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Using the Meridian Prime Headphone Amplifier
Connecting headphones
•
Connect headphones to either of the jack socket outputs or
to the mini-jack output on the front panel.
You can connect multiple pairs of headphones at once.
You can also connect a single pair of headphones to both jack
sockets simultaneously, with a suitable balanced cable, to drive
the left and right phones separately for highest quality.
Disabling the audio outputs
For headphone listening you can turn off the rear audio outputs:
•
Hold down the power button on the front panel until the
power light changes from white to green.
Sample rate
When using the USB input the sample rate indicators show
the current sample rate: 1x (44/48kHz), 2x (88/96kHz), or 4x
(176/192kHz).
Analogue Spatial Processing
•
Push the Analogue Spatial Processing button to select
between O, i, or ii, as shown by the ASP indicator.
Most stereo recordings are mixed with the intention of playback
over two loudspeakers. When we listen to loudspeakers each
ear does not receive a pure copy of the corresponding channel;
instead, just as with live sounds, each ear hears a mixture of
all the sound in the room. The ear further from a loudspeaker
receives its sound slightly later than the nearer ear, and the
sound is also shadowed by the head, causing a roll-off of
higher-frequencies.
When we listen with headphones, simply playing the
recording directly so that each loudspeaker signal is fed to
the corresponding ear can often be unnatural. The impression
depends on the recording, but there is often too much
separation; sounds happen close to each ear and the sound
image feels 'in the head'.
Meridian Prime Headphone Amplifier User Guide
The Analogue Spatial Processing (ASP) built into the Meridian
Prime Headphone Amplifier provides two carefully designed
options which blend the left and right signals to emulate
listening to loudspeakers. The processing modes i and ii both
provide blend, but with progressively increasing amounts of
delay, representing different loudspeaker angles. The O setting
is a pure bypass, and the left and right are fed directly with no
crosstalk.
We find this processing very natural and it can move the image
out of the head and provide a more coherent sound. You should
experiment with the choices on different types of recording.
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