I dont know about the sunfire, but heres my experience:
I moved from the Lexicon MC-1 to the 861 and I can tell you that the difference on *everything* is night and day. I was absolutely surprised by this as I expected to hear a slight improvement with music and no improvement with movies. With movies, there seems to be more bass everywhere (I didnt use the Lexicon's loudness mode) and it actually makes it hard to distinguish between DD and DTS (the DD is that good b/c its their own tweaked version of it). With music the only way I can describe the difference is that its like going from 8 bit color on your computer to 24 bit color - yes its that big a difference.
Ive never heard the 568 but I hear it is sonically similar to the 861 .
I think Meridians philosophy is: get music to sound its best and then worry about movies. For the home, I agree with them.
The meridian bass management is a little confusing the first time around. IMHO its more flexible and less flexible than the Lexicon's. Let me explain. You can choose different xovers for music or logic or 5.1 sources. but these xovers affect only those speakers designated as small. you can engage the meridian protection circuit for speakers designated as large. you use their calculator to arrive at a protection number (you tell it your woofer size) and then the meridian will roll off the low freqs (as volume goes higher). my problem with this is that as far as I can measure these rolled off low freqs dont go anywhere- they are just forgotten. I would have liked to see them go to the sub. Ive found the best sound with my room (my room is not the best acoustic space) is to xover everything at 76hz and designate all the speakers as small. the rock solids are good to 70hz (so its close for them) and the others you know are good to lower. I find I get the most pleasing sound with this setup- your experience will probably be differernt- but youve got to experiment. The thing I liked about the Lexicon is that you can say, ok, for my rears I want an 80hz xover, for my mains Ill xover at 40hz.
regarding LFE- on the Lexicon LFE goes to any large speaker plus the sub- on the meridian LFE goes only to the sub.
If you designate the sub as mono- it works in the way I described above- any bass for any small speaker below the xover (btw- the xover is digital 4th order). if you designate the sub as center- then it will only do this for the center speaker. If you designate it as LFE then it will only come on for LFE. You can also say for music you dont want a sub.
Some other setup things- the meridian allows you to control the phase of your speakers digitally. so for the sub, my loudest readings are when the phase is inverted- so I leave the setting as regular on the sw12 sub and I use the meridians phase control since its all in the digital domain. I was told to try this with the other speakers and I found that my best reading was with the center inverted. It sounds better this way.
I think for music and movies the meridian processor is hard to beat. I wish I could give you guidance specifically to the 568, but if it retains 90% of the 861's sound (IM told its almost identical as far as sound) then I would highly recommend it, and I highly recommend the 861.
- Jerry
[This message has been edited by aerialman (edited April 29, 2000).]
