page_title: Meridian Audio
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Meridian Audio / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Meridian Audio founders Bob Stuart and Allen Boothroyd.
context_page_description: Meridian Audio is a British manufacturer of high-performance, high-fidelity audio and video components and systems founded in 1977 by Bob Stuart and Allen Boothroyd.
context_section_description: Based in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, Meridian Audio was founded by John Robert (Bob) Stuart and Allen Boothroyd in 1977.  Since the company's inception, all Meridian products have been built in the UK.
  The company was the among 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, the 565 in 1994 as well as the first DSP-based digital active loudspeakers.
  Today, the company's two largest markets are the United States and the UK.
caption: Meridian Audio founders Allen Boothroyd and Bob Stuart
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