audio system – roon with meridian endpoints

I used Roon with a combination of Meridian DSP and Monitor Audio speakers. I am sold on Roon’s interface and am a long time Meridian fanboy, so this was an easy one.

Roon server, they call it a “core,” is running on a Hackintosh I built a few years ago. It is still a pretty solid machine, 3.5 GHz i7 with four cores, SSD, etc. Roon is set up with a Tidal HiFi plan, which serves up at least CD quality (16 bit 44kHz) and also MQA (they call Masters, typically 24 bit 96 kHz), plus a local library of music on the server,which sits on a shelf in the Middle Atlantic rack in the mechanical room.

We have two Meridian DSP speaker zones and four pairs of Monitor Audio in-ceiling speakers. The Meridian speakers are the main living area surround sound setup, which is a G61R processor hooked up to 2xDSP5500s (24/96 model), 1xDSP5000C (also 24/96), and a pair of DSP320s in the ceiling for surrounds. A Meridian 218 feeds the G61R through a Reviver (and I am using Revivers for the older DSP speakers). Then we have a MS200 feeding an AC200 that is hooked up to a pair of DSP520s in the master bedroom.

The Monitor Audio speakers (three pairs of CWT160s inside, one pair of AWC265s outside under a soffit over the main deck area) are fed by MS200s and  Meridian 258, and I ran Monoprice 12 gauge speaker wire, which was maybe overkill, 14 gauge or even 16 gauge might have been fine. But while the walls were open I figured might as well err on the side of caution and run fairly hefty wires.

I put all of the Meridian end points on fixed IP addresses. While setting up I noticed firmware versions were not consistent. We have a Mac household and as far as I can tell the only way to update firmware in the MS200s, maybe the 218 too, is to fire up the Meridian Sooloos Configuration utility on a Windows machine. I always had trouble configuring Meridian kit with a Mac running Windows in a virtual machine, so I knuckled under and bought a reconditioned Dell Latitude 630 with a SSD on eBay for $225. The way the Sooloos configuration tool updates things is strange, it just does it, no messages, no user interaction required or possible.

System is awesome. Sound is great, interface is easy to use, etc.