Firmware 8.1 released!

[GuillaumeB]

It has been said before at this forum but I will repeat it: Devialet do all their development without any listening just by engineering and technical analysis. This is what they told us Devialetchat forum members during our meeting in Munich.

Maybe they have a point as there are so many different positive as negative comments on this forum about the different FW's. 

I think Devialet's point was rather that the human hearing is hugely unreliable. If I recall correctly there was a question asked by a forum member in Munich about why Devialet amplifiers were so sensitive to the quality of mains cables and the answer to the question was "would we identify the change (of the mains cable) in a DBT?" It was a rhetorical question of course which didn't really give much away.

From these kind of comments it's easy to assume that no subjective listening takes place, but I'm not sure that we know that for sure. I might try and ask them next time I meet with them.

On the subject of listening tests I am reminded of a 1978 "Audio Amateur" interview of the late Peter Walker (founder of Quad):

TAA: How do you rate the merits of listening tests to instrument tests?

PW: We designed our valve (tube) amplifier, manufactured it, and put it on the market, and never actually listened to it. In fact, the same applies to the 303 and the 405. People say, "Well that's disgusting, you ought to have listened to it." However, we do a certain amount of listening tests, but they are for specific things. We listen to the differential distortion - does a certain thing matter? You've got to have a listening test to sort out whether it matters. You've got to do tests to sort out whether rumble is likely to overload pickup inputs, or whether very high frequency stuff coming out of the pickup due to record scratch is going to disturb the control unit. But we aren't sitting down listening to Beethoven's Fifth and saying, "That amplifier sounds better, let's change a resistor or two. Oh yes, that's now better still." We never sit down and listen to a music record through an amplifier in the design stage. We listen to funny noises, funny distortions, and see whether these things are going to matter, to get a subjective assessment. But we don't actually listen to program material at all.


Guillaume