound forever' – is exposed for what it is by the Meridian MCD, which is so much better than the ‘perfect' first-generation, 14-bit Philips CD player its based on. In fact, it posits the idea that ‘perfect' in this context is actually a synonym for ‘crap'. For audiophiles, this is both good news and bad.
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The bad news is that, straight out of the box, CD isn't up to snuff and far inferior, sonically, to analogue. The good news is that Bob and Meridian are on the case and have given the world its first souped-up machine... and it doesn't sound half bad.
The long haul has begun, and not just for Meridian. Improving the sound of CD will soon become the major preoccupation of the hi-fi industry. The important thing for the small Huntingdon-based company is that it's got the drop on the competition. And it's determined to stay ahead.
Next up, and an early indication that progress in the digital field is going to rip along, is the Pro-MCD. This features a separate, custom-designed power supply, DAC and oscillator, mounted underneath the transport. Even now, when most first generation CD players have been either binned or kept as quaintly-styled curiosities, the Pro-MCD is a sought-after classic that can more than hold its own with more modern players.
In 1985, Meridian invents the CD transport, separating the disc-reading mechanism from the digital-to-analogue converter to minimize jitter and other distortions associated with the transport. The combo is called the 200/203 and it's received with rave reviews. But bigger things are in the offing. With the 208 in 1989, 20-bit conversion and preamp functionality are combined in one machine. Three years later, the two-box approach re-emerges with the 602 transport, 601 Digital Signal Processing (DSP) preamp, 603 Digital Control Unit or 606 DAC.
