Audio Science Review of Expert 200.

[ssfas]

Amir has reached out to Devialet for a response.
There are questions that could easily be cleared up but I wonder if they will be as woefully uncommunicative on this as they are with pretty much everything else….

I actually signed into that site and made about 8 posts before I was banned. I think I should be grateful. Someone else have taken over from me and will no doubt be receiving abuse as I type.

What happened is that a chap advertised a D200 for sale, the seller said he loved it and it worked perfectly, and Amir messaged that if it was sold into the USA could the seller send it via him and he'd test it, then send it on. So it gets sold and the seller sends it to Amir and in 5 minutes he's blown it up. How dare I express any suspicion. So of course Devialet is considered to be fundamentally faulty and the not inconsiderable number of sociopaths who post there post 30 pages of fairly abusive stuff, as if any Devialet owners, or Devialet themselves, give a damn. Of course assuming Devialet care is just a measure of ASR members' own feeling of self-importance in the audiophile world.

All I can say is that my D250 Expert Pro CI gives me and my family, all of whom use it, a lot of enjoyment and it has done since 2016, moreso since the Feb-2019 firmware that made it Roon Ready and functionally faultless. 

Frankly, I don't give a hoot if the THD is 0.0001% more than Devialet claim. I bought the unit because I went to a demo at an audio dealer and loved (a) the sound and (b) the functionality. I still do. I didn't read the marketing, which is fantastically bombastic, but which I find amusing and do not take it too seriously. 

Devialet also took me off the audio merry-go-round. My only significant purchases since 2016 have been Shunyata cables and an Innuos Roon server.

ASR does some good in highlighting that there are a lot of quite cheap products, such as nCore amplifiers and things by the likes of JDS and March, that are very competent products and offer good value for money.

I would add that I met Mathieu Pernot at a demo, he was a bit scary but after a chat very personable, after which I have no doubt that if he decided to design a toaster, it would undoubtedly be the best toaster in the world.