Just Discovered Devialet Air

[AdamEOS]

Heads up to Devialet crew, it’s kind of easy to be confused between Air and Airplay. We’ve been using Airplay as the wi-fi streamer from Apple mobile devices. I like the convenience of Airplay but ultimately preferred the USB because the sound was clearly better. Until tonight. We finally figured out that Air was not the same as Airplay, with the former being bit-perfect and the latter is not. Downloaded Air to a Macbook Air, which was super easy to do. We use Qobuz, which for sound quality is easily the best of those We’ve had. Put on a Chuck Loeb 16/44 album. It took only a minute or two to confirm that Air sounds MUCH better than Airplay. I am a bit miffed about it all, because we’ve been wracking our brains for almost a year now wondering why we couldn’t get Airplay to sound as good as USB. On cursory listen Air, to my ears, seems to be every bit as good as USB. I will do some careful comparisons tomorrow to confirm what I am hearing. The only downside is the Air application is for laptops and not iOS devices such as iPad or iPhone.

While i’m at it, can someone describe the sound quality differences between the single box 220 and the two box (440?) solution. When do you know that you could benefit from more power? Driving a pair of Magico S3 or Evolution Acoustics Micro One.

Thanks

[BoyScout]

Same here.

[daniel.avasilichioaei]

Both Magico S3 and Evolution Acoustics Micro One do not have a very high sensitivity, so the sound quality could benefit from the power boost of the amplifier (440 vs 220).
It would be best if you could test before buying, to see if the difference in sound quality is worth the financial investment or not.

[AdamEOS]

Thanks BoyScout and Daniel.

My son has been on the fence as to whether an upgrade to 440.

[JohnnySix]

I used your picture to give an idea to my non-audiophile colleague of what my own living room looks like.

In case you haven't become aware of Devialet AIR bugs yet, be warned of it going silent when switching between files of different sample rates.

(You can avoid it by upsampling everything to a constant 192KHz at source, if possible).

[Zappydev]

Thanks BoyScout and Daniel.

My son has been on the fence as to whether an upgrade to 440.

It's not just about 'more power' - when I went that route, some years ago now, the sound changed significantly. It just sounded 'more together, more coherent' regardless of power/volume. I never regretted that change, and eventually upgraded to an O d'A.