Meridian Audio hosts Audio Engineering Society visit

Meridian Audio recently hosted a visit of the Audio Engineering Society (AES) UK Section at its Huntingdon HQ. Eleven members of the society enjoyed a facility tour, and a packed day of demos, presentations and company updates, in the company of Cambridge Section Chair and Meridian R&D engineer, Dr. Steve Oxnard.

Following an introductory presentation from Meridian CEO, John Buchanan, the group visited the Meridian Product Evolution Collection, which showcases the company’s first ever loudspeaker, the M1, and the extraordinary M10 loudspeakers.

Des Ford, Technical Marketing Manager, then led a tour around the factory to see first-hand how the team assembles all its products. Rather than following much of the UK industry in outsourcing this element of manufacturing, Meridian continues to invest strongly in PCB assembly, inspection and test capabilities, all in-house.

Director of Sales, Barry Sheldrick, led the demonstrations in Meridian’s Performance media room and its Reference theatre.

The group noted ‘both AV installations were capable of producing impressive levels of bass. The media room in-wall installation being particularly impressive in its ability to render low frequencies at high SPL with just three ten-inch drive units.

Sheldrick also introduced the group to Meridan’s all-new DSP9 loudspeakers, the flagship DSP8000 XE and Meridian’s patented HPA (High Power Array) technology, which allows three loudspeakers to be used as a single sound source.

Some members of the group also attended Meridian’s Automotive Lab, where the brand is exploring the use of its high-end active loudspeaker technology for in-vehicle use, but investigating the use of haptics – in which low-frequency components of the audio signal (typically 40-500Hz) are extracted, processed and fed to actuators which impart vibrations to the listener’s seat!

The day concluded with the Meridian Engineering team presenting some of their recent research work.

Chris Cotton, Graduate Research Engineer, explained his approach to room-correction equalisation (Meridian RE-Q Technology), and then presented his work into methods for quantifying apparent source width. Ethan Stanhope, Research Engineer, discussed in greater detail the haptics work that had been demonstrated earlier that day.

Mike Turner, 2023 Chair of UK AES Section Committee described the visit as ‘fascinating, informative and most.’