Meridian A500 Floor standing speakers
The Meridian A500 is a British three-way system with a closed-type acoustic enclosure (a rarity these days). Drivers: one inch soft dome tweeter and two 170 mm drivers with conical cones. The system allows independent switching of the woofer; the contact terminals are gold plated. Judging by the input impedance module characteristic, the system has only traditional amplifier requirements, as its parameters are: average impedance value is 8.3 ohms, nominal 3.8 ohms, standard deviation ±4.6 ohms, maximum (2.7 kHz) 16.1 ohms. The nominal 1 power value is 100 watts with a sensitivity of 88.7 dB at 2.83V per 1m (the manufacturer cites a figure of 90 dB per 1W per 1m). Obviously, the designers paid a lot of well-deserved attention to the wall damping and muffling of the internal volume of the loudspeakers. One gets the impression that the massive and rigid enclosure is like a fortress that cannot be taken by a siege. The homogeneity of the loudspeaker field is quite high, but it is better to direct the speakers to the listening area to avoid the mismatch of the upper and middle ranges. The architecture of the speakers and the quality of the natural veneer (ash or rosewood) leaves a very pleasant impression. The sense of completeness of the ensemble is created by increasing the stability of the elegant base and a decorative detail of black glass on top. The dimensions are 196x825x280 mm.
The average unevenness of the A500 frequency response in the range of 100 Hz-20 kHz is ± 2.5 dB, but the sensitivity values in the middle and upper ranges are almost the same, which fully corresponds to the results of the listening tests: among the positive reviews was noted high balance of sound. We can not ignore the part of the response from 1 to 10 kHz, which is crucial for the quality of the high-frequency aspect, largely determining the sound of the system as a whole: the unevenness of the frequency response here is just vanishingly small! As you would expect, the upper frequencies sound well-detailed, clear and expressive. One step left to use the strong word "authenticity". But what prevents you from doing it is a feeling of some tightness in the sound, as if you are already breathing mountain air, but you are still in a gorge... Perhaps this is due to the impending drop in the response from 10 kHz. The middle frequencies are worked out as a whole not bad, but close listening begins to pay attention to the inexpressiveness of vocals, and poorer looks male voice, a little brighter - female voices. In rich orchestral works, the sound may lose a little bit of the drawing of individual instruments. It is natural to suppose that these imperceptible deformations are caused by the local increase in the unevenness of the response in the 100-400 Hz areas. The bass left a neutral impression: sufficient depth does not impress the scale, and the achieved severity is not radical. But it seems that thanks to the acoustic design of the closed type, a good elasticity in the bass sound is achieved, for example on drums and bass guitar. The system creates a reliable stereo effect, although the illusion of involvement and presence is not achieved without difficulty, with some strain on the listener's imagination.
