Meridian launches £11,000 808v6 CD player

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The 808v6 is the newest version of the company’s 808 CD player and the latest addition to its 800 Reference Series. The new player supports MQA sources and stakes its claim as the “highest performance CD player ever manufactured by Meridian”.

Meridian says the v6 offers several improvements over its predecessors, including MQA decoding and rendering to deliver “studio quality reproduction” via digital and analogue outputs.

But the 808v6 is first and foremost a CD player, and one which offers playback from an internal CD-ROM based drive. Meridian says it allows for “data recovery and error correction many times better than that employed in standard CD systems”.

Inputs include USB and RCA, both of which can receive audio up to 192kHz, and there's a Meridian SpeakerLink connection. An improved DSP chip, which not only allows for MQA support, but also lip-sync control and DSD playback.

The analogue outputs benefit from bass, treble and balance controls too, while the upsampling filter aims to get the best out of CD resolution audio.

The CD player joins the new Audio Core and the DSP5200.2 and DSP7200.2 speakers, announced last month.

The Meridian 808v6 is available in black for £11,000 or in the complete range of 270 Meridian Select colours for £11,500.

MORE: MQA technology paves way for high-res streaming

See all our Meridian news and reviews

Max Langridge

Max is a staff writer for What Hi-Fi?'s sister site, TechRadar, in Australia. But being the wonderful English guy he is, he helps out with content across a number of Future sites, including What Hi-Fi?. It wouldn't be his first exposure to the world of all things hi-fi and home cinema, as his first role in technology journalism was with What Hi-Fi? in the UK. Clearly he pined to return after making the move to Australia and the team have welcomed him back with arms wide open.