Audio Science Review of Expert 200.

[petrik]

That is quite possible.

I can't remember where, but i have twice read about Devialet's poor measurements in past, due to SAM being on as found later on. And the measurements were done by well-known reviewers. I've ignored any measurements presented in "audio media" since then.

Yep. For example Stereophile and Stereoplay both have published not so optimal measurement results of the Devialet Expert.

I would really like to see some measurements that would prove that Devialet's official figures like signal-to-noise ratio 130dB and distortion 0,0005% are really true. Or are these numbers just marketing? I hope that's not the case.

If your ears can't tell you, does it really matter? Many people buy valve amps, knowing fully well that they give a somewhat distorted euphonic sound. But they buy them because they like that sound. The 'marketing' never was part of my buying decision.

I see Devialet as an engineering company that makes sure that their products measure well. Many of their published materials, like web page and white papers, regarding the D-Premier, Expert, and Expert Pro is based on great measured performance. This gives an impression that the measurements are very important for them and that they do take a good care of excellent measured performance before releasing new products / upgrades. We also saw great measured performance on the D-Premier, I think those measurements were done by Stereophile on 2010.

If their products do not measure fine in reality, at least I would be really disappointed.

That said, the Devialet Expert can be hard to measure since it has many unique features (variable input sensitivity, DPM, SAM, ICM, etc). I can totally understand that it's very hard for a reviewer to know what settings to use when taking measurements. Many of these settings do affect to the measured performance.