Developed by the company’s Engineered by Meridian (EbM) consultancy division, new DSP modules can be applied to multiple products and environments including automobiles, home audio and cinema, luxury yachts, soundbars and headphones. These will be demonstrated at CES 2024 at the Bellagio hotel on the Las Vegas Strip, with a selection of new audio products and software technologies.
Demonstrations of domestic audio systems will include the recently launched DSP9 loudspeakers (the third product of Meridian’s Extreme Engineering Program) and a selection of high-end, third-party products that benefit from embedded Meridian DSP technologies. Demonstrated for the first time will be a new ‘Bass & Space’ technology that increases the sense of soundstage without the loss of impact and power that can happen in such systems, making it ideal for applications such as portable speakers where the left and right audio channels may not be optimally spaced.
The British audio pioneer will also be revealing elements of its automotive technology roadmap, showing how vehicle manufacturers can use advanced digital signal processing systems to provide a next-generation, immersive audio experience for music, speech, games, movies and other systems that are enhanced by high-quality sound. Amongst these will be Meridian’s Vibrohaptic Audio technology for automotive seating which, as well as enhancing the audio experience, has the potential to enable impressive audio performance without large, hard-to-package bass speakers.
"This is a long way from the thumping-bass vibrating seat that is usually associated with vibrohaptics," comments Merdian Audio automotive director Paul Andrews. "Through our understanding of how our brains use more than our ears to interpret sounds, we have developed a system that is most effective when you can barely feel it working."
This deep understanding of psychoacoustics has also allowed Meridian to take a global lead in solving the unique challenges of high-quality sound in electric vehicles. "EVs may be quieter, but their acoustic profile requires a significantly different approach to conventional vehicles," explains Andrews. "We believe we are the world leader in this new science."
Meridian’s fresh approach to immersive sound is already supporting new vehicles from some of the world’s most ambitious manufacturers. Recently launched electric vehicles that incorporate Meridian’s audio technologies include the highly praised new Kia EV9 and the HiPhi Y from luxury vehicle innovator Human Horizons.
Meridian Advanced Technology Demo
Fresh out of Meridian’s UK laboratory and displayed for the first time anywhere, a new multi-purpose Soundbar concept being debuted during CES ‘24 demonstrates an advanced engineering implementation of proprietary Meridian technologies that can take a typical premium soundbar and give it the ability to deliver a much more authentic, powerful and spatial surround sound experience.
For the demonstration, Meridian's engineers have selected an off-the-shelf third party soundbar and subwoofer package, to which they have added their new Semantic EQ interface to provide users with an intuitive, personalized equalization based on natural language. A range of proprietary software technologies have been carefully selected and calibrated to maximize the performance and push the boundaries of what listeners would typically expect to experience from this hardware.
"The beauty of this system is that impressive results have been achieved through our understanding of psychoacoustics, allowing us to engineer software that optimizes the signal for how people actually perceive and react to sound, rather than by adding hardware complexity," explains Meridian CEO, John Buchanan. "This has allowed us to focus on what really makes a difference to the quality of the sound, creating a high-performance and luxurious experience without large and costly hardware."
The demonstration will deliver impressive results from 2-channel music, 5.1 surround or 7.1.4 Dolby ATMOS, all achieved through digital signal processing that will render any incoming signal to any channel configuration. Meridian describes the sound as "authentic, lifelike and natural with great bass, clear vocals and spatiality."
These new proprietary DSP technologies can be applied to any soundbar or portable loudspeaker design, for use anywhere the compact architecture is appropriate. "While the obvious applications are domestic and marine, we can see the physical simplicity being attractive to vehicle manufacturers too," states Andrews. "We believe this is a revolutionary concept that could be transformational for many vehicle segments."
Buchanan adds that while the Meridian brand will only be seen on the very high-performance systems that his team creates for luxury vehicles, high-end yachts and bespoke homes, its EbM consultancy works across numerous sectors, licensing the company’s proprietary DSP software and delivering audio engineering and tuning expertise for a wide range of manufacturers and brands.
"In the 45 years that Meridian Audio has been one of the world’s most highly regarded developers of high-performance audio technologies, we have never seen such dramatic changes in how great sound is achieved," concludes Buchanan. "By consistently investing around 15% of revenue in R&D, we are creating a full pipeline of innovations across our market sectors, helping our clients add value and competitive advantage in exciting new ways."
www.meridian-audio.com
