I upgraded firmware on both 818v3 and 8kSEs and the result is as described here, both displays show MQA 352 or whatever is playing. And yes, it sounds very nice.

But I also made another change and I can warn people about what happened. I turned off MHR to enable the digital output to drive a headphone amp, and two things happened:

1. The MHR is capped at 88/96 and of course the same digital signal is sent to the speakers over SL. I hadn't thought of that, imagined that there were two independent outputs.

2. But for some reason, the display on the speakers show VCR2 instead of USB, even though the 818 shows USB. This is a bug, but not a very critical one.

So now I'm happy. Although I haven't seen any Studio indications -- I think MQA Studio means "approved", and it is hard to imagine the 2L content isn't, it seems like totally white-glove "Studio" treatment. Any ideas?

Music room: 818v3, DSP8000SE, Roon/Intel NUC, microRendu/LPS-1 into Geek Pulse Xfi into Audeze LCD-3
HT: G61R, HD621, MS600, Oppo, Avantgarde Solo
Library: MS600, Bel Canto, Mark & Daniel
Other: SonicOrbiter, GeekOut, Audeze EL-8