22-Dec-2019, 12:17
For a company that has been focussed on the Phantom range and other dabbling, they've had a fair bit of favourable press for the Expert Pro range from Stereophile and Absolute Sound and ended the year with a brief preview of a review of the 220/440 from AudioStream which will apparently be published early next year. They've had to supply product for the reviews so they haven't quite been doing nothing and there's no reason to drum up positive reviews if you aren't prepared to do something to capitalise on them.
Having said that, I think this year has been a lost opportunity for Devialet with the Expert Pro range. The problems with the Roon Ready update and gigabit ethernet spoiled a good start to the year and there's been nothing to fix the problem or the remaining promise and issues still being worked on mentioned in the release notes for that firmware in February. They definitely have not kept faith with their customers. That's what makes this late year flurry of positive reviews which, given the lead time on publication and time for the reviewer to do their stuff, had to have kicked off at Devialet's end before mid-year, somewhat strange.
I don't think we'll see anything for Christmas but I do hope that we're going to see something more in the firmware early in 2020. Unfortunately that's a hope, not a prediction, and they've been dashing my hopes for the past 10 months.
Having said that, I think this year has been a lost opportunity for Devialet with the Expert Pro range. The problems with the Roon Ready update and gigabit ethernet spoiled a good start to the year and there's been nothing to fix the problem or the remaining promise and issues still being worked on mentioned in the release notes for that firmware in February. They definitely have not kept faith with their customers. That's what makes this late year flurry of positive reviews which, given the lead time on publication and time for the reviewer to do their stuff, had to have kicked off at Devialet's end before mid-year, somewhat strange.
I don't think we'll see anything for Christmas but I do hope that we're going to see something more in the firmware early in 2020. Unfortunately that's a hope, not a prediction, and they've been dashing my hopes for the past 10 months.
Roon Nucleus+, Devilalet Expert 140 Pro CI, Focal Sopra 2, PS Audio P12, Keces P8 LPS, Uptone Audio EtherREGEN with optical fibre link to my router, Shunyata Alpha NR and Sigma NR power cables, Shunyata Sigma ethernet cables, Shunyata Alpha V2 speaker cables, Grand Prix Audio Monaco rack, RealTRAPS acoustic treatment.
Brisbane, Qld, Australia
