Another AIR WN's culprit

[hk6230]

Is there a SQ difference between USB Vs AIR?

Well, to me, I can accept both, SQ-wise, but AIR allows me to be free of wires (well almost, unless wifi) and live on the promise of Devialet. I have a friend who is using TotalDAC USB cable with filter for his Le200 and when I helped him to set AIR up, he does like it. Frankly, with Devialet AIR, one can save monies on USB cable and enhancements. And most importantly is that you enjoy your music with your own setup, whether it is USB or AIR or other interconnects.

To me, AIR is what I preferred and it is what makes me to decide to buy Devialet amp in the first place.

[SwissBear]

For the past few weeks (with 10 days in between when I have a break), AIR is cracking up on me. I was trying hard to find the culprit(s) and today, I found it and it is fixed. My AIR is sounding great again as before.

Beside sound cracking up, I also noticed on the Devialet AIR's setting panel showing the AIR-ETH and AIR-WIFI keep flickering. In fact, even the volume display was flickering. I had took out devices one by one and replacing them, including changing Ethernet cablings. At the end, the main culprit was the main DHCP router. I found out only when I have difficulty accessing my router setting page. After replacing the router, everything is working smoothly again.

Hope this may help anyone who is having the same issue with AIR.

I share your view that DHCP is a major pb when trying to have AIR work reliably. This has led the French community of Devialet aficionados to establish a few recommendations when trying to setup AIR :
- use a dedicated Airport Extreme, placed just beneath the Master unit, so that the Wifi signal is > -30 db
- dedicate the 2.4 GHz band to the Devialet
- use the 5 GHz band for the Mac and other connections (iPad, ...)
- assign fixed IP addresses to all of the peripherals connected to this WAP, in order to avoid the cracking involved with the DHCP negociation...
Even with those recommendations, you sometimes get lucky hours of perfect SQ, and all of the sudden, for no apparent reason, crackings take over and ruin your listening.

However better the SQ might be with AIR, mainly due to the isolation from HF perturbation, I do not find it reliable enough to use. But the debate still is very alive on the French fora :-)

[ogs]

I see. AIR was stable when streamed from iTunes. ETH/Wifi.

USB - not stable for me as I have stupid cable. Ordered AQ jitterbug and cable.

Now it's AirPlay : AE >Toslnk> Devialet.
Confused- Like Melco, Antipodes are primarily into USB out

Eh... no. AIR in the first versions only used iTunes as a file-path handler. It never used the sound output from iTunes. AIR was actually a complete stand alone player and transferred music data via its own communication to the amplifier. But this was wifi only, before the rj45 ethernet connection was added to the Expert amps. The new AIR is a virtual sound card designed to accept data from any player on your PC/Mac.
I think the 'old' AIR with cabled ethernet and some tuning (eliminating wifi instability) would have been better than the new virtual sound card model Devialet uses today.

[Jnan_devi]

No more iTunes. That was way earlier.

Will work on AIR again. Wanted to configure AE as suggested (SwissBear) to go with 2.4g for Devialet. Forgot AE device password ?

During Roon trial AIR worked with noise of course. But was so excited with Roon, switched to "what's working" mode.

[mdconnelly]

...

Will work on AIR again. ...

This has been the source of my frustration over and over again.   I'll reinstall AIR, twiddle with it until I get it working, breath a sigh of relief and listen happily for awhile, and then it flakes out again.  I've probably been through that loop at least a dozen times since I bought my Dev.   Every one of those iterations has increased my anger and frustration with Devialet.  Which is kinda crazy because I was feeding my own frustration.  Devialet hasn't done a thing to add to the frustration.  Wait... that is the frustration!  They haven't done a thing.

I suspect that if I did fully isolate my network to the Dev and was able/willing to eliminate all possible conflicts, the "happy listening" would last longer.  But that's just an insane response to poorly designed software.

[blair.athol]

I cannot say it more often, for me it just works perfectly only when using the most simple way, iTunes, Air, Ethernet, Time Capsule (airport extreme), Devialet.
I am still testing Roon or Audirvana instead of iTunes but it does not work perfectly with Air yet.

[hk6230]

Hi Blair, I'm using Roon with AIR-ETH and it works well. I have even simpler router and hubs (cheap to be exact, Chinese brand and made). For AIR-WIFI, my router is a TP-LINK 841N (very old) and put just next to my Le200 (signal strength is <-25dBm) and works well, too.

[baddog]

Just my two cents, using my "optimized" Mac Mini with Devialet AIR ( actually running Bootcamp and Windows 10 ) with an ethernet cable ( thus AIR-ETH ) between the Mac Mini and the D400s sounded as good if not better than running the same Mac Mini with a Regen and various USB cables to my D400. In both instances I was running RoonServer on the Mac Mini.

All music stored on a Synology NAS. Mac Mini was running wireless. Router(s) Apple Airport Extreme, one upstairs, one downstairs.

One day soon I will return to the ETH-AIR setup.