Upgrade details

[thumb5]

Markush, thanks for your diligence and for posting that interesting summary of your call.

It seems to be a theme that personal contact with people high up in Devialet brings a sense of reassurance that they are trying to do the right thing.  I sincerely hope that the positive picture your conversation paints will be translated into reality.  Based on what you said, it should not be long to wait to see whether that starts to materialise -- I will be looking for the new discussion area on the website very soon; I see that as the first real commitment to a better style of communication between Devialet and its customers.  The next thing would be a properly-managed beta test cycle for AIR 3, I think.

[Confused]

markush - Excellent work!!  Thanks for making the effort to contact Devialet and report back, an excellent summary.  As someone who attended the Oxford event last week I have to say that much of this is new, in particular relating to communication and the proposed website discussion area.  I see this as very good news indeed, lets just hope it comes to fruition.

Regarding the new streamer board, this comment puzzled me; 'But so far there is hardly any hardware available that meets the high expectations / vision of Devialet'. At the Oxford event there were very few details regarding the streamer board, all I picked up was that it would be programmable, such that it had the potential be software updated for future protocols / usage, and that it would have an ARM processor.  So what does 'But so far there is hardly any hardware available that meets the high expectations / vision of Devialet'  actually mean?   Maybe I have misinterpreted this one, but it sounds like the streamer board is barely at 'concept' stage?   Plus, if there is no hardware in existence now that meets 'the high expectations of Devialet', I doubt that this situation will look much different in early 2017?

[Nightmare]

Until I proved wrong, these are all just poor excuses :-(

Always talking about the future. Not even dealed with the problems in the past ;-(

[Antoine]

Well done Markus, kudos to you and thank you for sharing! I'm actually kind of relieved to see that Devialet seems to have finally gotten the message.

A public discussion area on their website is IMO the biggest/best news and probably a big step for Devialet to take. It'll perhaps frighten them a bit considering the current tone here but I think it'll benefit both Devialet and us users a lot. Especially when they staff it with enthousiastic and knowledgeable people and not try to excercise too much control over it's contents.

Now let's see how they'll follow up on their intentions.

@Confused, what I think is meant is that they're deliberating if they'll bundle the upgrade with the new hardware/software (streaming/OS board) that's ready at the time of upgrade later this year but perhaps not mature enough yet or if they'll wait until it actually meets their set goals. Initially I read it like you did, so them still being in the design phase and looking on the market, but in vain, for the right components to implement their visioned product. Of course I could be completely wrong.

I would have liked to see Devialet wait until they had actually finished this new hardware and any other hardware or optimizations made before announcing/releasing any upgrade. After all it's been only two years since the previous line was released. Make a new product/upgrade really worthwile for your customers and fix your current issues first.

[Rufus McDufus]

Re: the streaming board - I'd like to think they've thought of approaching an existing manufacturer - e.g Sonore with their microRendu - but that's not really Devialet's way is it? (!) Technically I'm interested to see how they can update the OS on the new streaming board without removing it each time. I guess they must have the capability already built in but it's quite tricky stuff.

[Antoine]

This forum always seems like it's two forums in one, the Expert series forum and the Phantom series forum but a similar thread like this one with some very good points mentioned is here: http://devialetchat.com/showthread.php?tid=3246

Back in the day when I was still trying to be constructive regarding all matters Devialet I already wrote to them the obvious; they should always do what they say, and say what they do. This seems to be the message they're sending from that topic as well.

[Wdw]

Info should be available on 18th of July as far as I heard

Isn't this exactly what the guys at the Oxford event learned from the rep? Sounds like a standard song and dance to me.

What happened at the Oxford event? Participants had to signed NDAs?

Has anyone posted their experience with the Oxford event....haven't seen any comments?

[thumb5]

Has anyone posted their experience with the Oxford event....haven't seen any comments?

There's 15 pages or so here... http://devialetchat.com/showthread.php?tid=3145.

[Confused]

For what it's worth, at the Oxford Audio event, Devialet announced the cost of the D800 upgrade. Then someone asked about costs for the upgrade of other models, Devialet responded that they were giving details of the upgrades and prices to the dealers. It did sound to me like they had the details and were about to give everything to the dealers. However, it appears that that impression was slightly wrong!

[ogs]

Re: the streaming board - I'd like to think they've thought of approaching an existing manufacturer - e.g Sonore with their microRendu - but that's not really Devialet's way is it? (!) Technically I'm interested to see how they can update the OS on the new streaming board without removing it each time. I guess they must have the capability already built in but it's quite tricky stuff.

That would be nice! An OEM version of the microRendu inside our Expert amps... connected to the internal i2s bus. But then AIR must be ported to Linux/ARM. And there are lots of other problems arising from this too. Power to the board, firmware for two different architectures within the same box. As you say; tricky stuff. Confused reported in a post further up that Devialet is thinking of an ARM based streamer board. Makes it easier for them to follow streamer trends if they choose to do this.