Optical dropouts

[ogs]

Turns out that the Toslink interface has a terrible and unavoidable jitter spec. I just got a reply from Allo over at the Roon forum https://community.roonlabs.com/t/allo-di.../18564/499 where Johan explains how this works. Our best bet for good quality transfer to Phantoms seems to be Roon RAAT on Dialog (or even better direct to Phantoms..). That is another wait and see...

[antilles]

I feel like so much of this recurrent angst could have been avoided had they gone with some combination of HDMI & Ethernet to begin with. Well, I hope they are actually working on it now. They have to be getting sick of all these connection complaints too. Right?

[ogs]

I doubt that Devialet is working on this. I believe they are a 'modern' company working on the principle of 'good enough', where 'enough' is when more than 90% of customers NOT complaining. As long as only 10% has a problem they believe they can get away with not bothering...
A proper programmer would never leave a fault like this until it works properly. Someone will have to prevent that programmer from fixing it. I remember too well the AIR trouble. Devialet support is today recommending workarounds for the optical drop outs of Dialog, like going optical direct to one of the Phantoms.
As for HDMI, here is the late Charles Hansen's opinion on that: https://www.audioasylum.com/messages/pca...-interface

[Zappydev]

I doubt that Devialet is working on this. I believe they are a 'modern' company working on the principle of 'good enough', where 'enough' is when more than 90% of customers NOT complaining. As long as only 10% has a problem they believe they can get away with not bothering...
A proper programmer would never leave a fault like this until it works properly. Someone will have to prevent that programmer from fixing it. I remember too well the AIR trouble. Devialet support is today recommending workarounds for the optical drop outs of Dialog, like going optical direct to one of the Phantoms.
As for HDMI, here is the late Charles Hansen's opinion on that: https://www.audioasylum.com/messages/pca...-interface

No doubt Quentin will be working feverishly on another grovelling letter to tell us about how much they value our patience while they raise another round of funding for the next vanity project.

[meeotch]

I think I agree with ogs on this. I get the distinct impression that customer support is doing its best to pretend the problem doesn't exist. It took me a month to get support to admit that the Dialog optical dropouts thing was a known problem (for which they promised a fix was "coming soon"). In the year that's passed since then, I haven't had a single support rep acknowledge that it's design problem, rather than an issue with how I've set up the equipment. Two different reps in the past week have told me straight out that wifi should work with no dropouts.

This could be due to bad information sharing on their end, of course. But if they are knowingly selling gear with features that don't work correctly, that's class action territory, imho.

Either way, I think it's important that we remain vocal, both in terms of sharing info here, and in terms of letting Devialet know that we're not satisfied when the gear "sort of" works as described. Even if, as ogs suggested, we're in the minority for caring.

UPDATE w.r.t the optical splitter: After several days, I got an email from the same support rep with an amazon link to a splitter that specifically says in its description that only one of its outputs is active at a time. Not even a recommendation for a product that is known to work - just something she googled up, and as it turns out is not suited to the application.
https://www.amazon.com/VIMVIP-Toslink-Di...o+splitter

[Gremlin]

If the equipment is not up to standard, demand a refund under the guarantee/warranty. If you all do that, Devialet will be forced to take action to do something about it rather than developing substandard soundbars for Sky.

[ogs]

@meeotch I think the splitter you got linked from support is the right kind, despite the text that says 'only use one ... at the time'. It seems to be a passive type that splits light with a prism so it is worth trying - if you have a Toslink output you can use.. Both output ports should work simultaneously, but the strength of the light is probably a bit weaker due to splitting.

[alandbush]

UPDATE w.r.t the optical splitter:  After several days, I got an email from the same support rep with an amazon link to a splitter that specifically says in its description that only one of its outputs is active at a time.  Not even a recommendation for a product that is known to work - just something she googled up, and as it turns out is not suited to the application.
https://www.amazon.com/VIMVIP-Toslink-Di...o+splitter

This looks identical to the unit that I use successfully to output two optical signals from one input signal.

If you look at the accompanying diagrams, the wording that indicates only one output is active at a time refers to using two optical inputs into one output, i.e. two sources feeding either a pre-amp, integrated amp, av processor, dac etc. etc.  Clearly, in this case, only one of the sources can be active at a time.

Buy with confidence, although I got it cheaper still via eBay.

[Schumy]

It's almost a year since the last post.

I am new to Devialet: 2 new Golds and 1 new Dialog, I get regular drop outs on 1 channel while the other channel plays fine. This is when using the Dialog optical input. Playing other sources direct such as Spotify via Airplay is more stable.

I originally thought might be a PLC issue but after reading this entire thread, I'm thinking the issue is the Dialog optical.

Is everyone still experiencing the same dropouts?

[ragwo]

The dropouts are still there.