New York — The first new Sooloos product available since Meridian’s acquisition of the music-server company incorporates proprietary connections to Meridian equipment.
The $5,000-suggested Meridian-Sooloos Control 10 is a touch-screen music-server controller that also
connects to other-brand audio, distributed-audio and home-control systems. It replaces the Sooloos Control One, which lacked proprietary Meridian connections.
The Control 10 resistive touchscreen features 17-inch LCD display and a slot-load CD drive to play or rip discs. The screen connects to separately sold hard drives and other source components via standard TCP/IP Ethernet connection.
The Control 10 features Meridian’s SpeakerLink digital databus technology and Comms control-signal technology. SpeakerLink carries balanced digital audio and control signals in the RS-232, IR, and Meridian Comms formats up to 300 feet over shielded CAT-5 cable to Meridian’s active speakers from Meridian’s preamplifier/controllers and source units. The active speakers incorporate digital crossovers and digital signal processing. Meridian speakers using the technology can be daisychained rather than home-runned back to a Meridian stereo source. In a surround system, the speakers must still be home-runned to a preamp/controller, but in either case, fewer cables need to be run because separate audio and control cables aren’t needed.
Control 10 also supports older Meridian products equipped with Comms but not with SpeakerLink. Comms is a bidirectional analog-control-signal technology that rides over RG-59 coaxial cable, which would also carry IR and RS-232 signals converted to Comms by Meridian equipment. Digital audio signals are carried by separate cables.
