Is AIR getting better in the Pro era? Thoughts of little steps.....

[Confused]

What exactly do you have in mind by "less processing of the data flow"?  Do you mean there might be some DSP done on what comes in via AES/SPDIF but not on the AIR/USB data?  Given that it's all digital anyway, why would you be concerned about that?  (I am genuinely interested in your thinking, not being argumentative.)

I do not know really... we'd need the block-diagram to know exactly, but I am thinking that AES/SPDIF has a separate receiver chip while AIR is "directly" connected and USB with the XMOS processor may be connected similarly to AIR. This is all guesswork anyway, but from listening I have a feeling AES is somehow less transparent than AIR which leads me to this.

Yes, there is one clear difference between AIR/USB and AES/SPDIF, AIR/USB are both asynchronous protocols, AES/SPDIF is not.  Which takes us back to how exactly the Devialet 'extracts' the clock from the AES/SPDIF feed.  I would love some more details on this point, if nothing else it would give me a clue as to if adding a Mutec REF10 might offer a sensible improvement or not.