AIR 3 Beta for Mac

[GuillaumeB]

I've just done a very quick test of AIR 3 beta vs Melco N1A with just a couple of tracks, not super audiophile tracks at all but just stuff I listen to. Nick Drake's 'One Of These Things First  (HDTracks 24/96 version) and Sufjan Stevens 'The Only Thing' (CD rip).  Both FLAC files.
I'm using AIR 3 on a 2011 MacBook Air with Audivarna 2.5 - default settings except integer & direct mode turned off. Files being played are on local disk.
Melco connected via USB to the Devialet, and using Minimserver.

From this very brief test I find AIR 3 more transparent. It's slightly easier to follow individual instruments. Bass is wonderfully well-defined. It does sound very jitter-free.
Melco is very very slightly 'blurrier'. It's perhaps more 'analogue'.  I can imagine a lot of people would prefer this.

They are very close! There really isn't a lot in it and I think I would struggle to differentiate in a blind test.  My inclination is towards AIR 3 in this instance.   The problem is I don't like the usability of the AIR 3 options as I have them (Audivarna or iTunes on a MacBook) and prefer playing tracks from my iPad so in general usage I think I'd go back to the Melco.

The interesting thing is that I never really liked AIR 2. It always tended to be towards the bottom of my playback choices even when it wasn't spitting out white noise or dropouts, so this is a real result for me for AIR 3.  Now if only they could port the AIR 3 sender to run on Melco ...

Wow this is amazing! But it doesn't surprise me based on what I've been hearing over the past few days. I will do a comparison with the totaldac tomorrow. My hunch is that it's getting very close too, certainly with streamed material from Qobuz desktop it almost felt as though AIR 3 was edging ahead. It's the vocals that are getting me, so holographic and the speakers are just disappearing.

I'd love to know what Devialet have done with AIR 3. This is really special. 

Guillaume