Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Streaming Linear Power Supply Meridian 218

SMPS power supplies, when well designed, are superior to linear supplies in most respects and so are desirable. However, their Achilles heel is reliability. The one you have chosen seems to have been very thoughtfully put together with components that address key reliability points (I note especially the output capacitors). A good choice. We could do with a review in 5 or 10 years time!

Hi Crion,

Great to see you have ventured to do this upgrade! Although I have no real knowledge to judge the iFi, it looks good. Have you had the chance to compare it to your 861v8 on your 8KSE's? I stay curious whether a 218 with Farad would be outperformed by something like a 818v3/861v8.

I can recommend the Farad super3 also in basic version. I have the stage 2 cable and the SR fuse now, but these are very small improvements that I would not put my hand in fire to pick up in a blind test. The PSU itself is the real improvement, it doesn't have to maxed out, although the upgrade urge at least can go somewhere.

On one hand it is strange to fiddle with Meridian, as it designed to sound great without tweaking. But I think it can pay off and it is fun too.

Has done an extended listening comparison yet to see how big any potential gains might be from these mods?

1 Week now into the DC-jack mod with Meridian 210 and the IFI ipower Elite external SMPS.

This is such a wonderful sonic upgrade, the Meridian SQ is just enhanced, no character is changed but increasing the transparency, resolution and power. The distorsion/ripple is just amazingly low. So you hear more and any distorsion is lowered over the WHOLE frequency spectrum.

Yes it is a remarkable improvement isn't. I think now 4 people did the upgrade on this forum.
IF you have compared the 210 with iFi to your 861v8, I'd be happy to hear the results.

I haven't recently no, I did some testing of the Roon/210/861v8 vs MC200/ID41/861v8 initially when I did the switch to Roon. I didn't find it a major gap, I thought they were equally good. And I made sure of it since then by tweaking the NAS and the network with vibration control, better network equipment and grounding, cables etc.

And yes, the 210 unpacks the MQA tracks and they sound great in Trifield

Edit: I think I misunderstood your question. But also I have a multichannel setup and listen to Trifield via 210/861v8 and 7.1 via ATV4K/UHD722/861v8 mostly so putting the 210 directly to the DSP8000SE's is not in my book. Although I wouldn't say no to an MQA stream aware update to the 861v8!

This puts the 210 on my radar for any future second system.

Seems a bit mad that Meridian didn't release a non-installation version with a better looking box and either a better built-in, or provision for an external, PSU. Their product lineup is screaming for a product between the price of the 218/210 and the 800 series which still looks great on a shelf and sounds fantastic...

I agree with your sentiments, but sadly Allen Boothroyd is no longer with us and Richard Hollinshead's and Rhonda Wilson's influences are elsewhere, so I fear we would wait in vain. It seems that audiophiles with a willingness to pay premium prices for outstanding products are no longer part of Meridian's target market.

Quite interested in this... to power my 210 from a Prime PSU.

Can’t see the pic though - I see the preview but the full image doesn’t load. Am I doing something wrong?

S

I tried uploading the picture to the gallery again, same thing.

404 not found when you click it.

Sorry, can't do anymore from here.

No worries thanks for trying.

Is the mod difficult?

S

Don't want to take this thread O/T, but surely Meridian are capable of hiring other designers, and they still sell DSPs and endpoints the price of most people's cars. It's the middle ground between these and the custom install gear which seems to be MIA.