I have a Meridian 519 hooked up between my 704 and my Yamaha receiver. It’s setup to process AC-3 and to pass thru the digital signal coming out of the 704. I have had this setup running perfectly for many years. Recently, it started dropping the audio signal intermittently. I have test player, the cables, and the receiver, and have determined the fault is somewhere in the Meridian. The Meridian can output via Optical or Coax and the audio drops happen with both outputs. I’ve opened the unit, but nothing jumps out at me (but I’m no expert here). Any ideas or thought?

Thanks!

The Meridian (like all AC3-RF Demodultors that have multiple inputs) switches automatically between the AC3-RF and S/PDIF input. Your unit might be glitching back and forth between the two if the AC3-RF signal is not strong enough to maintain a lock for some reason.


The manual does show on page 6 that there are jumpers to change the operation of the unit. See here....

https://www.meridian-audio.info/public/ ... 106%5D.pdf


Also, another test you can conduct would be to remove the S/PDIF out of the player to the Meridian to see if not sending a PCM signal to the unit will cause any adverse effect or not w/ the AC3 signal.

That’s definitely some good information, but I don’t think that’s what is happening here. If the unit doesn’t detect an AC-3 signal, it will default to the digital track and pass it through. The jumpers are set to allow this functionality. I get the audio dropouts whether I’m sending an AC-3 signal or a digital signal. Further, this occurs whether I’m utilizing the Meridinan’s optical or coax output.

I remember reading an issue similar this on possibly someone's CLD-97. I think the consensus was that the RF level off the laser pick-up was getting weak and not sending complete data and would show up as drop outs on audio (both PCM and AC3). From what Kurtis said, I believe the issue starts off on the PCM track w/ crackles and gets progressively worse as the RF out continues to weaken.

Do you have another player to test the Meridian? If another player doesn't exhibit drop outs through it, then you need to look @ your LD player.

The meridian 519 defaults to coaxial INPUT. I have had 2 519 units where the ceramic capacitor on the SPDIF coaxial input was faulty causing the unit to think there was a signal there when there was not. I changed out the cap for a new one and Toslink passthrough was restored.

Nice solution to your issue.

I never thought ceramic caps go bad so that is good to know