Meridian Audio
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| Limited company | |
| Industry | Audio/Visual Consumer electronics equipment manufacturing and distribution |
| Founded | 1977 |
| Founder | Bob Stuart, Allen Boothroyd |
| Headquarters | Huntingdon, England |
| Products | High-end loudspeakers, home theatre equipment |
| Website | www.meridian-audio.com |
Meridian Audio is an English manufacturer of high-performance, high-fidelity audio and video components and systems founded in 1977 by Bob Stuart and Allen Boothroyd.
Based in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, Meridian Audio was founded by Bob Stuart and Allen Boothroyd in 1977. They continue to lead the company with Stuart heading all technological developments and Boothroyd leading the design team. Since the company’s inception, all Meridian products have been conceived, engineered and built in the UK.
The company was the first to introduce active loudspeakers (loudspeakers with power amplifiers inside the cabinet) designed for the domestic market, and was the first British company to manufacture a CD player in 1983. The Meridian MCD, launched in 1985, was the first audiophile CD player. In his review of the MCD, audio engineer and Stereophile founder J. Gordon Holt wrote, "For the first time, the sound of the best CDs (Telarcs, RealTimes and Sheffields) is truly liquid and transparent, with an effortlessness that I have not previously heard except from the better analog sources... To date, then, this is the best-sounding CD player I've encountered." Meridian also created the first digital surround-sound processor and the first DSP-based digital active loudspeakers.
The flagship DSP8000 active loudspeakers were released in the late 1990s as part of the company's new 800 series. Subsequent loudspeaker models (DSP7000, DSP5200) employed the styling that contributed to the success of the DSP8000.
In 2007 a significant minority shareholding in the company was sold to the Muse Group, a consortium of the Swiss-based luxury goods group Richemont and U.S. film company New Regency. Muse is now a majority shareholder and is 100 percent owned by Reinet Investments, a sister company of Richemont.
Today, the company's two largest markets are the United States and China.
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