[onthefly]

I'm considering moving away from my Tag processor to either the Bryston SP1.7 or Lexicon MC-4.  The MC-8 was an option but I really don't need zone 2 option.
My main requirements are music all day and movies at night!  Is there anyone out there who has faced a similar dilemma?

[Adz523]

You do realize that you are in the Bryston Owners Circle sponsored by Bryston?    With that said, I think you will get an honest response from the posters here in this Forum.  I think the general consensus (but there's always outliers) is the Bryston bests the Lex in music (when used as a preamp), but the Lex bests the Bryston in home theater, more specifically in its surround sound processing/steering capabilities.  The 1.7 may be updated soon which should bring it closer to the Lex in HT performance.  Also note that the 1.7 has no video switching capabilities, purely audio, and some love that audio only design, such as myself.  Personally, I'm waiting (albeit impatiently) for the feedback from the future upgrade to the 1.7 before I make a decision to stay here or move on.  A point of note, Meridian just released a new processor (the G68) which has several models one of which is an audio only version similar to the 1.7 and brings it within the price point of the 1.7.

[onthefly]

It might perhaps be a good idea to wait and see just what upgrade Bryston offer.  As for the Meridian G68, I see it is highly rated and I've always admired Meridian products in general from afar.  However, it has an inbuilt tuner which for some strange reason grates with me.  I cannot understand why they would spoil a great product by including a tuner!

[jgubman]

The new Meridian G68J has no tuner, no video switching and no zone 2.

I have the G68ADV, and it's a great unit. Definately NOT ruined by the included tuner.

[nicolasb]

I've never listened to the MC4.

I have listened to the Lexicon MC12B (version 3) and it's a truly stunning piece of kit. The SP1.7 beats it for analogue bypass performance, but the MC12B is superior in every other way. (And twice the price, of course!).

On one occasion I listened to an MC12 and an MC8, and, while it was a rather unsatisfactory demo for a lot of reasons, there seemed to me to be a surprisingly large gap in sound quality between the two.

If the MC4 supports Lexicon's take on room correction, then that's probably a reason to buy it over the SP1.7 - all the signs are that, even after the forthcoming upgrade, the SP1.7 still won't have any form of EQ system.

Lexicon also write their own proprietary post-processing software, some of which is rather good. The Logic 7 algorithm always goes down a storm.

Meridian processors are generally very well made. I've not heard the G68, but the old 568.2 was very classy (and, again, you've now got Meridian's ingenious room EQ system). They also have some interesting proprietary software such as the Trifield mode for stereo listening.

Meridian's philosophy is very different from Bryston's, of course - Bryston is all about top-notch analogue performance, while Meridian is all "digital plus DACs". The old 568.2 didn't actually have an analogue bypass at all - I don't knopw about the G68.

If you use an all-Meridian setup - player, processor, and digital active speakers - the result is stunning. It's still one of the few setups that lets you do top-quality bass management on DVD-Audio discs.

Which Tag processor are you thinking of moving away from, btw? If it's an older model then you might want to consider getting the dual-SHARC upgrade for it - that, in combination with the 24/192 DACs, makes a startling difference to the performance.

[Adz523]

Not sure if the Forum minds if I post this, but coincidentally, the MC-4 was just reviewed by SECRETS - a pretty honest publication all things being equal.   If not allowed, just remove it.  

http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volume_12_3/lexicon-mc-4-ssp-7-2005.html

[James Tanner]

Hi All,

I would like to point out a couple of design issues with our SP1.7 processor.

I know there is a general agreement out there that the Bypass Stereo and Bypass 5.1 Analog sections of the SP1.7 is first rate but one of the points not published or talked about very much is that the digital 5.1 outputs are also amplified with our proprietary Class A Discrete output section as well.

I  must get an email a week from customers who say they had 'such and such' a processor and replaced it with an SP1.7 and could not believe the difference in dynamics and clarity when watching movies or listening to DVD Music discs.

I do not want to sound negative here but a lot of processors out there are 'computers that pass audio'. There is nothing wrong with that approach if 'feature' based processing is what your after.

In Bryston's case we looked at producing a processor which was 'audio' based. That means if you asked me to build you a state of the art stereo preamplifier I would not use IC's ---I would use discrete circuits for all the reasons that make discrete circuits better. So the digital output stage is connected to these Class A discrete circuits and the difference in performance in my opinion is not subtle.

We use this arrangement with our internal DAC's on the BP26 as well.

Also we do not have any 'gain' on the digital board - it is run at unity gain. So all 'processing' is done at unity in the digital mode (which is what integrated circuits do best) but all 'amplification' is done in the 'discrete analog' mode.

Anyway my $0.02.

james

[onthefly]

Thanks for all the replys so far.

nicolasb:
My present Tag has all of the upgrades apart from the DP - unfortunately

jgubman:
I did not realise the G68J dispensed with a tuner.  It is not on the Meridian website.

[nicolasb]

My present Tag has all of the upgrades apart from the DP - unfortunately

You might be pleasantly surprised by just how large the difference in sound quality is between single and dual-SHARC Tag processors.

James T makes good points as usual - I must say, I am looking forward to hearing what the SP1.7 sounds like after the DSP upgrade. It's always seemed to me that the SP1.7 very much had the audio basics down, but was a little behind some other devices on the digital side of things. The same audio philosophy with an up-to-date DSP driving it is a tempting prospect.

James, are we ever going to be able to persuade you that precision in the signal coming out of the speaker is more important than precision in the signal going into it, thus making a digital EQ system an absolute necessity?  

[James Tanner]

Hi nicolasb,

Most competent speaker designers try to produce loudspeakers that do not 'beam' the energy at you. In other words they want the 'polar response' or frequency response of the speaker to be as even or as 'FLAT' as possible on axis as well as off-axis.

The reason is that the ear/brain not only perceives the direct sound but shortly thereafter the reflected sound from all the boundaries of the room. This is called "TOTAL POWER RESPONSE'. It is this 'total power response' that you in fact hear. If the off axis response is not as flat as possible in frequency then the radiated energy reaching your ear will have serious dips and peaks in response.

Speakers that have flat on and off axis frequency response always produce an excellent sound stage with proper imaging and placement. They always project sound 'outside the box' and the resulting experience is always more lifelike in presentation.

EQ srews this up because it alters the frequency response only at the measured position at the expense of everywhere else.

Long live the soundstage.


james

[nicolasb]

Speakers that have flat on and off axis frequency response always produce an excellent sound stage with proper imaging and placement. They always project sound 'outside the box' and the resulting experience is always more lifelike in presentation.

Well, all right, forget about the influence of the room entirely for a moment, and think about the speaker in an an anechoic chamber. What's important is not the effect of the room but the actual speaker output itself: as you rightly say, this needs to be flat as possible.

No matter how clever the speaker manufacturer is, the speaker's output will not be flat. Speaker specs tend to be quoted as +/- 2dB, sometimes even +/- 3 dB. There's a very perceptible difference between +2dB and -2dB. Reviewers will tell you that a particular speaker is "foward" in one part of the frequency spectrum, and "laid back" in another, etc.

But now suppose you introduce some high-grade digital EQ before the signal leaves the digital domain - that means that you can actually make the speaker's anechoic response absolutely flat right across the frequency spectrum. This what I'm talking about - not correcting for the room, but correcting for the speaker.

I think there's a good analogy to be made with high-end video callibration. If you imagine using something like a Lumagen scaler to feed a high quality plasma TV, what matters ultimately is not whether or not the signal fed into the screen accurately matches what's on the disc, it's whether the actual brightness of the phosophor dots matches what's on the disc. If the screen has a tendency to drift slightly away from the ideal colour temperature (e.g. dark greys go slightly blue while light greys go slightly red, or vice versa), then the video processing compensates for that, and you end up with a display that's as near perfect as the technology allows.

It would not, of course, be sensible to use a video processor to try and compensate for too much sunlight in the room - it'd be better to draw the curtains. But you can and should match the eventual output of the screen to the signal, not the input.

Similarly with EQ and speakers - the speaker's output needs to flat, not the input.

[James Tanner]

Hi nicolasb,

Ok so how do we know what correction to apply at the input without meassuring the output at some specific location?

james

[nicolasb]

The ideal I suppose would be to actually get a graph of frequency response from the speaker manufacturer. You could perhaps even distribute combinations of settings that have been found to work well for specific models. (That'd be a great opportunity for collaboration with PMC - for Bryston's processor to have specific presets for optimal performance with PMC speakers).

Or one could measure the speaker's response out of doors on a still day....

But that's a secondary consideration. What matters is the basic point that the speaker output matters more than the input, and that it's only a sophisticated digital EQ system that can give you that kind of control over speaker output (regardless of how its settings are eventually determined).

[James Tanner]

Well there's more to good speaker design than frequency respose so I still feel electronic EQ - digital or Analog creates more problems than it solves.

james