Some sign of Expert line

[Finn]

I afsked my dealer in cph about Devialet ,and he is a dealer from the beginning ,he Said that he has not sell expertline in the last 2 years , People Bye other things, in my termologi expertline is dead , devialet focus on other things , i Think when Devialet in there web say about expertline out of Stock, it mean that they have stop the produktion of expert Line, sad as it is ,becorse it was a great produkt ,i have altso been that Way, but when they stopp Update after we get pro, and the communation with Devialet almost stop or. Just stop i Think , time to move to other things , becorse be a part of a compagny who newer respond is and sorry piss on there costumers . That is why Devialet is for me is Bye Bye .

[daniel.avasilichioaei]

Considering the fact that the last firmware update was made 2.5 years ago, the configurator has not been updated for many years, and both have bugs not fixed for years, for me the Devialet Expert Pro range is a (very) discontinued product range. It has absolutely no relevance if Devialet still manufactures the product or not...

[vgbfamily]

Considering the fact that the last firmware update was made 2.5 years ago, the configurator has not been updated for many years, and both have bugs not fixed for years, for me the Devialet Expert Pro range is a (very) discontinued product range. It has absolutely no relevance if Devialet still manufactures the product or not...

OK, but why would they then have sent someone to get my speakers samised?  A few weeks ago.

[David A]

SAM is cheap for Devialet. It's an established process so no need to pay for research and development. The creation of a profile is an automated process for them, they have a setup that is small and easily transportable which they can take to locations like a dealer's showroom in some locations or you can send one of your speakers to them. It's easy for them to add new speaker profiles at low cost because they don't have to buy or rent the speakers in order to do it, they largely rely on using the speakers of Devialet owners. There are no distribution costs for profiles, just add the profiles to their database and anyone can access and instal a profile by using the Configurator.

But SAM is not without problems. When they introduced their Sweet Room room correction system 2.5 years ago we discovered that it did not play well with SAM, or that SAM does not play well with Sweet Room, take your choice of how you want to say that. Sweet Room offers 9 correction points if you don't use SAM but what users discovered when they started using Sweet Room was that they could only use 5 correction points. Devialet did not announce that when they released Sweet Room and they only acknowledged that problem some months after the release of Sweet Room.

Did they know about it when they released Sweet Room? We don't know but if they did know they withheld the information which caused problems for people using SAM who wanted to use Sweet Room. There's obviously an incompatibility at present between those 2 features and 2.5 years on it still has not been fixed.

If Devialet didn't know about the problem when they released Sweet Room then obviously they didn't bother testing it using speakers with a SAM profile active which is a stupid thing for them to have done. They should have known that a lot of users use SAM and that more than a few of them would want to use Sweet Room as well. That's poor research and development. If they knew about it then at the very least they should have pointed out the limitation users would have if they used Sweet Room in conjunction with a SAM profile and ideally they should have done more work and solved the problem before releasing Sweet Room.

Either way, the fact that there have been no firmware releases for 2.5 years, that there were bugs before that last release and that last release included this problem, and there are still one or two features promised when they released the Expert Pro range with the CI board 6 years ago which have still not been delivered shows that for at least the last 2.5 they have not been interested in doing the software research and development still needed to get the Expert Pro range working properly with all of the features they promised.

Continuing to release new SAM profiles is not a particularly strong "sign of life" for the Expert Pro line. It probably doesn't even take a technician to create a new SAM profile. Fixing the software problems with the line and delivering the last of those features they promised back when the line was introduced takes programming work and extensive software testing and a lot more time and money than creating a SAM profile but that's what would constitute a genuine "sign of life" for the range.

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy with my Expert Pro. It does all the things I want it to do at the moment but I think it could still work better with Roon which I use. I'm not about to jump ship and swap to another amp but if something changes in my needs and I wanted one of the promised but not yet developed features or if I wanted to use a room correction system then I would move to a different amplifier. I would not wait for Devialet to fix their bugs or provide the missing feature they had promised because time has shown that they are neither committed nor interested in doing that.

I think the Expert Pro is a great amp but when it comes to firmware and capabilities, it was released before they had the software ready to deliver everything they had promised. They still have not delivered on their promises which is something I regard as a "breach of contract" since they advertised fulfilment of those promises as part of the deal when we bought our amps, and they haven't provided the software support to fix the bugs. They always seem to be invested in releasing the next new product and those new products seem to come with similar limitations and software support problems.

They don't provide the support they should be providing and they were dishonest in their advertising when they released the Expert Pro line. If Devialet released a new range of Experts with promises about what it would deliver in features via firmware releases over time, I would not buy one unless it delivered everything I wanted and was bug free at the time of purchase because they've shown that they don't keep their promises and aren't committed to fixing software bugs.

[ssfas]

SAM is cheap for Devialet. It's an established process so no need to pay for research and development. The creation of a profile is an automated process for them, they have a setup that is small and easily transportable which they can take to locations like a dealer's showroom in some locations or you can send one of your speakers to them. It's easy for them to add new speaker profiles at low cost because they don't have to buy or rent the speakers in order to do it, they largely rely on using the speakers of Devialet owners. There are no distribution costs for profiles, just add the profiles to their database and anyone can access and instal a profile by using the Configurator.

But SAM is not without problems. When they introduced their Sweet Room room correction system 2.5 years ago we discovered that it did not play well with SAM, or that SAM does not play well with Sweet Room, take your choice of how you want to say that. Sweet Room offers 9 correction points if you don't use SAM but what users discovered when they started using Sweet Room was that they could only use 5 correction points. Devialet did not announce that when they released Sweet Room  and they only acknowledged that problem some months after the release of Sweet Room.

Did they know about it when they released Sweet Room? We don't know but if they did know they withheld the information which caused problems for  people using SAM who wanted to use Sweet Room. There's obviously an incompatibility at present between those 2 features and 2.5 years on it still has not been fixed.

If Devialet didn't know about the problem when they released Sweet Room then obviously they didn't bother testing it using speakers with a SAM profile active which is a stupid thing for them to have done. They should have known that a lot of users use SAM and that more than a few of them would want to use Sweet Room as well. That's poor research and development. If they knew about it then at the very least they should have pointed out the limitation users would have if they used Sweet Room in conjunction with a SAM  profile and ideally they should have done more work and solved the problem before releasing Sweet Room.

Either way, the fact that there have been no firmware releases for 2.5 years, that there were bugs before that last release and that last release included this problem, and there are still one or two features promised when they released the Expert Pro range with the CI board 6 years ago which have still not been delivered shows that for at least the last 2.5 they have not been interested in doing the software research and development still needed to get the Expert Pro range working properly with all of the features they promised.

Continuing to release new SAM profiles is not a particularly strong "sign of life" for the Expert Pro line. It probably doesn't even take a technician to create a new SAM profile. Fixing the software problems with the line and delivering the last of those features they promised back when the line was introduced takes programming work and extensive software testing and a lot more time and money than creating a SAM profile but that's what would constitute a genuine "sign of life" for the range.

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy with my Expert Pro. It does all the things I want it to do at the moment but I think it could still work better with Roon which I use. I'm not about to jump ship and swap to another amp but if something changes in my needs and I wanted one of the promised but not yet developed features or if I wanted to use a room correction system then I would move to a different amplifier. I would not wait for Devialet to fix their bugs or provide the missing feature they had promised because time has shown that they are neither committed nor interested in doing that.

I think the Expert Pro is a great amp but when it comes to firmware and capabilities, it was released before they had the software ready to deliver everything they had promised. They still have not delivered on their promises which is something I regard as a "breach of contract" since they advertised fulfilment of those promises as part of the deal when we bought our amps, and they haven't provided the software support to fix the bugs. They always seem to be invested in releasing the next new product and those new products seem to come with similar limitations and software support problems.

They don't provide the support they should be providing and they were dishonest in their advertising when they released the Expert Pro line. If Devialet released a new range of Experts with promises about what it would deliver in features via firmware releases over time, I would not buy one unless it delivered everything I wanted and was bug free at the time of purchase because they've shown that they don't keep their promises and aren't committed to fixing software bugs.

When I bought a 250 Pro CI in December 2016 they promised Qobuz onboard and it never arrived, so I kept using a usb streamer. The software was a bit flaky. There was a big upgrade in 2017 with the CI card. In October 217 I was in the Paris Rue Saumur store and a complete new firmware etc was promised. that never arrived. In February 2019 there was an upgrade with Roon Ready.

To be honest, it's been faultless since 2017 and I've been using Roon most of the time since 2019.

As I now seem to listen mostly to vinyl, I'm thinking of moving to an all-analogue system, but it's not because Expert performs anything other than brilliantly. 

This thread just exemplifies that with digital products people want new rather than older ones, even if the older ones are really completely up-to-date. This is far less of an issue with analogue products.

[David A]

@ssfas ,

You point out that there was a time when you waited for features Devialet had promised and those features never arrived. Those
You said that with digital products people want new rather than older ones even if the older ones are completely up-to-date. My problem with our Devialets is not that they aren't "completely up-to-date", it's that they are not yet what we were promised when we bought them.

You also say that the Expert Pro has "been faultless since 2017". Tell that to those who were plagued by problems using RAAT when the Expert Pro got that upgrade, and to those who are still plagued with bugs after the last software update. If you have had faultless use of your amp since 2017, that does not mean the amp is faultless, it just means that you haven't used it in a way that reveals the presence of the faults many others are concerned about.

I don't want a new product, I just want this product to do what we were promised that it would do and to do whaat it does without problems due to software bugs. I think most people who have responded in this thread also are not really looking for something new. If we were looking for something new we'd be out shopping for an amp that did not come from Devialet, we'd be buying that amp and then we would not be posting on this forum, we'd be posting on forums elsewhere that covered the amps we had bought or were considering buying.

[daniel.avasilichioaei]

@ssfas

Looking at your signature, I understand that you use a Devialet Expert 250 PRO. If you don't use SAM combined with Sweet Room, then this could be a reason why you could consider "it's been faultless since 2017". As far as I know, the configurator has no other bugs for the case of using a single Devialet amplifier.
The situation is completely different for configurations with several monoblock amplifiers:
The files generated for the companions are not correct: there are operating parameters that are saved only in the configuration file for the master (and not in the one for the companion), and the respective parameters are not even transmitted by the command from the master to the companion (some are sent , but not all those missing from the companion configuration file). So, the master and companions work with different parameters...
The configurator has limitations that are not technically motivated, for example the combination of different types of amplifiers. Simply, the configurator does not cover these situations, although the hardware allows this. I have two 140 PRO and two 220 PRO and I cannot connect all four in a chain using the configurator. However, I was able to connect them in a chain using a workaround. The configurator should have done this without a workaround.

Regarding "This thread just exemplifies that with digital products people want new rather than older ones, even if the older ones are really completely up-to-date": I would be satisfied with the functionalities currently offered by Expert PRO, if everything would work correctly. At the moment I am not interested in new functionalities. The only missing functionality would be MQA rendering, but that's not something important to me.

[ssfas]

@ssfas ,

You point out that there was a time when you waited for features Devialet had promised and those features never arrived. Those
You said that with digital products people want new rather than older ones even if the older ones are completely up-to-date. My problem with our Devialets is not that they aren't "completely up-to-date", it's that they are not yet what we were promised when we bought them.

You also say that the Expert Pro has "been faultless since 2017". Tell that to those who were plagued by problems using RAAT when the Expert Pro got that upgrade, and to those who are still plagued with bugs after the last software update. If you have had faultless use of your amp since 2017, that does not mean the amp is faultless, it just means that you haven't used it in a way that reveals the presence of the faults many others are concerned about.

I don't want a new product, I just want this product to do what we were promised that it would do and to do whaat it does without problems due to software bugs. I think most people who have responded in this thread also are not really looking for something new. If we were looking for something new we'd be out shopping for an amp that did not come from Devialet, we'd be buying that amp and then we would not be posting on this forum, we'd be posting on forums elsewhere that covered the amps we had bought or were considering buying.

I wanted Qobuz onboard. I've used it since 2014. It was promised, never arrived. I've always been able to stream from Qobuz, multiple ways.
Never had an issue with RAAT.
It's been faultless for me - just adding some balance! My dealer sets up new audio and if there was a problem he'd have sorted it or refunded me.

[markush]

Well @ssfas lucky for you when you didn’t encounter the problems many other users as mentioned are facing. For nearly every usecase there are severe bugs or features missing.
And we are already in an age when software updates which fix bugs and improve things or add new features are common.

So it’s up to Devialet to decide: finally ending abandoning the support & development of Expert line or risking more existing customers or potential new customers are going for other brands.
In the end we are absolutely at a turning point.

[David A]

@ssfas

I suspect you haven't had a problem with RAAT is that, at least until the most recent software update, you were not streaming high res files at resolutions higher than 96/24 over RAAT using an ethernet connection. If you had been streaming 192/24 files over an ethernet connection with RAAT then you would have had problems. I think everyone who was doing that had problems and both Roon and Devialet acknowledged the problem. Devialet acknowledged the cause of the problem lay in their firmware and took years to issue the last firmware update which seems to have largely solved the problem though some reported still having issues with RAAT with that latest firmware release.

That latest release also included the Sweet Room room correction feature and people using that together with a SAM profile are unable to get the full benefit of Sweet Room. That's a new problem introduced in that last firmware release over 2 years ago. There are other unfixed bugs from even earlier software releases which have been acknowledged by Devialet and are causing problems for some people.

Depending on how you use your Devialet you may well have had no problems but that does not mean that there are no problems with the existing software. Try doing something else that you can currently do with your Devialet and you may very well find that you run into problems due to faults in the software which have existed in the software for years and which Devialet has acknowledged but failed to fix.

You've just been very lucky that with what you're doing with your Devialet has avoided problems which Devialet has acknowledged and which have continued to exist for years because Devialet has not wanted to spend the time and effort to fix them.