Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Streaming MQA with DSP6000?

Hello,

So I was in a cave for about couple of years and it appears many new tech is out from M.

I could be lazy here asking this questions without doing enough homework, but what should I do to experience MQA with minimum expenditure?

My current system is simplicity itself. Roon, MS200 & DSP6000.2 I hope the answer is "go and get 218".

Thank you!

Good news

Go and get nothing! As you have Roon and non SE speakers the best you can get is the MQA decode which Roon is already providing, make sure in Roon device setup that you have the MS200 set to ‘no MQA capability’ (Roon should do this automatically) and in advance setup on the same page you have MQA decoder enabled.

Total additional cost $0.

This is a great news! So I don't need to get anything!

This could be separate topic, but would it be an upgrade sound quality wise if I replace MS200 with 218 under my current system setting?

Thank you!

Roon does the first unfold so I agree with Russ, you don’t need anything in your current set up. I can’t see any advantage in the 218 here.

For CD (1x sample rate) material, probably. The 218 is bound to have newer up-sampling code than the MS200. That said, you can up-sample in many places, so this is something that you will have to consider.

For material in general, possibly, but entirely dependent on output jitter. We have no measurements for either MS200 or 218. My gut feeling is that SPDIF output jitter is going to be lowish for both, and that ultra-low jitter on the digital outputs was not in the design brief for the 218.

This is very helpful explanation.

I always thought about experiencing ID41, but 808s and 818s were just far-exceed overkill in my economic & efficient set-up. To overcome the limitation on my MS200, I tried different experiments such as applying linear power and LAN isolator, which did show improvements to certain extent. This was about 3-4 years ago.

Anyways, I think I saw somewhere in the forum that 218 may have considerably closed the gap between ID41s and non-ID41s in terms of sound quality as a source, and I gotta try 218 if this is true. Unfortunately 218 cannot be purchased in my country and may need to look for international shipment to get it. This is rather big commitment compared to local pickup and just wanted to hear other views before making any arrangements.

But it seems I would stick around with my MS200!

Thank you for saving me time and money.