My 218 arrived today and was installed into my 5200SE system with minimal fuss.

MQA sounds fantastic, as I expected it would.

Unfortunately, I confirmed my long-held suspicion that the 218 does not pass-through 192k (in some form à la 818) to the SEs via its coaxial input, which is a downer for 4x PCM and converted DSD, streamed from Roon. Not a deal-breaker for me as I was mainly looking to add MQA decoding to my existing 96k MS200 streaming functionality as well as consolidate some input switching, but disappointing nonetheless. It is astounding though that in 2017 the 8x8 is the only way of getting >96k into SE loudspeakers. I guess that the purchasers of custom Meridian installations won't own "audiophile" material.

Roon Developer and ex-moderator of this Forum
I am #25 in the HH1 photo of fame.