Nucleus and Meridian DSP3200 - Best way to conncet?

Audio Gear Talk Meridian Audio
1

Is Nucleus working great with Meridian DSP3200? - and how do I get the best soundquality when connecting Nucleus to Meridian-speakers? Should I go for Meridian 210, 218 or…?
I am planning to buy a Nucleus, and I am tempted to buy a Meridian system too, so I am very interested in your good and bad experiences with this combination.

2

I have ROCK on a NUC → Meridian 218 → DSP5200SE which works beautifully.

A Nucleus should work just as well in place of ROCK on the NUC, and your DSP3200s (assuming they are SpeakerLink), should work in place of the DSP5200SEs.

I use the 218 as I need it’s modest preamp capabilities for other inputs; if it were a standalone system, I’d favour the 210 for its RAAT protocol implementation over the 218s Sooloos protocol.

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3

Thanks, Mesmo, for describing your setup and for your thoughts about choosing 218 or 210 in different situations. It is a great help to me.
Someone has recommended me the Innuos Zen MK3 instead of the Roon Nucleus. Have you any experience with Innuos Zen?

4

No experience of the Innuos Zen I’m afraid.

My belief is that with the network between the roon core and endpoint, so long as the core is appropriately spec’d for the library size (in my case a NUC8i5 with 8GB memory), then there’ll not be a difference.

For any future upgrades, I’ll be looking closer to the DSP’s… probably in the area of power conditioning.

There are some really interesting discussions over at https://www.meridianunplugged.com

5

The 210 is a streamer and works great with the 218 as a pre amp for my 5200 SEs
The 218 alone works great but is not RAAT, with the 210 I can group zones with other Roon Ready RAAT zones also having Bluetooth for the BBC Sounds app.
The 210 alone does not upsample.

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Thanks again for sharing your thoughts - and for the meridianunplugged-link, which looks very interesting.

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Thanks, Chris. It is a great help to me hearing about your use of 210 and 218.

8

With up-sampling available in the roon core this in itself shouldn’t be too much of an issue.

But I do dream of Chris’ set up and may well add a 210 to my 218.

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