Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Thread Like Summary - Linear Power Supply Meridian 218

Dear all,

I have been using a 218 as a roon streamer for a year now and I like the device a lot. Recently I went to a friend of a friend with an immense high end system. Martin logan E2 and MSB dac. We tested the MSB DAC being fed by USB directly from a mac with roon and compared the same dac being fed by the spdif of the 218 as roon endpoint. The difference was large and made me think about the 218. The MSB dac directly fed with USB was much better.

Considering a 818v3, I was looking at the 218 where there is a cheap switch mode power supply (cosel TUHS 5F) which could be improved. This power supply was removed and replaced for a external linear PSU Farad super 3. Straight after connecting the difference it made to the sound was remarkable. The soundstage became more realistic and much deeper. There was more detail as well. I can't switch back to the original but to form an idea, I switched back the 12V adapter of the MS200 and the step back is not subtle. I don't know how it would compare to a 818v3 as I don't have one..

A recommended upgrade!

With standard PSU:
https://www.meridianunplugged.com/ubbthreads/gallery/16/full/3499.jpg


Upgraded PSU:
https://www.meridianunplugged.com/ubbthreads/gallery/16/full/3500.jpg
https://www.meridianunplugged.com/ubbthreads/gallery/16/full/3502.jpg
https://www.meridianunplugged.com/ubbthreads/gallery/16/full/3501.jpg

Hello 210/218 users

I also replaced the power supply in the 218 with an external one,
(Farad Super 3)
the sound experience I have now is incredible.
A much nicer soundstage.
Read brighter and tighter sound.
I heartily recommend this to any 210/218 user.

The power module that comes as standard is the most minimal thing there is, € 1. I think purchasing, but it works and Meridian also has to keep an eye on their margin .....

Boru80, upgrade to 218 was performed by ASAPCOMPUTERS in Pangbourne, they charged me a very reasonable £66 (I dropped it off and picked it up, so no postage was involved) - neat job.

General point on whether the upgrade is worthwhile, you may be interested in my thoughts.

Firstly as a general rule I’m always suspicious when people rave about the ‘noticeable’ benefits that they have seen when they’ve upgraded something, particularly with cables etc. This particular upgrade wasn’t a huge mount of money for the power supply, the positive comments on this forum made it a ‘no brainer’, so I thought I’d give it a go. With hindsight I perhaps chose to do the upgrade because new products from Meridian aren’t likely to be forthcoming in the future and my current M setup is pretty near the top of the tree anyway.

With the Farad upgrade performed on just one of my three 218’s, I was then in a position to perform a ‘real’ comparison between the upgraded 218 and the non upgraded 218 (playing through my 7200 SE’s) - but I couldn’t hear ANY improvement/difference at all.

So to make the comparison more meaningful, I introduced a simple Ethernet A/B switch into the equation.This allowed me to switch back and forward between the 2 218’s quickly, listening to the same (in sync) music source. The delay as I switched backwards and forwards was minimal, perhaps 20 milliseconds maximum. This made it VERY easy to decide which 218 was performing best - and sure enough, to my ears at any rate, I could hear NO difference whatsoever!

Bear in mind that if you purchase the Farad you will most likely have to pay import duty to the courier a week or so after delivery. Fedex charged me £101 for that duty, so all in all it cost me about £650.

If you do decide to go ahead with the upgrade, I’d question whether it made sense to purchase the GX16 connector option, as i myself did. Mattijs had persuaded me that this would deliver the best possible result, but given that I can hear no difference anyway, it’s got to be questionable whether that option was sensible. (especially as if the Farad were to fail in the future, I’d have a non usable 218, not the case if I had stuck with the standard power connector).

With a G series LPS,it's just simply plug and play
https://www.meridianunplugged.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showgallery&Number=288354

I have been curious in the 210 and its power supply. Recently I got one and could not resist to open it. It has a similar PSU structure with a cosel SMPS. So the same upgrade is possible for a 210, with potentially even better results. I liked the 210 a lot, it sounded very good as is.

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.

Just to Bump an Old thread but good thread. Just finished the LPS conversion on my 218... Sounds Much better with the 5200SE/DSW combo. Everything is a little more detailed, there was a high end harshness sometimes ~ that's all gone. This was a very worthwhile upgrade/mod; thanks Mimesis for your OG post, this was good fun with a great outcome!