Picking up on Guillaume's thought for the day, I was wondering how many current D800's started life as a D240/250, and were then later upgraded to a D800 with the purchase of a companion. The point being that when the D400 appeared in 2014, the 250 more or less disappeared from Devialet's website, and although you could still buy a D250, conventional wisdom was that the D400 was a better buy. So how many people bought a 'straight' D500 or D800, rather than going D250, companion later? I have no idea, but I would say that it is clear that the D400 must have stalled D250 sales, and thus stopping people going for the more financially gradual route of D250, then D800. Take myself as an example, I bought a D240 in 2013, I did audition the D500 but at the time could not justify the extra cost, but then in 2014 I bought a companion to make a D800. I recon that if the D400 was available in 2013, I would have bought that, and I would have a D400 now.
So this begs the question of what will the final model range be? Will there be a replacement for the D250 pushed as the ultimate one box solution? The D350 Pro Plus or something? Thinking though the effect the arrival of the D400 would have made on 250 sales, and thus upgrades to D800's, I'm wondering if the D1000's market could indeed be a little saturated. Does this matter? Maybe not, perhaps enough lovely profit will be made upgrading existing D800's and D-Premiers.
As for the new DAC..... OK, I have no idea what the new DAC specification is, I have simply read the same marketing nonsense as everyone else. However, there have been a few posts re support for DSD, DXD and so on. OK, I get this, but one point to keep in mind is that the ADH core, the very essence of a Devialet, is native PCM. So any DSD support will be via conversion prior to feeding the ADH core. Unless I'm very wrong here, true native DSD with a Devialet would be impossible. One point to note though, having heard the staggeringly good performance of a D800 being fed DSD via a dCS front end, I'm not sure if this matters too much in the real world. I'd take real world performance over paper specs every time.
So this begs the question of what will the final model range be? Will there be a replacement for the D250 pushed as the ultimate one box solution? The D350 Pro Plus or something? Thinking though the effect the arrival of the D400 would have made on 250 sales, and thus upgrades to D800's, I'm wondering if the D1000's market could indeed be a little saturated. Does this matter? Maybe not, perhaps enough lovely profit will be made upgrading existing D800's and D-Premiers.
As for the new DAC..... OK, I have no idea what the new DAC specification is, I have simply read the same marketing nonsense as everyone else. However, there have been a few posts re support for DSD, DXD and so on. OK, I get this, but one point to keep in mind is that the ADH core, the very essence of a Devialet, is native PCM. So any DSD support will be via conversion prior to feeding the ADH core. Unless I'm very wrong here, true native DSD with a Devialet would be impossible. One point to note though, having heard the staggeringly good performance of a D800 being fed DSD via a dCS front end, I'm not sure if this matters too much in the real world. I'd take real world performance over paper specs every time.
1000 Pro - KEF Blade - iFi Zen Stream - Mutec REF10 - MC3+USB - Pro-Ject Signature 12
