Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems DSP Speakers - New Firmware - MQA rendering refinements

They render MQA to a final 88.2kHz or 96kHz only.

OFs denotes the original sampling frequency - this is the original sampling rate of the master recording used during MQA encapsulation, which, coming from a non-Meridian source (without MHR) is not authenticated.

Is 88/96 still an output limitation? I thought that the DACs could output at much higher resolution than this? iirc internally some DSP's would output at up to 192k if not higher even before MQA.

Hi Rick, if my SE DSPs and 808v6 are still under warranty is my dealer obligated to do the firmware update free of charge? Thanks

Hi, I don't know the official agreement with Meridian and their dealers in Sweden, so can only comment on how it works here in the UK.

For the UK, as this is a feature enhancement, rather than a bug fix, there is no onus on the dealer to offer the upgrade free of charge, even if the item is under warranty.
It's not like your system has a fault which needs rectifying, that we would be expected to address free of charge under warranty.

However, if you'd had just bought a pair of SE speakers and an 808v6 from me, I wouldn't be charging time for undertaking the firmware upgrade, although we may charge for travelling to your house, particularly if you lived some distance away and we were making a special trip.
Meridian leave this for each dealer to assess on each occasion, and if some dealers choose to charge for the installation of firmware they are free to do so.

Officially:
The firmware has no charge.
Dealers aren't obliged to provide their labour for nothing, even while the product is under warranty.

While we're on with this...
If anyone tries to do the firmware upgrade themselves, and 'bricks' the product for whatever reason, then this IS NOT covered under warranty.
There will almost certainly be a charge to get the product back up and running again.

Please always contact a Meridian approved dealer to discuss the best way to handle firmware upgrades.

Rick

Thanks for the comprehensive reply Rick. Much appreciated !

I was told by very reliable source within Meridian that it is not possible to 'brick' Meridian kit in the traditional way, save for a couple of models, off top of my head 800 and DSP3100's. There is a separate bootstrap loader that is never overwritten and should always be capable of taking a firmware update, no matter the state of previous update attempts. If the firmware cannot be re-applied, then (as was case of my unit hence I was told this info in the days when Meridian were more open), then it's likely to be a hardware failure, iirc controller, which I would like to think was covered under any applicable warranty as it would not be a 'bricked' device due to incorrect firmware but an underlying issue that came to light as a result of the firmware update.

Now, of course, there may be newer ways of doing things these days, but this was certainly the case up to and including G series and TBH, I don't think mainstream 500/G/8xx/DSP's have changed much in this area.

Hi Ian,

I have seen this happen myself and it wasn't caused by hardware failure.

I stand by my comment...

If you attempt a firmware update yourself, without arrangement through a Meridian dealer, and it bricks the product, it WILL NOT be covered under warranty.
Now Meridian and the dealer may choose not to charge to get it going again, but that is at their discression on a case by case basis.

I agree there were some DSP3100 which had difficulty taking new firmware caused by a faulty memory chip, which Meridian did indeed provide new chips for without charge.

Regards,
Rick

A little more info on my original comment above.

With 3.16 firmware installed, if a loudspeaker receives MQA encrypted with MHR from a Meridian MQA decoder, it will display MQA and the original sample frequency.
This means it's a fully Authentic, unchanged MQA file.

If it receives an MQA decoded signal, but without MHR, maybe from a different manufacturer's MQA decoder, it will display OFs and the original sample frequency.

This is because it doesn't have the Authentication information carried in MHR, so the signal it is receiveing MAY have been changed in someway during its path between decoder and speaker.
Therefore it might not be an Authentic 'as per the original recording' version of MQA.

Rick

Maybe a basic question?

Roon/Tidal streaming can make the first unfold of the MQA stream when the setup is done in that way (sw decode-unfold).

a) When streaming to an ID40 card or a 218 and the new DSP 3.16 firmware with the suitable speaker (as described in the posts), will they display MQA or not on the DSP`s?

b) And if not, why not?

I think yes. A DSP receives info in MHR from a 218 for example, allowing it to verify the original studio sample rate to be displayed, with “MQA” signifying an unaltered signal chain. Without this MHR info, the DSP can only determine if the signal is at the original studio sample rate. While I guess it probably is unaltered, it was not designed at the time to need this info.
A question which comes to mind is does this now mean a Roon decode with say room correction can still show as Full MQA?

Why Meridian is so keen on encrypting signal, FIFO alone can reduce jitter? Lots of processors like Trinnov and Theta don't do this.
The 861.8/ID41 can be a very good Roon bridge to feed digital signal to third party DACs.
Sorry for the off topic.