News

Meridian Reveals the Next Generation of Meridian Sooloos (23/9/2009)

Sooloos 2.0 - storage and management of your digital music at an unsurpassed level of power and operability

Meridian, a company long accepted as a world leader in advanced digital audio and video technologies for music and home-theatre, debuts an exciting series of updates that dramatically increase the power and flexibility of the Meridian Sooloos media-management system.

A Meridian Sooloos system creates a centralised, shared source of music for everyone in the home with an architecture that takes away the worry and hassle of backup, organisation and access for the entire family. The latest generation, called Sooloos 2.0, brings a host of improvements and additions to the industry-defining Meridian Sooloos music system from simple interface enhancements to major changes in system capabilities, zone playback and hardware options.

“We have completely reinvented the system architecture of Sooloos so that it can address massive numbers of files,” said Bob Stuart, Meridian’s Co-Founder, Chairman and Chief Technology Officer. “It’s quite brilliant actually, the new design allows the interface to literally handle hundreds of thousands of files with the same speed and flexibility as just one hundred - a critical point when considering online and other media types.” He continues, “The second generation of Meridian Sooloos is a fantastic collaboration, allowing the ability to communicate with Meridian legacy products and so protecting the investment of our current customers, while offering an attractive system and exposing Meridian to a broader audience.”

New System Architecture Requires Fewer Components

A Control 10 can now be combined with a Twinstore alone to create a system with the complete Sooloos experience. This two-piece system provides amazing interface, automatic backup, massive storage, incredible reliability, and superb sound quality.

Setup is incredibly simple, and for the ultimate in simplicity, elegance and performance, attach the SpeakerLink connection of the Control 10 directly to Meridian DSP Loudspeakers creating a complete digital audio system.

New Local and Remote Streaming Playback on any Computer

Meridian Sooloos now offers local streaming. Any Mac, PC, or Linux web browser can access and control the system. At the same time, the speakers of any computer controlling the system can be used to play music from it. In the office, in the den, in the kids’ rooms, on a laptop around the house wirelessly - the speakers of any computer on the network can act as a zone to play the music stored in one’s system.

The system also features remote streaming. Simply access the home Meridian Sooloos system through a web browser, from anywhere with a high-speed connection, and stream your music to your computer. At the office, in a hotel, at a friend’s home, or on holiday, your music is always available through the web.

Expanded Control Options

Meridian Sooloos can now be controlled from Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari on Macintosh, Windows, and Linux platforms, so that any computer – even new Linux-based Netbooks – can become a control point for Meridian Sooloos. The dedicated Control PC and Control Mac programmes offer the same control benefits as web browsers, with the addition of full CD importing, file importing, file exporting, and manual backup from any Macintosh or Windows computer on the network.

Easy and Simple Integration of Portable Listening

Meridian Sooloos imports your music in full-quality, lossless form for listening at home. Then it also generates MP3s of the files for portable use, so you don’t have to import and maintain two libraries. With the new Meridian Sooloos virtual file structure, any computer on the network will automatically access Meridian Sooloos as a shared library after installing Control PC or Control Mac. The result is seamless and simple transfer of music to iPhones, iPods, and other portable MP3 players, with no special setup requirements.

High Resolution Audio and New Format Support

Meridian Sooloos supports the import of FLAC, WAV, MP3, AAC, and Apple Lossless files, at any word length and sample rate up to 24-bit, 96 kHz. With Control PC and Control Mac, files located on your computer are easily imported and identified, acquiring the metadata with automated tools.

Improved Classical Music Management

Meridian Sooloos manages your library through a simple, elegant tool called Focus. Classical music presents unique issues to Focus – for example that four tracks out of twelve on a CD may represent the four movements of one composition. When you search, you want to search for any recording of this composition, not the individual tracks that make up the work. Meridian Sooloos now embraces this as well as other challenging aspects of browsing Classical Music.

Groundbreaking Interface Continues to Evolve

One of the most innovative aspects of the Meridian Sooloos interface is the ability to sort a wide array of options including but not limited to genre, title, artist, or producer - any of the metadata the system holds can be used to find exactly what you want. With the latest updates, this groundbreaking interface continues to grow. And after three years spent working closely with our customers, Sooloos 2.0 boasts an array of innovative improvements that make your digital music library even more accessible and enjoyable, further enhancing Sooloos’ position as an industry leader.

The Meridian Sooloos media-management system brings convenience and control to your entire digital music library, providing easy access and reliable storage from a central location. Your music can be shared by everyone in the home and played in any room. You can even enjoy music from your home system when on holiday or a business trip with remote streaming.

www.meridian-audio.com