D220 pro CI vs D440 pro CI

[Confused]

@David A  - excellent advice.  Speaker placement can make a big difference as can listening position.  The challenge I often faced with room treatments is that I spent a lot of time (and money) getting it mostly wrong before I learned enough to get it mostly right hence the suggestion for finding a pro initially.  And as David indicates... start slow... it's easy to over-treat a room and kill the sound.

Here's an interesting article on using bass traps... there's some good info there but don't let it overwhelm you (as it did me at first ;-)

http://arqen.com/bass-traps-101/placement-guide/

Good luck!  This is why we love this hobby, right?

Thanks for all the room treatment and speaker placement advice.  I noticed that I am getting quite a bit of sibilant sound with female vocals (e.g. Diana Krall). I read somewhere that this is common with Devialet. Any recommendations?

I think there has been some excellent advice from the others in this thread, but I have some points to add.  This has been mentioned before, but one thing you really should try is running via AIR Ethernet (or Wifi) as an alternative to USB.  It might be a little bit of hassle and effort to work out how to do it, but it might just give some of the improvement you are after for very little cost.  The link below is to Devialet's almost useful guide to AIR, take a look here, this should get you started.  If you have any issues getting AIR set up and running I am sure you will find lots of help on this forum.  Well worth a try.  It is almost like you have an expensive reclocking source device sat unused in a box next to you hifi, all you have to do is work out how to connect it up. 

https://help.devialet.com/hc/en-us/artic...vialet-Air-

The advice re room treatment is good, but obviously a lot of time and effort is required to get this right.  Based on your sibilant comment I wonder if your system currently has a slightly bright balance to the tonal presentation.  I think the high frequency performance of the Pro is very revealing of any minor issues that might exist in the recording, you could say brutally revealing.  (and a lot of recordings are bad in this regard)  So if you have this in combination with a speaker and room set up that is itself inherently bright, then this simply exasperates the situation.  Not exactly a purist suggestion, but you could try tweaking the treble down by maybe -3dB, or even try -6dB.  In combination, maybe go up a touch on the bass, +2dB or something.  This is completely free and very easy to do, and might just help get the balance you are after.  (I have been reading about the Dutch and Dutch 8C active speakers, the rom correction DSP apparently gives in-room frequency response measurement to produce a downward/sloping tilt of ~20 Hz to -10 dB at 20 kHz to be "perceived as neutral") 

OK - The room treatment solution is the better long term solution, but tweaking the tone controls is something you could try today.  Maybe just run the amp with -6dB treble for the weekend and see how you get on?  Once you have forgotten that you have done such a terrible non-purist thing as tweak your tone controls, you might actually find that you start enjoying the music more, which is what it is all about in the end.