Last minute Summer Devialet Event at OAC with Mathieu Pernot! 12 July 2018

[Confused]

Let’s agree to disagree

No, no, no.  We cannot do that.  The thing is, I am pretty much 100% confident we agree on much of this stuff.  We can certainly agree to disagree on some of it, but other than that, I disagree, which therefore means we agree.  Is that clear?

[petrik]

Sometimes it is best to enjoy what is good and works now, rather than getting too hooked up on one companies priorities not being 100% aligned with your own.

Yep, it is good to remember that Devialet Expert Pro (with Core Infinity) is currently working better than ever before. I think Mathieu, Joachim and others at Devialet have done incredible job and we can finally stream reliably when using the Roon. This hasn't always been the case.... if you guys still remember the early days.

The simple fact is, room correction is not Devialet's priority at the moment, and they have made this clear. 

Unfortunately that seems to be the case but I really would like to understand why the room correction is not a priority for them. What is driving their decision making and roadmapping? Is it still the good old vision ("Someday everyone will own a Devialet")? If that's the case, then why our friends would like to buy a Devialet if they realize that although the Devialet Expert Pro or the Phantom look beautiful and they can be used with Airplay, Spotify, and Bluetooth, but they also cost a lot of money and can sound pretty bad because of the room related issues? All the fantastic things that the Devialet Expert Pro and the Phantom do so well, can be ruined so easily by the rooms where we listen.

[Hifi_swlon]

Let’s agree to disagree

No, no, no.  We cannot do that.  The thing is, I am pretty much 100% confident we agree on much of this stuff.  We can certainly agree to disagree on some of it, but other than that, I disagree, which therefore means we agree.  Is that clear?

Clear as, er, mud. But when teetering on the edge of a 100 point reputation, whatever you say Sir!

I guess what maddens me about Devialet and Room Correction (or lets just start calling it convolution since that’s all I really care about) is that the Expert was born for it.

How many other combined DAC-amplifiers are there in the world - ones where the two are intrinsically linked and can only function thanks to software/firmware DSP? If ever there were a device made to do it, it was this one. And why keep putting all these ‘spare’ DSP chips on board for future possibilities if they don’t use them. I’d imagine the DSP chips in the previous (non pro generation) will sit cold until the end of their days now Devialet are no longer developing for that platform - what a waste! Let’s hope the Pro doesn’t follow the same path.......

RC aside I’ll admit the general vibe from the feedback seems to be overwhelmingly that they’re heading Bock on track. RoonReady is a dream that they’re finally talking about openly and maybe in time for winter? We’re getting snippets at least about roadmaps, web config, white papers etc etc, it’s all positive. I just don’t want them miss this other opportunity that would really set them apart if done right.

I do think Devialet have been let off very lightly about abandoning their obsolescence promise for models only one generation back though. I’m surprised (once again) that few seem to care - Devialet have such a loyal following. They’re very lucky all things considered.

[David A]

…
In an ideal world, Roon and Devialet would collaborate.  Imagine, Devialet could make superb amplifiers and all they would have to do is make them Roon ready, you could then enjoy the superb Devialet sound quality together with all the splendid software features of Roon, including convolution, PEQ and all the rest of it.  That truly would be the best of both worlds.  And yes, we have this now, so it's not so terrible is it?  (unless you want to play vinyl, or connect your Dev to the telly or something )
…

I think this is incorrect. If the Devialet was Roon Ready the signal Roon would pass to it will be exactly the same as it currently passes using AIR. My understanding is that convoulution, PEQ, and the other changes to the signal that Roon can make are all done via DSP in room and don't require the renderer device to be Roon Ready. RAAT vs AIR only affects the way that Roon will "talk" to the Devialet, not what it will "say" to the Devialet.

I haven't tried convolution in Roon but I have tried PEQ and when I used PEQ the signal my Devialet received had the PEQ changes in it so I see no reason why you can't do convolution in Roon and have the modified signal sent to the Devialet using Roon AIR. The limitation with this is that convolution will only be applied to Roon and you won't get convolution applied for other sources.  We already have all of the software features of Roon available on a Devialet when we're using Roon as our source but there is no way of applying those software features to other sources.

[ogs]

Not quite @David A . Roon/AIR used to display volume, balance, tone/phase in its 'Signal path'. When the CI was installed only volume was displayed, the rest disappeared. Most likely this has to do with Devialets AIR code on the CI. Let us hope all this returns with RAAT. It was very nice to have this as the display is impossible to read from a distance, even if the amp is wall mounted.
Roon convolution works fine with AIR. If/when Roon adds 'the input device' it should be possible to route for example A/D converted lp playback through Roon's DSP.

[mdconnelly]

I will say this about the prior Expert line... I don't think of this as Devialet abandoning it at all... Few manufacturers would have made the effort to provide an upgrade path (albeit at a non-trivial cost). The prior gen Experts still sound awesome and I'm certain they will continue to do so for many years to come. Depending upon when a customer bought in may result in them feeling like Devialet didn't meet the update promises made in the marketing spiel. But hey, I've owned many audio products that were discontinued just a year or two later. That's just the inevitable march of technology (and marketing) into the future. But fortunately for us, Devialet did provide a means to march along with them in the form of the Pro & CI upgrades.

Many owners did jump to upgrade to the Pro when offered. Some chose not to. But the fact that many of us could and did, and many more will once again be able to speaks highly of Devialet's support for the existing customer base. I feel certain that to take the Experts to the next level, new tech was needed - in the form of the Pro and CI updates. For that, I'm grateful even though I had my 200 for just a year before the Pro upgrade was announced.

True, there have been many times over the last year or so that I felt quite frustrated with Devialet for their lack of communication and bug-ridden software, but I'm now a very happy Pro 440/CI owner, quite pleased with current sound quality and functionality and quite excited about what still may be coming in the future. There are always bumps in the road and Devialet has certainly managed to hit most every damn one of those potholes. But sometimes it's just better to just pay attention to the road ahead.

[David A]

Not quite @David A .  Roon/AIR used to display volume, balance, tone/phase in its 'Signal path'. When the CI was installed only volume was displayed, the rest disappeared. Most likely this has to do with Devialets AIR code on the CI. Let us hope all this returns with RAAT. It was very nice to have this as the display is impossible to read from a distance, even if the amp is wall mounted.
Roon convolution works fine with AIR. If/when Roon adds 'the input device' it should be possible to route for example A/D converted lp playback through Roon's DSP.

I was using Roon/AIR before my 130 got the CI board upgrade and can't remember seeing volume, balance, tone/phase info in the Signal Path data but that may be a failure of my memory. I used to have volume control turned on in Roon just so I could see the volume level in the bottom right hand corner of Roon's display on my iPad, even though I was using the Devialet remote, but I think I get a small increase in sound quality by minimising what Roon does to the bare minimum for my purposes and I found it difficult to make fine volume adjustments using Roon's volume slider so I turned off volume control in Roon since I wasn't actually using the function.

I totally agree about the difficulty of reading volume levels on the Devialet display from a distance. I sit about 3 metres from my rack where the Devialet sits and I have to stand and step forward a bit to be able to read the volume display which is annoying but I'd probably find it very frustrating if I wanted to see the volume setting frequently.

Are you sure the change in info displayed in Roon is related to the CI board? Could it have been related to a change in one of Roon's own updates? Over the year that I've been using Roon they've been turning out updates on a monthly basis for most of the time, sometimes more frequently. Could there have been a Roon update which made a change while your amp was away for the CI board upgrade so the first time you noticed the change would have been after you fired up the amp with the CI board installed and you therefore associated it with the board upgrade rather than with a Roon change?

[Chris Marshall]

I’m a bit late in this but I’d like to add my thanks to all of you that have taken the time to report back from the event, I’m pretty sure I know more now than if I’d attended!

It’s great news that there is commitment to improving the experts, although I now can’t really see what I need now Roon/AIR seems perfect. The onboard configurator will definitely be an improvement along with over air firmware upgrades though.

[maxijazz]

Lyngdorf’s amps directly compete with Devialet’s. They have RoomPerfect RC built-in. Here is short description: http://lyngdorf.com/news-what-is-room-correction/.
Maybe the RC can be licensed? Maybe Lyngdorf can be acquired?

[Confused]

After some quiet reflection, I think it might be useful to take stock and see where we are now.  In terms of those interested in room correction and those who think it should be prioritised now, I think this leads us to an interesting and subtly different question.

First to say that I genuinely agree with pretty much everything @Hifi_swlon wrote in post #103, plus, I think @David A misinterpreted my earlier post slightly (my post was written with some slightly obtuse language), but no problem here, David is correct we can have the full benefit of Roon PEQ and convolutions together with Devialet sound quality now using Roon AIR, we are actually agreeing I think!  This reminds me of a point made by Mathieu Pernot during the original presentation at OAC.  Mathieu was talking about Roon RAAT versus AIR, stating that he did not see these two as rivals in any way, rather they were complimentary.  Personally I see this as good news, I know that Roon RAAT is very good, offering excellent sound quality and stability, but it is just for Roon.  AIR offers excellent sound quality together with far greater versatility, so they serve different purposes.  Thankfully AIR is far more stable these days. Anyway, in terms of Roon's functionality, it works almost perfectly now with Roon integrated AIR, and with Roon RAAT coming soon, we can look forward to it working even more perfectly.  It was not long ago that a few people were saying things along the lines of "if only Devialet would add Roon RAAT it would be perfect", they had a very good point to be honest, and the good news it is here now. (Well, almost, in terms or RAAT)  As an aside, AirPlay was also mentioned in this context, with Mathieu stating that if you want the stream the sound from something with video content, then AirPlay is great, if you want the best quality two-channel sound, use something else, AIR, RAAT or UPnP.

OK - We know that Devialet are not prioritising room correction, so what are they prioritising?  We know the answer to this too, the primary focus now is on the functionality of the CI board, stability, adding Roon RAAT, Qobuz, Bluetooth, and so on.  There was vague talk in the past of adding room correction, but the Pro was sold with the promise of the CI board, and it is clear that Devialet's current focus is on delivering this promise.  Yes, it is taking some time, but stability is improving, bugs are being fixed and new features are coming.  What else do we know that is prioritised?  Going back to Thumb5's summary (Post#61) we know that they are working on a refreshed iOS app and an onboard configurator.

Jumping back to room correction.  Using Roon, I can set PEQ's on my iPad when sat in the listening position, I can switch between bit-perfect and Room correction convolutions on the iPad too.  If I want to change convolutions, it takes less than a minute on my PC in Roon's settings.  Via Roon the functionality is great, it is usable, it is intuitive.  If Devialet gave us room correction now, it would be a case of loading via an SD card, the IOS app would be useless for changing settings and there are not enough buttons on the remote to support everything.  So Roon's version would be fun, functional and intuitive, Devialet's version would probably just be frustrating and limited in usable functionality.  

So IF room correction is to be added to the Pro's, it would make sense that we had a better iOS app and onboard configuration first, one thing at a time, everything in a sensible order.

So looking at this logically, it looks like the priorities as we understand them now are absolutely correct, logical and sensible.  CI stability and functionality first, then the iOS app and configurator, with the last two being essential if room correction is to be practical and usable.

In time the CI board will be fully functional and stable.  The new IOS app and onboard configurator will be finished.

This then takes us to the big question.  What then will be the next priority?  This we do not know the answer to.