AIR1 v AIR2 v Spark

[ThierryNK]

Hi

I got emails from some of you to invite me to participate to this thread. This is very nice, sympathetic and flattering, but the topic is difficult, and I do not know everything about AIR and Devialet, I had one D-Premier at home during 2 weeks to try to understand what was wrong with AIR Wifi, then some people brought me, quite recently D200 to evaluate the audio performance, and I have some friends that have D200 or D800.

Here are what I think I know, and NOT what I know for sure, I can be wrong. Consider all that follows somewhere between facts for experiments and hypothesis for other things.

AIR WIFI
AIR WIFI was very fragile on the D-Premier. Not only for dropouts, but from simple network implementation.
A port scan, sending some bytes on every port of Devialet Wifi interface, made the interface crash, with the obligation of reboot.
There was only 1 Wifi signal seen seen by my Wifi scanner, and it was mine. So no Wifi interference.
The Wifi access point was 2 meters from the D-Premier, in direct view, so no Wifi communication issue.
From my point of view, it is only a very bad implementation of network protocols.
If a port scan could make the Devialet interface crash, then any Wifi traffic could make the interface crash.

I DO NOT KNOW is this has been corrected by Devialet.
2 weeks ago, at a friend's, on a standalone Wifi network (no other stuff connected to this Wifi), with 0 other Wifi network, with a one meter distance between Devialet D800 and the wifi access point, there were still dropouts.

When I went to Maison Devialet one year ago, Devialet people advised me not to use Wifi.

AIR
To my knowledge, the computer has ALWAYS been the place where track decoding happens.
Because
- there seems that there is no chip in Devialet able to do track decoding.
- sniffing what was sent on network showed that it is not files that are transmitted
- UPNP would have been implemented in one week

In first implementation of AIR, track decoding was made by Devialet Software on the computer, iTunes being the interface, exactly as in Audirvana first version. This is coherent with the fact that they could do 24/192 at a time when iTunes was not able of 24/192.
But writing an audio software is a full time job, with real software, hardware, OS Kernel, APIs, etc,  experts. Not the core competencies of Devialet teams (to my knowledge)

So, to my knowledge Devialet stopped making the track decoding, relying on external audio softwares, iTunes, Audirvana, Foobar, etc, at a time when iTunes was also updated to read 24/192 tracks.
And I definitively think it is a very good decision. (By the way, I think that Roon makes the opposite mistake by developing an audio software, when their added value is elsewhere with databases coherent accesses, tags, etc, their bashing of UPNP just shows that either they do not know anything about audio and UPNP, either it is a dirty marketing position)

Devialet kept (or improved)  their audio transfer protocol. And I have the feeling that it is something very similar to USB transfer protocol, sent by ethernet or USB.

White noise
Sorry guys, but I do not have a clue about it, and I never experimented it, I do not have a Devialet at home.

Kind regards