D800 upgrade, is it worth it? Alternatives?

[Confused]

Confused, you have to ask (remind) yourself of why you bought the Devialet to begin with.  Was it for the the simplicity of an all-in-one unit?  Was it for the flexibility of configuration?  Was it for the esthetics of a lifestyle system?  Was it for the audio performance?  Was it for the bang-for-buck/price performance ratio?  Was it for all of the above?  I think you need to evaluate the competition based on all of these merits and line up who's in the running.  I think you'll still fine slim pickings among the alternatives but more have shown up to the dance floor.   You need to compare apples-to-apples and under this condition the Devialet is pretty hard to beat.

This is quite an easy one for me, it was audio performance, and yes, bang-for-buck/price performance ratio sums it up well.  I have never remotely been interested in the aesthetics or one box solution stuff.  In some ways I see this as a disadvantage, I think I would have preferred the DAC to be separate and to have huge mono-block amps!

It is perhaps also worth noting that I do find some benefit from SAM.  Some have posted on here that SAM is of no benefit for large / full range speakers, or that things sound better without SAM.  I do not find this.  OK, the Blades produce more than enough bass without SAM, but this is not the full story, there is an improvement with the bass definition, plus a noticeably grater focus with sound stage with SAM.  These are not huge improvements, but to be honest, even minor improvements at this level can be expensive to achieve, and SAM was a 'free gift' from Devialet after I made my initial purchase.  So this is one aspect that immediately puts the opposition at a minor disadvantage.

To keep this simple, sound quality is the main factor, price is also a key consideration, and that's about it.