If you have any interest in deriving 5- or 7-channel surround from two-channel sources, the Meridian is undoubtedly the way to go - Meridian and Lexicon really do this the best. A lot of people on this site scoff at the notion of surround anything, but there are avid fans of this.
You don't mention a source - if you have a high-quality source with analog outputs, you'll probably want to buy one of the procs with analog pass-thru. I don't think the Meridian has this. If you're using a transport into the processor and the processor for the D/A conversion, I can't comment - I haven't heard the units to compare.
At the risk of expanding rather than refining your list, and that you might have already considered and discarded as a possible choice, have you looked at the Lexicon MC-8? You can get these fairly discounted, they're a very modern and expandable architecture, they're the absolute leader (IMHO) in the movie surround sound, they have two and six channel analog pass-thru. Lots of good stuff. I'm a very happy owner of the MC-12.
You don't mention a source - if you have a high-quality source with analog outputs, you'll probably want to buy one of the procs with analog pass-thru. I don't think the Meridian has this. If you're using a transport into the processor and the processor for the D/A conversion, I can't comment - I haven't heard the units to compare.
At the risk of expanding rather than refining your list, and that you might have already considered and discarded as a possible choice, have you looked at the Lexicon MC-8? You can get these fairly discounted, they're a very modern and expandable architecture, they're the absolute leader (IMHO) in the movie surround sound, they have two and six channel analog pass-thru. Lots of good stuff. I'm a very happy owner of the MC-12.