Having demoed 861v8 into a full multichannel setup again yesterday (thanks Rick!) I'd like to play this question another way around -

Who is still waiting for/would love Meridian to update the 861 to v9?

From my own perspective, every time I listen to one in a full multichannel setup, my primary interest in 861 is not movie soundtracks (although this is very good of course), it's the proprietary Meridian processing of 2-channel material into e.g., Trifield, Music, Stereo and Super DSPs. It depends on how the material is recorded as to which of these sound best, but on the right recording they can sound really spectacular, in some cases better than 2-channel direct.

However, I've chosen, for the moment, to carry on with 818v3 simply and only because of the uncertainty/timescale of a 861v9 upgrade, because where there used to be parity in basic sound quality between the 808/818 and 861 of a given generation, the basic SQ of 861v8 is now not at the level of 818v3808.6, which I feel was a particularly significant upgrade.

To be clear, I don't want to conflate this with MQA or Atmos, etc. My thoughts on SQ here are quite apart from MQA source material, I'm talking SQ with all sources, and the demo was carried out with all red-book material, not MQA. Movie/TV soundtracks were listened to in 5.1.

So, how many would like Meridian to upgrade the v8 to v9, not necessarily adding anything apart from the latest low-jitter architecture and input cards, etc. to at least bring parity to the basic SQ and match the loveliness of the 818v3/808.6?

HC: 861v4/ID40/LPS, DSP5000, DSP5000VC, DSP3100, SW1600, HD621, Oppo BDP-105, Sony VPL-HW55ES
2-Channel: Oppo BDP-105, TEAC VRDS-7/Trichord Clock 3/PSU, 551, Quad 303, Harbeth Compact 7ES-3, Kimber cables, Russ Andrews mains and supports.
Previous Meridian: 5000C, 5200SL, 7200.2, 6000, 562V.2, 568.2mm, 800v4, 808.2i, 818v2/v3, 861v8, 502