[4candles]

Originally Posted by diggrd

Did Meridian license this to Dolby? I'm planning on putting togther a system using Meridian speakers to start with, and working up from there. I may need to consider getting the encoder at some time as well.

I'm not sure of the legal arrangements, but Dolby is definitely involved - I believe they take care of the licensing of MLP encoders and decoders to third parties on behalf of Meridian.

As well as having to pay about $2500 for an MLP encoder, you will also need a high-end DVD-Audio authoring program (e.g. Discwelder Chrome - also around $2500) to use the resulting files. Most DVD-Audio authoring programs (including my own dvda-author, and commercial apps like Wavelab and Discwelder Bronze/Steel) only support authoring uncompressed LPCM.

An MLP encoder is only needed if the total bitrate of your audio exceeds 9.6 MBit/s (the maximum for DVD-Audio discs). As an example, 2 channels of uncompressed 24-bit/192KHz audio is about 9.2Mbit/s. So you can do a lot without needing MLP.