I have drifted away from hifi but recently attended an excellent Roon demonstration at Martins in Norwich which has woken up my interest again. Whilst I have been happy with Sooloos, the Roon was a major step forward, particularly with classical so am about to put in the order for the bits for a NUC Roon server. It was clear that Sooloos whilst still being supported will not be developed and will become a legacy product and one day I would move to Roon anyway.

It also encouraged me to experiment with taking my 7200.2's, left and right, out of the theatre setup (putting 5500's in their place) and moving them to a much larger room with a high (18ft) vaulted ceiling, driven by a MC200 over SpeakerLink. Although I am closer to corners, lose the ID41 input and the 861 room correction, I much prefer the sound as the previous room was too small really for the system with a very low ceiling. The MC200 is also driving my Lemann headphone amp into Grado GS1000.

I have been trying to get my head around recent developments and in particular MQA and whether it is worth the effort. Version 1.5 of Roon also appears to be a step forward with MQA in being able to do the first unfold and also room correction. Is there a route plan for further Roon updates?

How does the Roon room correction compare with the 861 version?

From my understanding, if I do the room correction then I would also need to do the MQA first unfold within Roon (rather than a 218 - see later). Would the MQA benefits then pass straight through the MC200 both via the digital and analogue outputs?

Would love to upgrade the 7200's to SE but see that the price for this is now circa £8,500 which is from my memory, way above what it was a few years ago, presumably MQA has given M a real boost in selling these upgrades. The SE upgrade will have to wait and maybe never.

Having possibly found a solution to the room correction issue, the next issue is finding a solution to losing the ID41 quality which was always a lot superior to the MC200 feed. Does anyone have a view as to whether the 218 would provide a significant increase in non MQA quality as compared to the MC200 (will be moving data off this onto the NUC). One advantage of the 218 is that it would provide 'full-fat' MQA to the headphones. As a down side I think I would lose the ability to do room correction.

To start with will build the NUC and experiment with the above but would be good to have a longer term view re the 218.

Given this is fast moving field, are there any rumours re any new Meridian products or firmware?

Apologies if the above contains inaccurate information and lots of questions, but a lot to take in given I am a few years behind.

Thanks,
David

PS One item in Roon that was interesting was the possibility to streaming DVD-A multi channel music. Has anyone tried plugging the Roon NUC HDMI output into a HD621 and playing DVD-A files?

861v6 ID41, HD621, G98, MC200, DSP7200, DSP7200HC, DSP5500 (rears), D2500; Oppo BDP83, PS3,
- Other rooms 3100, F80