Astra reviews

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Seems like Devialet started to pay for some people to come here and talk about how a downgraded spec Astra on any aspect being AMAZING Fun to see the desperateness.

I can assure I am not paid and do not work for Devialet. In fact, I bought an Astra while I was actually shopping for an Accuphase E-4000 or a Luxma 590 AXII MK 2.    I played those for hours in a store, got up to leave and say the Gold Leaf Astra Pro.  I had only heard about it, it isnt released in the US until August 4th.  They hooked it up to the same exact speakers I have a home, Fyne 702SP's.  I immediately realized that this was not from this earth.  It was not an old 75-year-old tech dressed up in a new box.  I knew I needed this; I could also solve three issues: Phono, Streamer, and unfatiguing clarity.  I bought it.   When I came on here and saw everyone trying to DOG IT as a bad amp, I felt it was completely unfair to the product.  It seems like everyone wants to judge it based on their White Papers rather than what their ears are telling them.   I have a VERY clear understanding of how this sounds vs. an Accuphase, several Luxmans, Yamaha S-3200s, Marantz Model 10 and 30.   IT IS VERY SPECIAL and I want to hear from people who have benched this thing for 300hrs, not from write ups.

Have you ever listened an Expert Pro? There are a lot of things that were trimmed down from Expert to Astra like ports (no AES/EBU), AIR and recently we discovered internally Astra operates at 24/96 while Expert is 24/192 etc. What we all say here is, the price is doubled, the tech is from 2017 (there is no single improvement on the tech pieces from Expert to Astra, SAM is the same, MAT is downgraded, Bitrate is downgraded, DAC is the same etc etc.) with cuts. That's it.

Expert 440 Pro are much more capable amps then a dual setup Astra and they are half priced in retail and today they are actually almost 25% of the Astra's price.

We are all trying to understand Devialet as we weren't able to achieve it for last 5 years I assume. Congrats on your purchase and we are all happy to see that you made a great investment, Experts are exceptional amps, carrying the 90% of the DNA we are all sure that Astra's are exceptional too. Don't feel bad about them but also understand others, we are trying to find reasons to upgrade but we weren't even able to see Astra as an upgrade over Experts and Devialet is not helping us to do so.