One year after 13.2.0

[Nickname]

I have been working at Devialet for few years and what I can say is we will never know what is going on there untill the new update or product has been released. So let's hope some development is on the way. The technical platform of our Expert is ready for it !!

[disarmamant]

What would you expect from updates ? (don't tell me a good wifi , I know this is absolutely not the best input here)

Native Qobuz: Promised with the Expert Pro and CI. Never materialised.

Fix the bugs in the online configurator for dual mono setups, 440 Pro etc. And/or onboard configurator in the amplifier.

[Delija]

Qobuz works just fine through UPnP.

[Nickname]

I guess no company can support a product more than 10 years. It comes a time where the product is mature.
Also consider that, for all brands, promises made 5-10 years ago has been made by people how are probably not any more in charge of Expert.

[David A]

I guess no company can support a product more than 10 years. It comes a time where the product is mature.
Also consider that, for all brands, promises made 5-10 years ago has been made by people how are probably not any more in charge of Expert.

The problem with the promises in this case is that some of them were made when the Expert Pro was originally released without the CI board but the advertising promised the CI board as a free upgrade and it promised things like Bluetooth and Qobuz as part of the feature set for the CI board that purchasers were going to get. In other words Devialet have failed to deliver on features promised to customers as an enticement to buy the Expert Pro. That really amounts to false advertising. It doesn't matter whether the people involved with the promises are no longer involved with the Expert Pro range, the promises were made by the company as part of their advertising for the Expert Pro range. Morally Devialet has an obligation to deliver on them and I think a good case could be made arguing that they are legally obliged to deliver on them because they made those promises in their advertising.

Product maturity has nothing to do with this. The unfulfilled promises were made for the product at the actual time of release.

In addition, regardless of the age of a product, if a company releases new firmware for the product and there are bugs in the firmware, I think the company has an obligation to fix those bugs and to fix them properly. In that case the product is the firmware and support should be prompt when it comes to fixing firmware bugs.

[Pleyel]

I guess no company can support a product more than 10 years. It comes a time where the product is mature.

Or not. Or also become outdated.
Actually, CI was introduced less than 5 yrs ago and branded to be "infinitely open and evolutive".

Also consider that, for all brands, promises made 5-10 years ago has been made by people how are probably not any more in charge of Expert.

Wow, do you really mean that the longer a promise remains unfulfilled, the less meaningful it would become?
Or is it just that promises only bind those who believe in them as in politics?
Maybe you're not involved in PR at Devialet.

The problem with the promises in this case is that some of them were made when the Expert Pro was originally released without the CI board but the advertising promised the CI board as a free upgrade and it promised things like Bluetooth and Qobuz as part of the feature set for the CI board that purchasers were going to get. In other words Devialet have failed to deliver on features promised to customers as an enticement to buy the Expert Pro. That really amounts to false advertising. It doesn't matter whether the people involved with the promises are no longer involved with the Expert Pro range, the promises were made by the company as part of their advertising for the Expert Pro range. Morally Devialet has an obligation to deliver on them and I think a good case could be made arguing that they are legally obliged to deliver on them because they made those promises in their advertising.

Product maturity has nothing to do with this. The unfulfilled promises were made for the product at the actual time of release.

In addition, regardless of the age of a product, if a company releases new firmware for the product and there are bugs in the firmware, I think the company has an obligation to fix those bugs and to fix them properly. In that case the product is the firmware and support should be prompt when it comes to fixing firmware bugs.

+1

[ssfas]

I guess no company can support a product more than 10 years. It comes a time where the product is mature.

Or not. Or also become outdated.
Actually, CI was introduced less than 5 yrs ago and branded to be "infinitely open and evolutive".

Also consider that, for all brands, promises made 5-10 years ago has been made by people how are probably not any more in charge of Expert.

Wow, do you really mean that the longer a promise remains unfulfilled, the less meaningful it would become?
Or is it just that promises only bind those who believe in them as in politics?
Maybe you're not involved in PR at Devialet.

The problem with the promises in this case is that some of them were made when the Expert Pro was originally released without the CI board but the advertising promised the CI board as a free upgrade and it promised things like Bluetooth and Qobuz as part of the feature set for the CI board that purchasers were going to get. In other words Devialet have failed to deliver on features promised to customers as an enticement to buy the Expert Pro. That really amounts to false advertising. It doesn't matter whether the people involved with the promises are no longer involved with the Expert Pro range, the promises were made by the company as part of their advertising for the Expert Pro range. Morally Devialet has an obligation to deliver on them and I think a good case could be made arguing that they are legally obliged to deliver on them because they made those promises in their advertising.

Product maturity has nothing to do with this. The unfulfilled promises were made for the product at the actual time of release.

In addition, regardless of the age of a product, if a company releases new firmware for the product and there are bugs in the firmware, I think the company has an obligation to fix those bugs and to fix them properly. In that case the product is the firmware and support should be prompt when it comes to fixing firmware bugs.

+1

I’ve been a Qobuz user since 2014 and bought a 250 Pro in 2016 expecting Qobuz onboard. It never happened. I used an external streamer I already owned (Aries), then uPnP when the CI board was fitted in 2017 and then Roon from February 2019. Forget the promises, the thing has and still works perfectly. What’s the problem?

I have no concerns about redundancy or support. I have or had products from Quad, EAR and Leica still fully factory serviceable after more than 50 years.

[David A]

@ssfas wrote:

"I’ve been a Qobuz user since 2014 and bought a 250 Pro in 2016 expecting Qobuz onboard. It never happened. I used an external streamer I already owned (Aries), then uPnP when the CI board was fitted in 2017 and then Roon from February 2019. Forget the promises, the thing has and still works perfectly. What’s the problem?

I have no concerns about redundancy or support. I have or had products from Quad, EAR and Leica still fully factory serviceable after more than 50 years."

I'll simply say that Devialet introduced the Expert Pro range when it wasn't in its intended state. There was no CI board and it was using the previous generation of firmware. They introduced in and sold it with promises about what the CI board would do and what features would be added with the rnew firmware which was to accompany the CI board. We got the CI board as promised and we got new firmware with it but we didn't get all of the promised features initially. Some features have since been delivered, some have still not been delivered. Quite a few of those original promises involved streaming features.

One feature which has been delivered but which was not promised was making the Expert Pro Roon Ready. When they added that feature they did so with comments that it was something not promised as part of the Expert Pro feature set, an "extra" if you like. It seems like delivery on the streaming features stopped with the Expert Pro becoming Roon Ready.

I adopted Roon prior to Devialet announcing that they were making the Expert Pros Roon Ready and I'm grateful that they did but, apart from the fact that they still haven't totally fixed the gigabit ethernet bug that came with that firmware release, there is a problem with the failure to deliver the other streaming features. At the moment I think Roon offers the best method of getting really good streaming features with an Expert Pro at present but Roon itself is not a part of the Expert Pro firmware, it's third party software which requires a subscription which means that Expert Pro owners have to pay for it whereas we don't have to pay for Devialet firmware updates. It seems that on the streaming front Devialet has simply stopped firmware development completely, choosing to encourage us to adopt Roon at a cost which adds to the cost of getting certain functionality on the Expert Pro. Many Expert Pro owners don't want to adopt Roon but it seems that Devialet no longer plans to deliver the full feature set promised for the amps.

That's the problem. If you're an Expert Pro owner who uses Roon, and I am one, you can sit back and ask "What's the problem?" If you're not a Roon user and don't want to pay for a Roon subscription then some of those features promised but not delivered are the problem and those people, because of the promises Devialet made, are justified in saying that there is a problem. When it comes to support, those Roon users still having problems using a gigabit ethernet connection with RAAT have a problem. It's now over 3 years since the Expert Pro became Roon Ready (February 2019) and the gigabit ethernet bug first started being reported and we only received a partial fix with FW 13.2.0 in October 2020 and nothing since. That's far too long for a bug to remain unfixed, especially when it's considered in the context of Devialet apparently regarding Roon Ready status as the best way to deliver on their streaming feature promises.

Some of us have things working without problems and are happy, we don't have a problem. There are others who are having problems with Roon because of the bug, and others who don't want to use Roon and want the rest of the promised functionality. They do have problems and those of us who don't have problems should be concerned about that. We should be concerned because the fact that there are undelivered promises and unfixed bugs after this length of time indicates that Devialet does not care about delivering what they promise and providing quality firmware support and that means that we may also find ourselves having a problem that won't be addressed in anything even mildly approximating a reasonable time the next time a new firmware release is issued.

All Expert Pro owners deserve to get all of the features promised at the time the range was released, whether we need or would use the undelivered features, and all owners deserve to receive prompt and effective support for firmware bugs. None of us are getting those things, whether or not we need or want them, and some of us are definitely having problems which have not been addressed.

[disarmamant]

I have no concerns about redundancy or support. I have or had products from Quad, EAR and Leica still fully factory serviceable after more than 50 years.

My concern about support is should the online configurator become no longer available. What do we do then?

[David A]

I have no concerns about redundancy or support. I have or had products from Quad, EAR and Leica still fully factory serviceable after more than 50 years.

My concern about support is should the online configurator become no longer available. What do we do then?

There are 3 practical ways around the problem, one far better than the others. Devialet could make a configurator app people could download which would let them run the configuration file generation process on their own computers or make the configurator available to someone who would host it online for users, along with a database of all SAM profiles available. That would definitely be the best solution.

In the absence of that, the second solution is that someone is willing to set up a database where existing users can upload their existing config files with a summary of what their configuration does and others can search that database tottery and  find a file that provides the configuration they want. That will help in some cases but not in every case.

In the absence of either of those options things become difficult and creating a new configuration means that the user will have to edit an existing configuration file in a text editor. It can be done. When I had my CI board installed it was installed by a Devialet engineer who was travelling around Australia doing board updates in dealers premises. When I got my amp home after picking it up, the config file I created did not work and I phoned the engineer at the dealer's shop. He had me email him the config file, noticed that it had been "scrambled" a bit in some way, edited my file to correct the problem and emailed it back to me. The edited file worked perfectly. Files can obviously be edited if you know how to do it and it might be possible to develop a set of instructions for how to edit a configuration file but that won't help for things like SAM profiles because you need to know the details for the profile for your particular speakers. SAM would basically become unusable if you changed speakers.

The default position in the absence of any of the above options is factory configuration. That means single amp mode only, all inputs on at their default settings. Some things like tone controls can be changed and the new settings will stick but other changes like DPM on or off will need to be reset every time you turn the amp on. You lose access to SAM and I don't know what happens with phono settings and how that affects people. Network settings default to DHCP so you can't have a fixed address for the amp. The amp works and is usable but  we lose a lot of the things which make a Devialet the amp it is. I don't use a turntable so I wouldn't miss the phono settings capabilities but I would miss SAM which does make an improvement to the sound I get from my speakers. I don't use a fixed IP address, I use DHCP, so that would not be a problem for me but turning DPM off every time I turn the amp on would become a pain. Others would have different problems. Factory configuration would not be a problem for some but for others it would range from a minor annoyance to a real PITA.

That's my assessment of where we would stand without the online configurator.

I hope Devialet would either create an app we could use on our own computers or at least provide a very complete guide to the creation and editing of config files. After that it comes down to the ingenuity of the user base at the time.