Guillaume's hi-fi system

[GuillaumeB]

My hi-fi system comprises of a Devialet 800 made up of two 250s. These are being fed by a Simaudio Moon MiND 180 which is essentially a UPnP renderer with a number of high quality digital outputs. This solution has enabled me to preserve my original UPnP network-based setup with a QNAP 419P NAS with 3 (1TB) bays set up as a RAID 5 and 1 (1TB) bay as a backup volume. I use AudioQuest Diamond ethernet cables between the NAS and Draytech router and between my switch and MiND 180. Connecting the Draytech to switch is a 20M run of AQ carbon Cat7. The switch sits next the hi-fi rack, which is a Spectral High End rack with 19mm thick glass shelves.

(My previous system was a Linn Klimax DS with Linn Klimax Kontrol and Solos and therefore was UPnP-based)

My speakers are Wilson Audio Sophia 3s although these will soon be upgraded to Sasha 2s. My speaker cables are Chord Sarum.

I use Transparent XL digital cables (an S/PDIF and an AES/EBU) to connect the two Devialet units together and the MiND 180 to the master unit.

Power-wise I have a dedicated consumer unit for hi-fi duties with 8 individual circuits feeding a double socket via 6mm T&E, therefore all my components sit on separate circuits. Of the 8 wall sockets, 3 are Furutech GTX-D US-style duplex wall outlets. Each Devialet unit is therefore connected to its own wall socket (the third one is currently unused but was fitted for future proofing).

Mains cables-wise I use Entreq's top of the range Atlantis power cables, these feature Furutech's heavy duty FI-50M ceramic/carbon fittings with US plugs. Each Atlantis mains cable is in turn connected to a Silver Tellus ground box via an Atlantis earth cable.

The two Devialet units and MiND 180 are connected to a separate Entreq Silver Tellus ground box using Apollo ground cables.

I have 4 GIK acoustic panels in the two front corners of the room (with two stacked from ground to ceiling on each side), these are Tri-Trap corner bass traps.

Guillaume

Hi Guillaume,

I am new to the site as I am currently researching Devialet and a possible upgrade to my system.

I am interested that you have moved away from a Linn based system to Devialet, especially as the Klimax DS is often considered the pinnacle of streaming devices. I have a Linn Renew DS fed from a QNAP HS 210 with 1tb of SSD via Cisco router.

The QNAP has USB output that I could connect directly to the Devialet, I Believe?

How would you compare the streaming capability of the Devialet compared to the Klimax DS?

I understand it is more flexible but for flac files, would you say it was an improvement?

So many questions

Thanks in advance

Graham

Hi Graham,

Welcome to Devialet Chat!

Devialet does not currently support UPnP therefore you would need to use AIR, which is Devialet's proprietary streaming software. The Devialet approach relies on using a PC or a Mac to push music to the Devialet. There are a number of different flavours of AIR (or rather implementations of AIR), with some streaming via wifi and others using a wired ethernet connection.

Personally I did not want to lose my existing UPnP setup so I opted for a stand alone UPnP render which I connect to the Devialet via a digital cable. That way I don't need to worry about computers and I can access my existing FLAC collection.

There are rumours that there might be UPnP coming to Devialet sometime soon.

Now to sound quality. Since the Devialet combines DAC and amplifier in one box it's difficult to divorce one from the other. So really you have to compare to a complete Linn Klimax system. To my ears it was a very big improvement.

Having said that the KDS is a very fine streamer but compared to the Devialet I would say that the Devialet is a bit more transparent and the amplifier section just works so much better than the KK + Solo combo.

Cheers,

Guillaume