Great player all in all. Impeccable performance when used as a transport.

Doesn't cut it as a stand alone unit, shame for the price.

An addition to the above review:

When connecting the G91 through Meridian (preamp) 502 the sound is clearly better, and the aforementioned treble roll off/veil is taken care of to great extent. Why the G91 (which has it's own built in preamp) fails to deliver the same crispy and transparent output is beyond me.

Running the G91 through the 502 to the G55 pretty much puts the performance on par with the cdplayer that bettered the G91 as a stand alone unit. I write pretty much as the difference is so small now that it is no factor to be concerned with.

Great build, great looks, very good picture and sound but without that little extra something that makes it stand out in the high end arena.

Sketchy and buggy when I got it but to their credit it was worked out.
Not really high end like Meridian is known for. Bettered on sound by less expensive players, and better by Oppos DVD player for a mere fraction of the price of the Meridian.

The player had initial problems with reading discs and no HDMI output and had a few runs back to the shop.

Build is, as usual with Meridian, top notch. The performance of the unit is a bit lacking considering the price. System integration with Meridian gear is well thought out and in my 2ch set up it was easy to configure.

Plays DVD's really well what with upscaling the image and all, no complaints. When comparing it to an Oppo 981HD there was a tie which of course makes the Meridian look pretty expensive considering you get roughly 26 Oppo players for the same money. The Oppo was even better with seamless scene switching where as the Meridian sometimes pauses a second.

For sound there is hardly anything to complain about, however there is a slight veil/roll off in the very upper treble. Most people will probably not take notice but if you have heard units with better transparency in the upper end you will know there is something not quite right there. After many years of using Meridian 500 series (502 pre and 557 power) I can honestly say that Meridian reached their pinnacle then and there and that the current G-series is not bettering the 500 series in any other aspects than the looks. I'd even go as far as to say that with my very forgiving yet very transparent speaker system in my acoustically treated room (to a smaller degree) the 502/557 sounded a bit better than the G91 and G55 I currently own, just that very last crispness in the upper end is not there when I listen to acoustic / voice recordings I am very familiar with. Too bad.

But then of course there are at least HDMI offerings with the newer DVD players.

Meridian has always been in the forefront of Digital/Analogue solutions but today it seems they have a hard time living up to their great (and justified) reputation when
there are other makers with great digital solutions that Meridian honestly quite can't match.

Great sounding kit, but not high end.

Customer Service

Great.

Similar Products Used:

Denon, Rotel, Marantz, Oppo, Teac and Pioneer players, other Meridian players,