Meridian CD performance. And a bit of a 'find'..!

[Eoin]

About a year ago I was thinking of trying to improve the digital side of my system as even my very modest Ariston/SME deck showed the CD up as a bit flat and congested. I looked into some of the modestly priced DACs currently available (the Cambridge Audio one) but concluded that it was unlikely to help. The current CD was a Marantz 63 K.I. signature.

Budget was as normal,err, £50-100 so I was also thinking of DIY dacs and so on maybe a kit but to be honest it didn't really look like it was going to be a go-er so I dropped the idea and put up with the mediocre CD performance. Also the Achilles heal of the Marantz (a poor clock giving lots of jitter) can be helped, but at a very high price for a new clock so it was unlikely to be a good transport.

Well I subscribe to the 'Freecycle' local website. If you don't know this, it's like a classifieds ads site but the things are all offered free as it's stuff that people would otherwise be chucking out. Yesterday somebody offered a Meridian 596 DVD/CD player.

Wow. Can't really be a Meridian, can it? It was. Chap said it 'may need a new transport'. OK, shouldn't be a problem, Meridian decks use PC computer style drives so something should be possible.

Picked it up, it's in mint condition, fully boxed with it's remote, manuals and accessories. A beautiful thing! As far as I can make out, it's effectively audio wise equivalent to a Meridian 507 CD player with 24 bit DACs. I won't be using the DVD function of course. What a find! Also, the drive fault according to the owner was just a slightly sticky drive tray so it'll most likely just need a light clean and grease. However I've given it a go and it seems absolutely fine.

He'd paid something like £2500-3000 for it new which must have been 2000-2003 roughly. He wasn't interested in selling it, he just wanted to pass it on to somebody who'd get it fixed and enjoy it. I was very very grateful indeed. I haven't connected it up the the stereo yet as I need to do a few things setup wise on the rest of the system first. I am looking forward to it.

Few questions:

Does anybody have experience of Meridian gear?
Anybody used this device or any of the 506/507/508 CD players?
I've got some light spray 'white lithium' type grease. If I need to clean and lube the tray mechanism is this likely to be suitable and compatible with plstics?

Pictures to follow if anybody is interested.

[MonkeyBoy]

I wish I could help you, but I also want to thank you for helping me. It looks like a great site. I'd never heard of it before and I will be checking it out pretty frequently from now on.

[JaS]

Back when I still used CD players I used the 200, 203, 506-18 and 506-20 and they were very nicely built with excellent sound quality. FWIW I use silicon grease for plastic gears/slides but never had an issue with this part of my Meridian gear so I'm not sure what they used?

Regards,
JaS

PS I tried freecycle for a while but it was all 386/486 desktops and whippets around here

[Jim Leach]

I have an old Theta Data and when I had to change the drawer gear and belt, I cleaned everything of grease and re-lubed it with white lithium myself.

If you can find it, get the aerosol version of the grease (that's what I use) as it tends to be thinner and go on thinner as well. You only need a drop or two and the tubs of the bike grease are quite a bit thicker (too thick in my opinion).

AWESOME find! That is amazing that someone would ditch anything like that. Even for cosmetic parts it is worth quite a bit!

[Eoin]

You can freecycle a whippet? Wow.

Anyway, I've had it apart, it's all fine except that there's a small rubber pulley belt that works the drive openin mechanism which needs replacing. Square section, about 80-82mm. I'm firing off a couple of emails to see if I can find one.

Apart from that its fine.

[Eoin]

Boxed and mint.



Built like a tank.



Dissassembly. The DVD-ROM drive is under this nice wrinkle painted cover.



The offending dead rubber belt. The smaller pulley is also cracked, but I believe I can cannabalise another DVD drive to get a similar part. Or possibly machine up another one.



A really beautiful bit of kit. I'll post back with the sound when I get it all working correctly.

[Eoin]

Hmm images don't work. I'll try again later.

See here for the pictures:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bigmaus/

[LeeS]

It looks filthy inside on that last image... Loads of brown, fluff and dust... Make sure you give it all a very good clean... Nice find though !! Lucky so and so....

[Eoin]

Yes it's been carefully cleaned. I think I've found some parts to repair it, a pulley I've found looks suitable. The drive lube grease has migrated around a bit and there's a lot of fluff but it's all cleaned up.

Any tips on how to do forum photos? This ones were links from Flickr but it seems to have not worked.

[LeeS]

I use PhotoBucket personally. Each photo has its own URL for embedding into forums etc.

[youngdand]

I had a similar find on Freecycle. My micromega Stage 4 which is a thoroughly decent CD front end. Although may benefit from a more modern dac. its very warm sounding. Advisertised as having a problem not playing all cds/ this was due to hardened grease, and nothing a little fresh silcone grease didn't cure.

[Eoin]

All fixed.

Totally cleaned it out, didn't grease anything as it didn't seem to need it and I didn't want to cause damage by using the wrong sort of grease.

The drive drawer mechanism turned out to be faulty; it's got a motor with a small pulley which had cracked and the rubber belt had perished. An old DVD player was cannibalised and turned out to have an identical pulley which simply pushed onto the spindle and I got a suitable belt from my watchmaker neighbour (actually a large o ring). Works perfectly!

And christ almighty, what a difference! I'd always assumed the difference between CD players would be fairly minor and that you'd always get a fairly 'hard' sound. This thing is absolutely lovely. I've just tried quickly 'The Hurting' (Tears for Fears) as its probably reasonably well recorded and I tried 'Mass for Four Voices' (Tallis) on a Naxos disc.

The first was just silk smooth, and the surprise was the incredible solid stereo image. Not a trace of hardness. The Tallis recording I love but particularly if played loud you'd get a hard, not quite glassy, but grey harsh veil to the voices particularly on the higher and louder notes. I thought that was just it and nothing could be done but with this but on this device.. It's like honey at the top end but so clear that the voices soar rather than get sharp.

Just whacked on Bach Multiple concertos. The harpsichord is so crisp you could eat it. Sorry, not very good at writing descriptive 'hifi' stuff!Cracking bass but it's the top end which is so very much better.

Anyway, it's massively massively very much better than my previous Marantz CD63 K.I Signature. Which itself at the time ('98?) was regarded as a 'giant killer' and equivalent to £1K CD players. I was not expecting such a change to say the least. The sound was very immediately totally different in every respect. 'critical listening' sitting down trying to hear subtle changes was not required...

Cheers all,

[Alec124c41]

To post photos, see FAQ at the top.

Cheers,
Alec

[Eoin]

Ok pictures working now, the issue was the code/address supplied by Flickr but I've got it working now.


Mint! by blat1234, on Flickr

Boxed and mint.


Disassembly. by blat1234, on Flickr
Taking in apart. Quite a bit of fluff. It's a hand made thing, carefully laid out. I can well beleive the original price ticket..



The dead rubber belt and the small pulley is cracked, managed to replace these

Meridian 596 by blat1234, on Flickr
All fixed and working perfectly.