Ditched my Meridian 861 V6 for ADA mach IV - Page 2  

Well, it is 'yes' for me. In the absence of any direct comparisons it all ends up being assumption and specualtion, regardless of what you might personally think of v4 vs v6. The only people here who have done direct comparisons of v6 and MK IV are you and Stephen - and you each came to diametrically opposed conclusions. Go figure!

For what it is worth, however, I did find quite a material difference between 861v4 and v6. But as I've said before, I'm more a music listener (as much mch as possible) than I am a movie watcher, so perhaps my listening paradigm is different.

Hope you don't take too much of a 'bath' selling your 861. I must confess, it can get a bit distressing thinking about how much one can spend in this hobby with the constant desire to upgrade.

Very true. One can spend $80K on the "DCS stack", $5K on a powercord and $20K on a pair of speaker cables. A $30K SSP that packs a DSP, 8 channel DACs and preamp will not even remotely make the top 100 absurdly priced high-end components list.

As I have been mentioned in this thread I feel compelled to chime in...

1. I did move from teh Meridian 861V4/HD621 combination to the ADA MACH IV B...my listening habits are 20% music / 80% home theatre...my move was a resuly of two factors those being:

a) I would not pay the V4 to V6 upgrade costs. I was left with a bad taste in my mouth because my USD 25,000 DVD was now a door stopper and my USD 25,000 pre/pro was now going to be USD 40,000+ both of which wer eto be upgradeable.

b) I went with the ADA -- out of all the otehr possibilities -- beacuse to me it sounded best and, more importantly, bested the 861V4/HD621 combination.


2. In respect of the 861V4 versus 861V6 isuse I have heard the 861V6 -- and heard it extensively -- at the local Meridian dealer...I do find the 861V6 to be noticeably different that the 861V4...I do find the 861V6 to simialrly be noticeably different than the ADA MACH IV B...

Now, here is where I will get into trouble...I do not, either for music or movies, find the 861V6 to be better than the ADA MACH IVB but rather different...it is my position -- based on my ears -- that the 861V6 has a sonic signature that is less to my liking than the ADA MACH IV B hence I prefer the ADA offering over the Meridian offering.

Now, were that not enough, I will also add that I listen to all my music in multi0channel format and, again, to my ears ADA's QuadBypass is unsurpassed by Trifield or any other surround mode that I have heard [i.e. Logic 7, Trifield, etc.]...and, here is where I will no doubt get flamed, the ADA is more transparent and with less of a sonic signature...


3. While everyone has an opinion and they are all worth what we pay for them -- nothing -- let me close with this...I am friendly with a chap in the UK who use to be a senior engineer for the BBC who is very well versed in audio...I came to meet him 10+ years ago in my TMA days [i.e. I use to own a TMA AVR192R] and, in fcat, he is ceenhad's business associate...

I contacted him when I decided to move away from Meridian..he counceled me to listen to the ADA because, in his view, it is the best and most transparent pre/pro he has heard....

I took his advice and went to listen to a number of pre/ pros and, at the end of teh end, found his advice to be accurate...I should add that getting teh ADA was not easy for me because there is no damn distributor in Canada so I had to get my dealer to be act as the distributor -- at least for me -- and have a 30 day trial...the rest is history.


4. Were I not already up to my eyes in it...I have been speaking to a number of people who are in the know and will add that many of them are playing with and using pre / pros in the $10,000 range so to me this tells me -- and yes, I could be worng -- that should those in the know be using these then waht is the real / true benefit of spending more beacuse the poeple can have whatever they want!

With respect to Meridian specifically I *AM STRONGLY OF THE VIEW* that the secrete sauce that tehy have needs their DSP speaker to be fully realized and that, quite simply, their performance diminishes when used with analog speakers...

5. With that said, let us also add that the ADA offering has a few features and trick that the Meridian does not have with one of the most beneficial and obvious such capabilities being a PEQ capabilities....yes, yes, I know that Meiridian offers their flavour of room correction but, that said, I beleive that ADA's PEQ is more powerful and better able to tame a room...


++++

With that all said, come and get me...

Naah, nothing to quible with (well, OK, maybe just one thing) - as always, very well reasoned. The funny thing is, somebody else, with equally complete due diligence might well come to a very different conclusion. My only quibble, really, is the difficulty in making any material comparisons by listening at a dealer. Perhaps it is just my own shortcoming, but without actually getting a component into my room and with my equirpment comparisons become very tricky. I've made the 'but it sounded great in the dealer's listening room' mistake a few too many times

I have to say, I am curious to hear this unit. Problem is, I can't really imagine that I'd make a switch and since I've dealt with Tom M. at ADA and he did me a favor, I don't really want to be disengenous with him.

I think what is important that even at a large multiple of cost that the pieces can even compete sonically. That, in and of itself, is significant. The fact the ADA beats it in your set up is pure bonus.

As I eluded to earlier, when analog devices were superseded by cheaper digital solution that approached similar performance (and ultimately beat it), prices on those components dropped. THe days of the expensive analog Lexicons, CBIIIs, et al are over. The $30K Faroudja VP 5000, an analog device, was beaten by a cheap chip. It drove Faroudja out of the market (sold). Look at what the (no analog) Lumagen Radiance offers today for $5000! Infinitely far more. CRTs at $50000 were upended by digital devices under $10K. And are better. In the HDMI world, digital SSPs are following the exact same course. The ADA Mach IV's high performance / low price ratio is only the beginning of such products populating the scene. The bloated prices in the context of HT are simply a thing of the past.

The last few SSPs I have bought have been thousands less and better performing.

Why would anyone be surprised that a new, built from the ground up state of the art (lower priced) piece beats an expensive SSP that does the exact same thing?? Of course there is a threshold for such performance and $8K - $10K seems to be it.

I would state the premises like this: all things technology are subject to innovation and price performance improvement over time. Digital technology is subject to a higher rate of innovation than analog, and hence faster price performance improvement. as a result yesterdays $30,000 digital component is today's $5,000, and yesterday $10,000 analog component is todays $5,000 component. This I wholeheartedly agree with.

However, most of your statements and examples to make this point are off the mark.

First: digital does not replace or make analog obsolete. Case in point: Vinyl is alive and well and SACD is dead. Tube amps are everywhere. Class D amps have not taken over the universe.

Second: just because yesterday $30,000 can now be had for $10,000 does not mean the market for $30,000 components disappears. Existing companies innovate, new ones enter the market, some die some thrive. But there will always be the next $30,000 piece (this includes projecors, which ironically you mentioned you happily spend $30,000K on yourself).

Third: There is nothing inherently more "digital" or "analog" in a 2010 ADA SSP than and a 10 year old CBIII or Meridian 861. Both are architecturally the same: digital signal in -> DSP -> D/A conversion-> volume control (granted the ADA probably does volume control in the digital domain, while the CBIII is analog, but the Meridian is entirely digital as well). The ADA may very well be a far better performer at its pricepoint but this is because Theta failed to innovate, not because ADA replaced anaything analog with digital.

Hell, if I get a bonus early next year I might even get one on trial myself for a shootout against the Six Shooter - ud9004 combo .....

Does it do DSD direct by any chance? In my experience this is the only way to get the best sonics on SACD, but none of the high end SSPs supports it.

I am not committed to any brand or architecture - just looking for the best SQ within my budget range. If I had realized at the time how screwed up Theta is I would have probably bought a Bel Canto MCH analog pre (one sold for 1,500 on audiogon last week), or a EMM labs switchman (auctioned on audiogon for 2,000 a few months ago). I would have had 90% of the performance (probably 100% with the EMM labs) saved a few thousand, and would be dealing with a serious brand. I would have missed all the fun of following and chiming on the various Theta threads though....

I fully agree and my point is there are no game-changing, cutting edge innovations to be had today in SSP design (as you elude to below).


Agreed. Theta (and others) have done little to differentiate their products over the years and are simply relying on expensive updates to have some sort of revenue. No money to fully re-design and bring the piece up to their former, high standards. Can't imagine anyone with 1/2 a brain has bought a loaded CBIII in the last couple of years. ADA and Classe, for example, were able to pull off new designs, new thinking and hardware and, thus, are the new 'reference' pieces of today (albeit at real world (for the high end) price points).

Recall there is no OSD overlay in the ADA. The video path is pure for a pass through.

Edorr is rarely elusive but he may allude from time to time.

The correct spelling of 'allude' has eluded me...

The whole point of this thread is to convey ADA has improved SSP price performance by 75% in one stroke (30,000 performance for 7,500) this could be labeled as "game changing" innovation. If you want to say "no game changing architecural innovation", but "drastically improved price performance through continuous improvement", fine. But this is just semantics. By the way, there is an interesting analogy with what Oppo did to universal players.



Thanks. that would include me.

Kal is rarely cryptic but he may be elusive from time to time

Since neither of us is deluded, this exchange is concluded.

Simon:

Fair but not fair...in that I knew what the V4 sounded like in my room, I knew the difference between the V4 and the V6 from the dealer [i.e. he had both so an A/B was easy] and therefore SURMISED what teh V6 would be like in my room...

That said, I am going tp borrow the V6 and put in my rack to remove any unfair and unknown variables...

With that, I should also point out that I will be comparing the units in as equal as footing as possible using no room correction [as I hav ethis done by my QSC DSPs] or other inherent "fucntional differences"...

HTH...

As one of those lucky few who have heard both an ADA and an 861, both in two different rooms and systems, I really can't hold out any longer. ADA are becoming very popular here in the UK, and its not easy to have a fair and reasonable discussion these days.

I think in some ways it may be the other way round. While ADA processors generate analogue outputs, many Meridian 861's only have digital audio outputs, plus they really aren't so effective with analogue sources. So if anything, the 861 is closer to the all-digital processor than the ADA (not that that makes it any cheaper though :-( ).

I agree that the digital decoding and processing is not usually a great discriminator between SSP's. In my recent experience, its the D to A that makes or breaks a system, and thats the difficult thing for an SSP to get right. Stereo-only players and DACs seem to do it better, and low-cost SSP's never seem to do a decent job. In other words, there's not really any cheap and easy way to get analogue right - and you do have to do it right somewhere in your system.

Nick

Not buying I still think you have to do the comparison ... surmising is the same as assuming, and we all know the old saying. If you do take the time to make the comparison I'd be keen to get your impressions.

In this case surmising is more of an enlightened assumption, i say it is a fair assessment.

Well, I do not! I think some things are fundamental to the reasonable assessment of component differences. Actually hearing the componenets at issue is one of those fundamentals - in its absence we are subject to rumor, inuendo and hyperbole (sort of like most AVS threads ). Suggesting that because I owned the 861v4 I can reliably infer performance for the v6 is not credible IMO. Is that the advice you'd give your clients? I'd hope not.