Meridian G95 an all in one dream

It is our constant goal to bring you the best products from the best manufacturers that we can find at any time. Our own budget sometimes restricts our ability to do that and so a manufacturer may have to sit on the back burner awaiting us to have the funds to buy in the demonstration stock required. Meridian is a manufacturer that we’ve dreamed of having since the day we started business and finally it’s here.

We dipped our toe in the water so to speak last year when we started selling the Meridian F80 – still an unbelievable product, but just in time for our opening we got our first Meridian delivery. Consisting of their fabulous G95 all in one DVD and surround sound processor/amp and P320 on wall speakers with an SW1600 subwoofer providing the low frequency.

Meridian have been around for 30 odd years developing products that strive for unprecedented realism of reproduction and enjoyment of both music and movies.

The G95, launched last year is Meridian’s take on what Linn did a while back and Arcam did more recently. A single box that offers playback CD’s and DVD’s along with FM and/or DAB tuner and with all the processing and amplification for multi channel enjoyment built in.

As soon as you lift this unit out of the box you know you are handling a substantial piece of kit. It’s a true heavy weight and actually got my fingers stuck underneath it when placing ours onto the rack that was to become it’s home. The disk loading mechanism is a slot loader rather than a draw. Meridian tell us it’s by far the most stable mechanism and who can argue? If it’s stable enough for CD players found in cars then you can be sure it’s not going to have any problems sitting on a rack.

The disk reader runs at a standard speed but when required can step up a gear and run faster meaning it can check data that may have been missed or if there is a “problem” disk it will have a better chance of collecting all the data where other readers would show an error. The scaler inside comes from Faroudja so you can be sure of the very best in video reproduction and scales to 1080p with astounding results, and if you really want to get the best out of your viewing and listening then you can get yourself an HDMI switching box from Meridian that integrates with the G95 and it’s remote and allows you to input Sky or DVD inputs and benefit from the electronics inside the Meridian rather than those in your Sky box.

All in all this is a great product to have as part of our stable range. It’s going to please those that like the tidy simplicity of a one box solution as well as those looking for a unit that performs well beyond others in it’s class.

You can find out more about the Meridian range by visiting their website www.meridian-audio.com and of course you can experience it here at Audio 7.