Swap

[ledzep]

My brother has a Quad 33 pre and Quad 303 power amp both in original condition both working, could probly do with a service but they work fine,he wants to swap them for a meridian 200 series cdp

[DSJR]

Are you sure you want to do this? Forgive me for asking, but 33/303's are easy to fettle and/or update and they're still climbing in value slowly but surely...

[ledzep]

yep he is positive he wants to swap

[Spectral Morn]

Hi the Meridian 207 was a lovely CD player and the 200 transport was very good but the 203 Bitstream Dac was imho awful compared to a well implemented multi-bit Dac or integrated CD player of the day.

DSJR will correct me if I am wrong but I seem to recall :scratch: that the early version of the 203 was multi bit.


Rehgards D S D L

[DSJR]

I replaced an MCD-Pro with a 207 and liked the latter a lot. the built in preamp was a bit bland though, but with todays thinking and refinement to op-amps etc, it may well sing again..

One thing though, which I edited out before posting last night. ANY 200 series CD player is going to have an ageing laser, depending on the use its had and replacements will be difficult to obtain unless a good donor player is gutted. How much life a 207 or 206 has will depend on this. While the mech was good, Meridian used to fully update any player returned to them for service..

Neil, the only 203's I remember were the soggy sounding bitstream ones, but very early examples may well have been multi-bit as you suggest (I believe "bitstream" was printed on the front on all afflicted samples :))

HiFi dave will confirm this, but during the 200 series' life, MANY batch upgrades and tweaks were done, meaning that a six month old demo unit was deemed out of date by the rep. The early 500 series was similar I believe and I remember hearing two 506 players which sounded polar opposites of each other... THIS is why I love the production-stability of Quad and Naim for example, as at least one knew what one was getting and all the tweaks and developments made were saved up into a major upgrade or new model..

Just my views obviously and Neil has far more experience of post 500 series Meridian than I have..