I feel your pain Evand.
I always liked the Meridian sound and philosophy and so a journey of second hand purchases over the years had begun. I started with a 541 anaolog processor and some A500 speakers with a NAD 6 916 6 Chanel amp to Bi amp the speakers. Loved it.
Then I bought a 565 and a 506 CD player. This seemed an impossible goal to me not so long before (Here I learned about depreciation). A 518 and some M30ās came along (still have them) I always liked Trifield.
Now I have my G61R, M60 active fronts M33 centre and rears some MS200ās for first Sooloos and now Roon. I did buy a new MC200 with free iPad when I first had Sooloos which I use as a zone now.
Apart from this all my kit was pre owned and has cost very little. When I consider the length of time I have had the equipment without issue and the joy I get from it, it gets better value every day.
I have enjoyed the journey too, each upgrade has added to the quality and I have not lost the initial sound I loved so much and I am far from the cutting edge.
I enjoy āNew to Hi Fi peopleā coming around for a listen and watching their jaw drop as they hear music played in a way it should be heard for the first time. Even without full MQA.
So this is the next step, how to get full MQA into a Meridian system? Ironically this is a quandry facing many Meridian owners and a source of frustration due to lack of an affordable map from Meridian.
I await the future with pleasant anticipation but my system still delights me everyday, even just watching The News on TV.
Thoughts, Chris
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My father in law used to run Meridian with his Kefs. He always reckoned them.
I believe Meridian worked closely with Kef in the early days.
Got my Jivelite Squeezebox Touch emulator up and running with Roon. Framed Raspberry Pi 7 inch screen fitted to Pi 3 and USB. Looks tidier than the Pi in a box. Enjoying exploring the new 1.3 update and ready to pay my next subscription. Now if there was a special offer on lifetimeā¦??
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Lifetime IS A special offer.
.sjb
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If you have deep pockets, probablyā¦
Nope, just the right priorities 
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My trial membership ends today and my life as a subscriber beginsā¦ soā¦ I guess I am a legit user.
System is Roon 1.3 > Devialet Expert > B&W 800D2 (there is a DIY turntable in there for-shits and giggles)
Roon 1.3 runs on a lowly fanless Core2Duo Celeron 3050-based MSI Cube N (a Braswell NUC) It has a 128GB mSATA boot SSD and 16GB RAM. I configure a large cache and use a lot of that RAM as swap. Running on Linux Ubuntu Server 16.4 so no graphical interface to contend with. Hard drives sit on a Raspberry Pi in another room acting as an SMB and Google CloudPrint server.
Devialet is connected to NUC directly via USB and it is working great. No DSP (the Devialet is set for Active Speaker Management) nor any upsampling (again Devialet does all that internally), Roon just serves up bits as stored bits. At present I only have a few hundred CDs stored in a mix of 24-bit and 16-bit FLACs and performance seems more than fine. Most of my playback comes from Tidal. Interface is via a spacious 17" android tablet.
I have since moved the loudspeakers a bit closer to the middle and added a very very slight toe-in. Nothing massive but a slight adjustment goes a long way.
All good. Thanks @roonlabs.
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Welcome Claire. You wont regret it. Roon just keeps getting better. 
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Canāt afford to be that selfish Iām afraidā¦
I wasnāt suggesting a lifetime was necessarily affordable for everyone just that it is a special offer and is likely to disappear in the future and the only option will be yearly subscription.
What you are asking for is a special offer on a special offer, which I donāt think you are going to get.
We all are faced with things we want and canāt afford, thankfully for most here this is not food and shelter.
.sjb
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They did do this once before so Iām not asking for the impossibleā¦
Fair enough, play the long game, I may weāll be wrong.
.sjb
Iām not playing any game. I simply suggested that their may be an opportunity again which would make Lifetime a more affordable option for me, as monthly payments mightā¦because I really like Roon. Many of my upgrades have been gifts or second hand purchases and most of my income goes to the priorities of family life etc.other companies do this.its a business.
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I would agree with SJB. My best guess is the lifetime subscription disappears at some point. For me, after the trial period, I signed up for the annual subscription. Within a month, I committed to the lifetime subscription since it changed how I enjoyed my music listening. $500 USD is a lot of money, but I think itās a bargain. Consider it as a piece of equipment, and what benefits are provided. āThis equipmentā keeps getting better too. If you can afford it, go for it, if not, the annual subscription is still a good value.
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I respect your points of view.
Yours are respected as well ā especially the priorities of family needs and the ability to build a nice audio system out of hand-me-downs and used gear. Iād bet the satisfaction rate is even higherā¦
As for now ā why not turn things around and start saving up a manageable monthly amount? If Roon were to offer a discount (I doubt it ā but who am I?) you can jump right in. Alternatively ā youāll eventually end up at Roonās cost of purchase.
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That was exactly my decision.
Sure, 500 bucks for a piece of software is very steep, but after 5 years itās āfreeā 
After all, roon is absolutely awesome and I wouldnāt want to be without roon for the rest of my musical life 
Every new bigger release brought me something I really love 
think of squeezebox support, parametric EQ, SRC like HQPlayer and so on.
I havenāt had the time to compare roon SRC to HQPlayer sonically, but iām open to try.
And if roon one day manages to make the consumimg queue optional, I will be over the moon 
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+1 
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