Meridian 500

 Meridian introduce the 500 Compact Disc Transport that combines major advances in digital audio and engineering design to provide clear, pure and natural sound

The 500 Compact Disc Transport incorporates a precision engineered CD turntable and drawer system, which provides all the advantages of drawer loading with the superior disc clamping normally associated with top loading players. It provides a precision digital output which is re-clocked and uses a very high power 75 ohms amplifier for superlow jitter. In order to improve the sound quality and disc playability Meridian has updated the design of the 500 to use a new three beam laser CD mechanism. This involves a new type of in-house software that, amongst its many features, adapts the player to the parameters of each CD.

 The software is combined with radical proprietary analogue processing system that “de jitters” the data coming from the disc before it is decoded. The 500 is our best transport, ideal for Meridian digital speakers or with the 565 Digital Surround Processor. Combined with our 566 DAC, it’s the finest CD playback system Meridian offers to get the sound of “being there”

 Meridian has eschewed the usual bought-in drive controller PCB in favour of its own circuitry.

Decoding of the signal lifted from CD is via Philips SAA7310, which handles error correction as well as demodulation and subcode processing, and optical control is provided by the TDA 8808/8909 servo electronics. From this a PCF2705 provides further digital processing from 12C to S/PDIF, before output to a high power 75 Ω amplifier feeding the co-axial output through a small toroidal transformer to improve the squareness of the signal into the interconnect.  A high speed optical EIAJ "Toslink" output is also provided.

Specifications

Clock accuracy:  ±20 ppm.

Display:  Eight character display for track, time, and index.

Outputs

Digital:  Co-axial, 500mV p-p.

Optical:  EIAJ.

AES/EBU:  XLR connector.

Communications:  Two 5 pin 240 DIN sockets

Consumption:  20 VA

Finish:  Black textured enamel and glass.

Dimensions (H x W x D):  88 x 321 x 332 mm (3.46" x 12.64" x 13.07").

Weight:  6.4 kg (14 lbs).