D220 pro CI vs D440 pro CI

[Confused]

@David A  - excellent advice.  Speaker placement can make a big difference as can listening position.  The challenge I often faced with room treatments is that I spent a lot of time (and money) getting it mostly wrong before I learned enough to get it mostly right hence the suggestion for finding a pro initially.  And as David indicates... start slow... it's easy to over-treat a room and kill the sound.

Here's an interesting article on using bass traps... there's some good info there but don't let it overwhelm you (as it did me at first ;-)

http://arqen.com/bass-traps-101/placement-guide/

Good luck!  This is why we love this hobby, right?

Thanks for all the room treatment and speaker placement advice.  I noticed that I am getting quite a bit of sibilant sound with female vocals (e.g. Diana Krall). I read somewhere that this is common with Devialet. Any recommendations?

I think there has been some excellent advice from the others in this thread, but I have some points to add.  This has been mentioned before, but one thing you really should try is running via AIR Ethernet (or Wifi) as an alternative to USB.  It might be a little bit of hassle and effort to work out how to do it, but it might just give some of the improvement you are after for very little cost.  The link below is to Devialet's almost useful guide to AIR, take a look here, this should get you started.  If you have any issues getting AIR set up and running I am sure you will find lots of help on this forum.  Well worth a try.  It is almost like you have an expensive reclocking source device sat unused in a box next to you hifi, all you have to do is work out how to connect it up. 

https://help.devialet.com/hc/en-us/artic...vialet-Air-

The advice re room treatment is good, but obviously a lot of time and effort is required to get this right.  Based on your sibilant comment I wonder if your system currently has a slightly bright balance to the tonal presentation.  I think the high frequency performance of the Pro is very revealing of any minor issues that might exist in the recording, you could say brutally revealing.  (and a lot of recordings are bad in this regard)  So if you have this in combination with a speaker and room set up that is itself inherently bright, then this simply exasperates the situation.  Not exactly a purist suggestion, but you could try tweaking the treble down by maybe -3dB, or even try -6dB.  In combination, maybe go up a touch on the bass, +2dB or something.  This is completely free and very easy to do, and might just help get the balance you are after.  (I have been reading about the Dutch and Dutch 8C active speakers, the rom correction DSP apparently gives in-room frequency response measurement to produce a downward/sloping tilt of ~20 Hz to -10 dB at 20 kHz to be "perceived as neutral") 

OK - The room treatment solution is the better long term solution, but tweaking the tone controls is something you could try today.  Maybe just run the amp with -6dB treble for the weekend and see how you get on?  Once you have forgotten that you have done such a terrible non-purist thing as tweak your tone controls, you might actually find that you start enjoying the music more, which is what it is all about in the end.

[David A]

@David A  - excellent advice.  Speaker placement can make a big difference as can listening position.  The challenge I often faced with room treatments is that I spent a lot of time (and money) getting it mostly wrong before I learned enough to get it mostly right hence the suggestion for finding a pro initially.  And as David indicates... start slow... it's easy to over-treat a room and kill the sound.

Here's an interesting article on using bass traps... there's some good info there but don't let it overwhelm you (as it did me at first ;-)

http://arqen.com/bass-traps-101/placement-guide/

Good luck!  This is why we love this hobby, right?

Good link, thanks for posting it.

[David A]

Thanks for all the room treatment and speaker placement advice.  I noticed that I am getting quite a bit of sibilant sound with female vocals (e.g. Diana Krall). I read somewhere that this is common with Devialet. Any recommendations?

Sibilance is a problem with a lot of possible causes. It can be a recording problem and some mics can exaggerate the amount od sibilance in a singer's voice. Singers can control it to some degree by replacing the "sh" syllable with a "th", effectively employing a slight, deliberate lisp. to avoid singing sibilants . If sibilance is captured in the recording it can be reduced or made worse in the mixing and mastering process. Finally, some components in our systems can make it worse and some things in the room can make it worse. If you've got surfaces like an uncovered glass window or door, or a picture framed under glass, or glass or ceramic objects on shelves at a first reflection point, that can make the problem worse. You can cover windows with a curtain or blind or you can move pictures and objects.

Another possible room problem is an uncovered hard, reflective floor like a polished concrete floor or a tiled floor between the speakers and the listening position. A natural fibre rug can solve that problem.

You've got a particularly small room and that may make the problem worse. Air can absorb high and mid frequencies but the lower the frequency, the greater the distance the sound has to travel in order to be absorbed. In a small room you get more early reflections and early reflections have travelled through less air than late reflections so the reflected sound in a small room can contribute to a brighter overall sound than you get in a large room like a concert hall. Though I prefer to leave first reflection points untreated myself, treating them can reduce the problem in some rooms so you could try something like using fabric wall hangings at first reflection points rather than acoustic panels which would absorb more sound over a wider range to see if that takes the edge off things.

In the end, however, some recordings display more sibilance than others and some singers display more sibilance than others. Diana Krall who you mentioned is one singer whose voice and recordings can show more sibilance than others in my experience.

[Pim]

I used to run a 200 to my Dynaudio C1's and it sounded quite good, especially with SAM. Now I'm running an Original d' Atelier, upgraded to 1000 Pro with CI board and it does sound better. But not so much better that I would suggest upgrading the amp. I bought mine with the plan to upgrade to much larger speakers in a much larger room, otherwise I would have stayed with the 200.

The question to ask you is what is it that you're missing in the combo you're running now? Lots can be done with set up, room integration etc. without the need for an upgrade. tell us more about what it is you want and we'll be much better prepared to give you advice.

Looking forward to you reply.

Cheers,

Pim

Pim
There is nothing wrong with my system per se, but I feel like there are times when I feel the sound is harsh sometimes and not as clear as I would like. Not like they are playing in my listening room. May be it is the recording quality is not that good.

thanks, Jay

Jay,

The C1's sound harsh because they are brutally revealing. There's nothing you can do about this unless you only listen to recordings that aren't harsh, which are very hard to find. In my journey to get the best out of my system I've learned that a very revealing amp (Devialet) and a very revealing set of speakers (Dynaudio) just don't work together to get a natural sound. 

I've had my setup in a few different rooms and have played a lot with setup and found that ultimately I'm going to have to buy different speakers. On the plus side, some of the cheaper speakers that are actually less revealing are probably a better match for the Expert range. I'm planning to audition Vienna Acoustics, a brand not mentioned much here but, according to a dealer friend, a great combination if a natural sound is what you're looking for.

[David A]

I don't know that I'd say the CIs sound harsh because "they are brutally revealing". I'd also note that @chungjh 's statement was "…I feel like there are times when I feel the sound is harsh sometimes and not as clear as I would like." That sounds to me like these issues are present at times but not all the time and probably less than half the time. If the issue was an innately harsh speaker then I think the statement would have been simply that the sound was harsh and not as clear as wished, with no qualification such as "at times", or at the very least he would have said "most of the time" instead of "at times".

[mdconnelly]

One way I've found to tame sibilance is to angle the speakers away from your listening spot a bit. @chungjh , if your speakers are currently angled directly at your listening spot, consider opening up the angle a bit so that they point to the respective outside of your listening spot or try just pointing them straight ahead. It will likely result in more reflected than direct sound, but that can also tame siblance. See if that makes a difference.

Of course, there's only so much anyone can recommend without actually seeing/hearing the room. To echo @Confused 's comments regarding the tone controls, when you try a tweak, change one thing at a time and give it awhile (a couple listening sessions) for your brain to adjust to subtle changes in the sound.

[Vivialet]

I have the 1000 Pro CI with a Giya G2 which is also a very revealing speaker. I also had problems with sibilance and got completely rid of it by doing these things:
1: move from D800 to the 1000 Pro CI
2: replaced a silver speaker cable with the Inakustik 4004 Air
3: optimized my PC with the latest audiophile optimizer and Fidelizer versions
4: using Roon RAAT instead of AIR
5: using an optical Ethernet connection between PC and Aqvox switch and good ethernet cables

Now it is really hard to find records that still sound harsh or have sibilance. Most of this really comes from the source.
And one more point: every DSP processing like room correction adds digital harshness. I have used convolution filters in Roon for some time with good results, but I found a better way: I'm using my B&W DB1 subwoofer that has a built in room correction and run it below 80Hz. This covers all my room resonances so the convolution is not required anymore.
And even in comparison to the Giya driven by the 1000Pro the DB1 does a better job.
The Devialet itself seems not to produce harshness or sibilance, it reproduces whatever you send to it.

[hardcore]

I need some advice on D220 pro vs D440 pro. I listen only to digital music (Tidal) from my old mac laptop to USB to D220 pro to Dynaudio confidence C1 bookshelf speakers (4 ohms impedance) (in a very small room 10 ft x 11 ft x 8 ft high).

I also suggest you try using AIR / UPNP / Roon over WiFi as the input. Make sure to *disconnect* the USB cable from the Devialet when testing, as you don't want the electrical noise from USB to affect the Devialet.

In my experience, the USB input is the poorest sounding one, and the AIR / streaming input on the Core Infinity Devialets sounds very good if not the best.

XLR (AES) input does not sound better than AIR / streaming, unless you have a really really good USB converter or transport. I was previously using a Singxer SU-1 with Uptone LPS 1.2 supercapacitors, and it did not sound better than AIR / streaming unless I also carefully tweaked the USB connection chain from my PC.

Recently upgraded my USB converter to the Singxer SU-6, and now using XLR (AES) does sound better than AIR / streaming. But it is still very close.

By sounding better I mean: more detail and texture, more open and airy, more soundstage dimensionality.