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Meridian G-Series Brochure on-line
 

ARE YOU LISTENING?

What is your interest in music? When it comes to music, how do you enjoy it? Is your primary interest in listening, or do you mainly want background music?

There are obviously times when all of us want a musical background while we do something else – but is this your main use of music? Since its launch in 1984, we have become accustomed to the Compact Disc – including its early problems and the more recent solutions. Today, a CD is capable of extraordinarily high quality – far better than the best the exponents of vinyl could ever have imagined, and far closer to the original sound in the studio than would ever have been possible with traditional disc technologies that had hardly changed in a century. And now, just a few years into a new millennium, we have media such as DVD-Audio that promise – and deliver – significantly higher levels of fidelity than could be achieved with the CD, although the latter will remain a popular medium for some time to come.

Yet today, a significant proportion of music playback involves systems that offer lower quality than the CD – including compressed miniature disc formats and audio stored in RAM or on a hard drive in a personal stereo, along with MP3 and other lossy-compressed files downloaded from the Internet. Why are so many of us seemingly going backwards?

The reason is that today’s downloaded sounds are not designed for listening: they are there simply to provide you with a soundtrack to daily life. It really doesn’t matter that these systems throw away much of the musical information so that it will download more rapidly, or enable you to get more songs into a tiny MP3 player. These lossy compression systems work by throwing away parts of the music that their algorithms think you won’t notice. And they’re right: you won’t notice, because what’s sizzling in your earpieces as you walk down the street is not designed to be listened to – it’s just what’s going on in the background while you’re doing something else.

But stop for a moment. Is background music really all there is? Is music simply ‘going on’? Or would you rather be listening?

Take a deep breath, close your eyes, and imagine this… Imagine walking into the most comfortable room in your home.

Imagine settling into your favourite spot. Now, dim the lights. Press ‘Play’ on the remote control and close your eyes.

Suddenly you are in a different world. The room disappears – to be replaced, perhaps, by a concert hall you know well, or a recording studio half a world and twenty years away. A world-famous orchestra and conductor are poised to play your personal favourite pieces of music, just for you – and you are there, in the hall.

The classic recordings of the entire history of popular music are available to you, too – where you can take the producer’s seat in the studio control room and experience exactly what was heard when they played back the master and said, unanimously, “That’s the one.” This is, unmistakeably, not background music. Instead, it’s music that transports you to another place, and perhaps another time. It is not just a buzz in your ears. It is, without doubt, an experience.

You are listening.

And what you are listening to simply cannot come to you over the Internet. Not now, at least – and perhaps not ever. It will not fit on your personal MP3 player.

Because what you are listening to is the ultimate in multichannel surround-sound reproduction – the very latest in modern audio listening technology – a system that, if you wish, is fully digital all the way from the recording studio to your loudspeakers.

A system in which each component is carefully designed and matched to work together in a unique way – so that instead of placing obstacles in the way of that flow of music, everything works together to enhance the whole. A system that can transport you to the best performance venues in the world – or bring the sound of the studio home to your listening room.

A Meridian system.

Next: Continue reading: Hi-Fi for listeners

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