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Devialet Predictions for 2020
#1
Wondering if the unification of the three product lines under DOS 2 will actually happen this year, and if so if it will bring the anticipated benefits (RAAT support for Phantom tops my list).  The new app, although it is functionally somewhat of a Minimal Viable Product, seems stable and the UX design is nice.  Good start.  

Also looking forward to something, anything, for all the long suffering Expert owners - particularly those that forked out for the Core Infinity upgrade.  Ever hopeful.

Happy New Year folks!
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#2
Back before I retired, the office I worked in supplied a desk calendar refill each year to staff. Each day had its own quotation and some were attributed to "WGP". I once asked someone who WGP was and was told that it was an acronym for "World's Greatest Proverbs". What has this to do with a thread about predictions for Devialet?

One year, the quotation on that calendar for January 1 said "There will be no change in men's pockets this year" and it was attributed to WGP. Did it mean that men would be no better off and have no more money in their pockets that year or did it mean that men's clothing would have exactly the same pockets as in previous years? It was a pretty safe prediction either way because it would have been equally valid for every previous year for a long time.

I predict the more things change, the more they'll stay the same. In other words, some Devialet owners will get things they want and some won't. At present Devialet seem focussed on the Phantom/Reactor range so we'll see some software movement there and Expert Pro owners will feel neglected but at some stage, maybe not this year, the focus will shift back to the Expert Pro range and the Phantom/Reactor owners will start to feel neglected. That switch in focus back to the Expert Pro range will occur before Phantom/Reactor owners are completely satisfied. New software for both ranges will have bugs and won't work as well as it should. Bug fixes will be slow for bugs that don't affect everyone, becoming an ongoing source of frustration for those afflicted by them.

There will be one or more new spinoff products, collaborations with other firms, and we'll all ask why Devialet is fiddling around with that sort of thing when they could be delivering on what's promised for their own product lines and fixing their software bugs.

There will be promises of better communication but there will be little or no change in their communication with owners.

In other words Devialet will continue on in its own idiosyncratic way this year as it has done in previous years.

The above predictions are a fair description of 2019, and 2018, and 2017 when I became a Devialet owner. My experience doesn't go back any further than that but I expect the above predictions would have worked for earlier years as well.. Devialet doesn't learnt from the past, it repeats it If anyone wants to know how 2020 will go for Devialet owners, they just have to look at how 2019 and earlier years went for Devialet owners.

There will be no change in our overall experience this year. Some details will change but the big picture won't. Describe the previous year in general terms and you've got a good prediction for the coming year when it comes to Devialet.
Roon Nucleus+, Devilalet Expert 140 Pro CI, Focal Sopra 2, PS Audio P12, Keces P8 LPS, Uptone Audio EtherREGEN with optical fibre link to my router, Shunyata Alpha NR and Sigma NR power cables, Shunyata Sigma ethernet cables, Shunyata Alpha V2 speaker cables, Grand Prix Audio Monaco rack, RealTRAPS acoustic treatment.

Brisbane, Qld, Australia
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#3
I truly hope that it will be a good year for Devialet (and therefore, us!). But they have significant issues to address across their full product line. My guess is that their future will ride on their ability to get them addressed fully *and* begin a reasonable communication channel beyond obscure marketing efforts in 2020. Attempting to predict what and when that will be is likely to be a futile effort.
Devialet 440 Pro (two 220s)- Oracle CD transport - Kuzma Stabi S/Stogi S turntable - Von Schweikert VR-35 speakers - JPS SC3 SCs - PI Audio power conditioning -
Triode Wire Labs ICs and PCs - Roon on NUC 8i7beh running ROCK
Durham, NC USA
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#4
(02-Jan-2020, 01:08)David A Wrote: There will be no change in our overall experience this year. Some details will change but the big picture won't. Describe the previous year in general terms and you've got a good prediction for the coming year when it comes to Devialet.

I'm afraid to say I suspect you are spot on.  As a "fellow traveller" since 2013 I immediately recognise the wisdom of your words.  

However the flame of optimism in me refuses to die.  The unification of the firmware platform, if they can pull it off successfully (and that is a big "if"), would allow them to potentially kill several birds with one stone:
  • Fill functional holes in the various product lines (e.g. RAAT support for Phantom)
  • Avoid accusations of favouritism/neglect from different owner constituencies when releasing new functionality
  • Accelerate innovation
  • Reduce costs
I am surprised that there has been so little discussion of this initiative on this forum (or maybe there has been and I missed it), if they can pull it off it promises to be a big win-win for Devialet and for us.
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#5
I hope support for some more streaming services like tidal, deezer and internet radio. All the rest I don't care too much about. Would love to have an alternative for spotify.
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#6
(02-Jan-2020, 13:45)gitaarwerk Wrote: I hope support for some more streaming services like tidal, deezer and internet radio. All the rest I don't care too much about. Would love to have an alternative for spotify.

Deezer is also a French company so who knows... Would be cool to have it integrated. I am quite fond of Deezer. Interface and music suggestions in my opinion are much better than Spotify. And the hi-fi tier has good sound quality. It sounds a bit different than Tidal but cannot say whether one is better than the other. Just subtle differences.
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#7
(02-Jan-2020, 17:36)Stino Wrote:
(02-Jan-2020, 13:45)gitaarwerk Wrote: I hope support for some more streaming services like tidal, deezer and internet radio. All the rest I don't care too much about. Would love to have an alternative for spotify.

Deezer is also a French company so who knows... Would be cool to have it integrated. I am quite fond of Deezer. Interface and music suggestions in my opinion are much better than Spotify. And the hi-fi tier has good sound quality. It sounds a bit different than Tidal but cannot say whether one is better than the other. Just subtle differences.
I hope so :-) So far, I have to say, spotify just sounds good. It sounds better than my flac collection often. It's because its downloaded, and not all people know how to rip good. Those differences are way more substantial than lossy compression, unfortunately. But it's nice and makes it easier to do a real good A/B test between them as well. Spotify is friendlier when it comes to support for other devices as well as interface. Tho the latter is often quite personal.
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#8
My predictions:

As a follow up to the 2017 'The Lost Recordings' in Spring 2020 Devialet announce 'The Lost Firmware' for the Expert range containing some minor bug fixes and introducing some new ones. Much hoopla about exciting things coming later in 2020 and promises of more open communication, neither of which materialise.

Q2 2020 - New Phantom Ultimate announced, 5000W in a variety of colours.

Q2 2020 - Phantom Cinema Mode announced along with Phantom Sub. 5.1 multi channel

Q3 2020 - SmartPhantom released - a new range of Phantom and Phantom Reactor with voice control for Phantom using proprietary Devialet AI and processing. At launch, works only in French with support for other languages 'coming soon' ;-)

Q3 2020 - Devialet release a range of in-ear and over ear headphones with noise cancelling technology and 'the best mobile sound in the world' - priced at $499

Q4 2020 - Major electronics firm buys out original investors

Q4 2020 - Discontinuation of the Expert Pro platform as the company refocuses on consumer and mobile audio.
440 Pro CI, Roon ROCK, Technics 1200G, Celestion Ditton 66
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#9
(02-Jan-2020, 01:08)David A Wrote: Back before I retired, the office I worked in supplied a desk calendar refill each year to staff. Each day had its own quotation and some were attributed to "WGP". I once asked someone who WGP was and was told that it was an acronym for "World's Greatest Proverbs". What has this to do with a thread about predictions for Devialet?

One year, the quotation on that calendar for January 1 said "There will be no change in men's pockets this year" and it was attributed to WGP. Did it mean that men would be no better off and have no more money in their pockets that year or did it mean that men's clothing would have exactly the same pockets as in previous years? It was a pretty safe prediction either way because it would  have been equally valid for every previous year for a long time.

I predict the more things change, the more they'll stay the same. In other words, some Devialet owners will get things they want and some won't. At present Devialet seem focussed on the Phantom/Reactor range so we'll see some software movement there and Expert Pro owners will feel neglected but at some stage, maybe not this year, the focus will shift back to the Expert Pro range and the Phantom/Reactor owners will start to feel neglected. That switch in focus back to the Expert Pro range will occur before Phantom/Reactor owners are completely satisfied. New software for both ranges will have bugs and won't work as well as it should. Bug fixes will be slow for bugs that don't affect everyone, becoming an ongoing source of frustration for those afflicted by them.

There will be one or more new spinoff products, collaborations with other firms, and we'll all ask why Devialet is fiddling around with that sort of thing when they could be delivering on what's promised for their own product lines and fixing their software bugs.

There will be promises of better communication but there will be little or no change in their communication with owners.

In other words Devialet will continue on in its own idiosyncratic way this year as it has done in previous years.

The above predictions are a fair description of 2019, and 2018, and 2017 when I became a Devialet owner. My experience doesn't go back any further than that but I expect the above predictions would have worked for earlier years as well.. Devialet doesn't learnt from the past, it repeats it If anyone wants to know how 2020 will go for Devialet owners, they just have to look at how 2019 and earlier years went for Devialet owners.

There will be no change in our overall experience this year. Some details will change but the big picture won't. Describe the previous year in general terms and you've got a good prediction for the coming year when it comes to Devialet.

In general, I have to agree this is a fair summary of where we are now.  However, the above predictions would not have worked for earlier years as well, consider that for most of 2015 there was no Devialet Phantom, there was just the Expert range, nothing else.  During this period we had regular firmware updates for the Expert, typically two major updates per year, with the odd interim firmware update appearing quite regularly.  In a way, this time was as you describe, so in 2014/15 we had the Expert owners getting update goodies and some D-Premier owners feeling left out.  From late 2015, we have the Phantom, the Reactor, Sky box and other such stuff, and find ourselves in the position you describe now, except for 2016 when the Expert Pro upgrade scheme was in full flow, together with the O'dA debacle.

Looking forward, personally, I think there will be some big surprises over the coming years, I predict that ultimately Devialet will remain very unpredictable.

Going back to @struts original post, Devialet were quite clear regarding their plans during the Q&A session at Oxford Audio last summer, there would be a "unified remote control" app, first for the Phantoms, then rolled out for the Expert range.  I guess we have seen the start of this with DOS2, but the question remains of when (or maybe if) they will ever complete this initiative.
1000 Pro - KEF Blade - iFi Zen Stream - Mutec REF10 - MC3+USB - Pro-Ject Signature 12
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#10
@Confused .

I stand corrected. There was a time before the first Phantom when there was only 1 product line.

I also think you're right that Devialet will remain unpredictable.
Roon Nucleus+, Devilalet Expert 140 Pro CI, Focal Sopra 2, PS Audio P12, Keces P8 LPS, Uptone Audio EtherREGEN with optical fibre link to my router, Shunyata Alpha NR and Sigma NR power cables, Shunyata Sigma ethernet cables, Shunyata Alpha V2 speaker cables, Grand Prix Audio Monaco rack, RealTRAPS acoustic treatment.

Brisbane, Qld, Australia
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