How a $100,000 Speaker gets made! - Meridian Facility Tour - #Helpful Post

have you ever wondered what would happen

if you rounded up a bunch of obsessive

audio geeks and then locked them in a

building with only the instructions to

build whatever you want and don't come

out til you're done well wonder no

further because LG electronics

graciously sponsored our trip all the

way to beautiful Great Britain to tour

the Rd and production facility of

world-renowned speaker manufacturer

Meridian and this is gonna be a good one

because while on the surface Meridian's

flagship $100,000 speakers here couldn't

be more different from the LG X boom go

Bluetooth speaker that I'm holding they

have a lot more in common than meets the

eye

so let's go have a look shall we this

video is brought to you by LG's ex boom

go Bluetooth speaker line up check out

the special offer linked in the video

description

so during development they worked

closely with Meridian and not just on

the voicing of the already finished

product like you'd see in many other

co-developed audio products meridian was

involved in developing the

specifications of the drivers and the

passive radiators that LG brands as

dual-action base they were involved in

the creation of both the vocal and bass

enhancing profiles and they even helped

with the physical design of the back

cabinet to enhance sound quality one

really cool sort of Meridian

special-sauce feature is actually on the

PK 3 here and what it does is it applies

image elevation to raise the perceived

source of the sound slightly since it's

so common for people to plunk their

Bluetooth speakers on a table next to

them or by the poolside or whatever

so bottom line takeaway from this tour

is an X boom go gonna sound like the

speakers that we auditioned when we

walked in the door no of course not

don't be stupid but the folks here at

Meridian are still proud to take credit

for bringing better sound quality to the

rest of us as well who can't afford

six-figure speakers except for one thing

right the the RGB lighting they actually

didn't want any of the credit for that

no pride they were very clear if that's

on LG you know what whatever I think

it's cool we'll start with a little bit

of history when Meridian launched their

first product in 1977 powered

loudspeakers so ones with the

electronics built into them were only

available in the professional world but

while these were expensive at around two

thousand pounds their strategy of using

dedicated amplifiers for each driver

unit allowed them to split the incoming

signal before amplification avoiding

some of the messiness of a crossover and

actually when the folks here hooked

these puppies up to some Spotify they

were shocked at how well they've stood

the test of time so then you

fast-forward

I don't know was this forty some odd

years and the vast majority of consumer

devices now are highly integrated

containing not just drivers and

amplifiers but even advanced digital

sound processors that can decode high

bitrate streams like bluetooth with

optics HD like this guy and dramatically

improve performance where cost or

physical size constraints had previously

made decent sounding audio simply

impossible but this is fun it turns out

Meridian knows a thing or two about that

as well have you guys ever heard of

Dolby true HD well long story but it's a

method of compressing high resolution

blu-ray audio losslessly that was

originally called meridian lossless

packing and it was invented right here

now the vast majority of product

development is done in software these

days but when push comes to shove you do

have to build one and actually listen to

it eventually so to that end they built

what they call the inner sanctum

including this anechoic chamber which is

used in combination with more realistic

listening scenarios to ensure that every

product that they build here meets the

standards of a group of Golden Ears who

work together to evaluate how closely

the product represents the original

recording honestly speaking though for

me it wasn't the admittedly very nice

good job you guys graphics on the wall

here that blew me away it was the

production floor now I've seen a good

number of manufacturing facilities but

this one is completely unlike any that

I've encountered for one thing it's

practically a ghost town in here and

it's not like they cleared it out for me

or anything that's apparently just the

way that they work they've got far more

build stations and testing stations than

they do people to work at them which

they say is perfect for the small

batches that they produce for their

worldwide dealer network so without

further ado then shall we follow the

journey of a loudspeaker all the way

through well you don't really have a

choice that's what we're doing let's go

first up while they source Baer PCBs

from an outside manufacturer a number of

years ago Murray

invested in their own SMT line which

means that whether it's for in-house

prototyping for brand partnerships like

the one they have with LG or as we're

about to see right now

retail product manufacturing they can

build their own boards in-house so first

up then the board goes into this machine

where it gets a coating of this gray

kind of oozy solder paste that actually

gets squeezed through these holes in the

aluminum template so that it ends up on

all of the contact pads on our bare

printed circuit board then our board

goes into a pick-and-place machine that

automatically places the smaller board

components using computer vision to

ensure that there are no obvious defects

so then from there it goes into a second

pick-and-place machine that handles the

larger components so you can see those

are on the spools right here but we're

actually gonna stop for a moment here

and draw your attention to this Blundell

production equipment cabinet here so

this is pretty cool some of the DSP and

compute chips actually need to be stored

under specific environmental conditions

or they can absorb moisture from the

surrounding air which can turn into a

steam pocket during the final stage of

production and cause damage the more you

know right which I guess brings us

perfectly to the final stage the pizza

oven so at this point here everything on

that board is actually only held in

place by the stickiness of the solder

paste now of course I was being a little

facetious before however much this does

actually bear resemblance to a pizza

oven it's of course a bit more

complicated than that and in fact this

one here can handle both traditional

surface mounts you know with the little

legs around the outside of the chip and

BGA chips which have all the solder pads

on the bottom fun fact by the way when

you're designing a double-sided board

you have

to account for running it through the

oven twice so you don't want to put

anything too heavy on the bottom or it's

all gonna fall off when the solder

remotes so here at the other end out

comes our finished board it sits and

cools for a little bit then gets carried

over to this station where it's scanned

by a combination of optical recognition

software and real live human

intervention how about that now you

might have noticed though in that close

up before that there's still a lot of

contact pads that are empty on our board

here well believe it or not a shocking

amount of the soldering work here at

Meridian is still done by hand so here

we are at one of those stations

unfortunately it's not running right now

I did say it's kind of ghost town in

here but you'll have to imagine it

because this is a really old machine but

a cool one nonetheless so what you do is

you press this button right here and

then pretty much there's these drawers

that are built into the entire table

that come out you take out the component

and then there's a lens up here that

focuses like a red beam onto where you

place the component then you go ahead

and press the next button you grab the

next one and put that onto your board

you build the whole thing manually like

that crazy right

then you take your finish board and walk

over here this little guy is lots of fun

so if you've ever seen a surface mount

component here's a capacitor they've

actually got super long leads on them

and this allows them to be mounted in

multiple ways like you could kind of

bend them like this and then lay them

over on the side but they don't want

that they want it stuck through and then

they want as little excess on the back

of the board as possible so this little

guy right here kind of guillotines off

the back of the leads so that they're as

flush as possible to the back of the

board so they don't short out on

anything

oh I think we're done now we're ready

for the solder wave it's apparently

actually what they call it so the board

goes along this conveyor where it gets

blasted with flux and preheated then it

pretty much passes over this pool of

molten solder that seeps up into the

joints but like gross look at this thing

it's got shmoo all over the top of the

solder pool we don't want that anywhere

near our components well that is where

the wave comes in so it grabs clean

solder from the bottom of the pool and

then it runs the bottom of our board

over that kind of well wave as it passes

by

well no not actually cool at all it's

like really hot actually kind of

dangerous but but like neat so this

machine here is called the flying probe

and given Britain's long and colorful

history of creative torture devices I

wouldn't blame you for thinking that

that sounds a lot worse than it is but

basically it's kind of like a CNC

multimeter it's got 4 sharp probes that

measure every single resistor in

capacitor and then that spit out an

error if a measurement doesn't match the

expected value so you can actually see

this readout here where it's going

around and pokin and proddin at all the

solder points to make sure that

everything is a-okay it actually takes

up to 13 minutes for this thing to test

a single board which I guess in very

small volumes is fine but in mass

production this would be suicide that's

where this tester comes in it uses a

template and then a whole bunch of

relays that are in the machine in the

back here instead of a CNC probe you

later to do that same job in about 20

seconds the only drawback is that these

templates cost a lot and they take weeks

to make why does it take so long you

might ask well because aside from

creating all these little probes

in the front that just all stick into

the back of the board at the same time

you've also got to Oh

wire it up at the back and the worst

part is that if you change one thing

about the design of the board you've got

to make this all over again

so you only do one of these when you are

serious about doing larger runs so then

every single board that comes through

here goes through one of these machines

which seems kind of inefficient doesn't

it

but I guess that's um that's what kind

of stands out about the culture here no

one I've seen appears to be in any sort

of hurry to like meet a quota they're

just trying to build the best damn thing

and if you appreciate that and you've

got deep pockets sick good for you

otherwise I don't know I guess go buy

something else by this stage our board

is very unlikely to blow up if we plug

it in so it moves either as a raw board

a half-built product a finished product

or some combination of the three into

human testing land here that is to say

the land where humans test it not the

land where humans get tested anyway

meridian uses a combination of real AV

products and signal generators some of

which were actually designed and built

right here to ensure that every input

and output works the way that the user

would expect before moving the product

to the soaked area over here where it

gets burned in four hours all of that is

just the electronics though now let's

take a look at the cabinets

now gonna put that down Meridian is

known for their DSP tech but signal

processing is not magic and good

physical engineering principles matter

too so you think those speakers that we

saw it they're just made of MDF or

whatever think again these high-end

units are actually constructed from

three layers of plywood with an

additional layer of aluminium as well as

this weird

kind of

reson stuff along with a whack of

internal bracing actually this is cool

even the outer glossy coating apparently

contributes to deadening the sound waves

within the cabinet as completely as

possible so they won't color the sound

and I will say this if nothing else it

makes for a very impressive demo when

they are literally shaking the ceiling

tiles of their showcase room with a 5p

coin balanced on its side sitting

directly on top of the speaker finally

every unit gets bolted together and the

whole thing gets tested here by an

engineer to ensure that there's no

distortion no buzzes or rattles or

anything like that from the cabinet

anything loose then they run a computer

check that can be overlaid with a

reference frequency response curve to

ensure that it matches the golden model

that they've got stored away somewhere

honestly it's rare to see anything made

with this kind of enthusiasts level care

and attention these days

LG is running a promotion right now on

all three X boom Go models they're super

compact pk3

with full submersion water resistance

their PK 5 which features both clear

vocal and enhanced bass profiles and up

to 18 hours of battery life and their

flagship PK 7 with dual tweeters and up

to 22 hours of battery life go check out

the link to the X boom go PK 3 PK 5 and

PK 7 in the video description so thanks

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