Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Firmware Release for 218, 251, 271, ID41

It’s not a critical update, so you may want to wait and see although my updates was straight forward and quick.

I am guessing that you now see MQA on the DSP’s rather than ‘OF’ (original format) when Roon does the MQA decode?

Thanks @Chris. @Ratbert: to the extent that I play MQA music, I have the 818 take care of decoding. Is there a benefit to having the Roon core do that job?

Yes, I understand you can have Roon do the first decode then have Roon apply any room correction then pass that onto the DSP5200SE’s for rendering, if you don’t use any Roon eq then you can stay as you are.

Not just eq, but any (allowable) Roon DSP in conjunction with the (Roon) MQA decode, for example, volume levelling.

For example, in my main 818/8k system I perform the first decode in Roon and apply notch filters in Roon DSP, the parameters of which were calculated in a G68 MRC run!

If you don't use software MQA decoding and/or don't use non-Meridian DSP of any kind, this recent firmware update isn't that important.

One also gets the ability to use the Meridian IP control app with the ID41 connected device, ie 808v6/818v3.

Far from essential, however, definitely a nice to have albeit the MSR+ functionality seems slightly cutdown from a true IR base MSR+. For normal playback and basic controls though, it does the job.

Also it is very easy to swap between ID41 and 218 zones to perform functions that are beyond the basic volume control offered by the roon interface alone.

John

Thanks. While these benefits are not high on my priority list, Meridian IP control functionality for the ID41 and non-Meridian DSP while preserving MQA make sense to me.

Should I be seeing MQA on the display for MQA tracks, after Roon has done the first decode and its level correction? I'm still getting OFs using an ID41.

OFs is correct Jeremy. Roon performs the cryptographic authentication. The Roon to ID41 transmission is not cryptographically encrypted, so the Meridian endpoint/DSPs are unable to authenticate the stream themselves.

Thanks for the confirmation

Updated my ID41 quite easily. Used Windows 7 on an old Asus EePC. Wireless updating did fail but with hardwire it was a breeze. Thanks for the tips on this topic guys.

Cheers to mothership for the regular and free sw updates. Kudos to the PP Rick for sharing.

Note: you might need to run the Meridian Device Manager twice to get the latest firmware.

First time I ran it (my ID41 was on firmware 1.1 and my 218 was on v1.0); the ID41 was upgraded to v1.2 build 1002216 and the 218 to v1.1 build 1001216.

However when I ran it a second time, they were upgraded to builds 1002218 and 1001218 respectively.

Suspect therefore the v218 builds can only be applied if you are already on build v216.