Will Devialet ever release new Expert features?

[petrik]

I also think that guys here are very unpatient. We have the update of the amplifier for 7 Month. And the streamer should arrive the next few months.
Isn't that a constant improvement?
And i also share the opinion taht it doesnt make sens for devialet to heavily tweek the system by now when they change an important part of it in the near future. so keep your head down, enjoy your actual Expert Pro and be happy as soon as the streamer board arrives.

Good point and I agree that sometimes we are being a bit unpatient.

Problem is that there is no information available on the OS/streamer board. I think that is causing the frustration. We don't even know when it is going to be released. There are only some rumors about Q4 so the actual release date could be in 2018. Another problem is that we don't know what exactly we are waiting for. No one knows what features it will support. It could be totally useless for many. People would like to know more so that they could do decision whether to wait for the OS/streamer board or to buy something else.

Let's compare this situation for example with Apple Homepod. Apple has released already quite much information about it (when it comes available, what features it will support, how it looks like, etc). We know almost nothing about the Devialet OS/streamer board.

Apple is a multi-multi billion dollar company - 116,000 full time employees according to Wikipedia - and is sitting on billions of dollars of spare cash.  Even then Apple only does major upgrades once a year.  I suspect Devialet is a bit more hand to mouth having to balance out cash flow against development expenditure.

It wouldn't require much cash to tell us what features the OS/streamer board will contain and when it will be released, would it? It's probably a company policy that they are not allowed to communicate with us.

[agentsmith]

I also think that guys here are very unpatient. We have the update of the amplifier for 7 Month. And the streamer should arrive the next few months.
Isn't that a constant improvement?
And i also share the opinion taht it doesnt make sens for devialet to heavily tweek the system by now when they change an important part of it in the near future. so keep your head down, enjoy your actual Expert Pro and be happy as soon as the streamer board arrives.

Good point and I agree that sometimes we are being a bit unpatient.

Problem is that there is no information available on the OS/streamer board. I think that is causing the frustration. We don't even know when it is going to be released. There are only some rumors about Q4 so the actual release date could be in 2018. Another problem is that we don't know what exactly we are waiting for. No one knows what features it will support. It could be totally useless for many. People would like to know more so that they could do decision whether to wait for the OS/streamer board or to buy something else.

Let's compare this situation for example with Apple Homepod. Apple has released already quite much information about it (when it comes available, what features it will support, how it looks like, etc). We know almost nothing about the Devialet OS/streamer board.

Apple is a multi-multi billion dollar company - 116,000 full time employees according to Wikipedia - and is sitting on billions of dollars of spare cash.  Even then Apple only does major upgrades once a year.  I suspect Devialet is a bit more hand to mouth having to balance out cash flow against development expenditure.

Devialet is far from hand to mouth.  In fact they received investments from Foxconn and LVMH and the like and total injection is north of 100M Euro.  I suspect in fact they have more capital than they know what to do with. 

And no matter how small you are, letting your customers know what they have paid for is not going to kill the company is it?

[agentsmith]

Also from what I heard from insiders, they are far from struggling both in terms of cash flow and development. Apparently they are "ahead of schedule" in development, but of course they cannot tell us that.

[f1eng]

It is much more relaxing to not continually look for updates but to listen to music, I find.
When there is an update I am thankful since my Goldmund amplifiers didn't have one in the 15 years I used them in my main system for listening to music several hours per day.
What is it that the Devialet needs?
OK there is always the question of streaming, where no logical standard seems to exist in the hifi business so the multiple choices are variously irritating, inconsistent and often useless (for classical music). But the inputs for normal sources are state of the art to my ears and I can enjoy LPs, CDs and streaming for background pop music without fretting about updates.
When the streamer board and other updates become available for my amp I will look forward to them, though the streamer board is of little interest to me unless it magically finds classical works in a logical sequence until then I have been simlpy listening to music.

I really think Devialet made a rod for their own backs by making their amp user updateable. Most other high end companies make it dealer only or difficult in the rare case where an update is possible, mostly it isn't of course.

[agentsmith]

Also from what I heard from insiders, they are far from struggling both in terms of cash flow and development.  Apparently they are "ahead of schedule" in development, but of course they cannot tell us that.

It is much more relaxing to not continually look for updates but to listen to music, I find.
When there is an update I am thankful since my Goldmund amplifiers didn't have one in the 15 years I used them in my main system for listening to music several hours per day.
What is it that the Devialet needs?
OK there is always the question of streaming, where no logical standard seems to exist in the hifi business so the multiple choices are variously irritating, inconsistent and often useless (for classical music). But the inputs for normal sources are state of the art to my ears and I can enjoy LPs, CDs and streaming for background pop music without fretting about updates.
When the streamer board and other updates become available for my amp I will look forward to them, though the streamer board is of little interest to me unless it magically finds classical works in a logical sequence until then I have been simlpy listening to music.

I really think Devialet made a rod for their own backs by making their amp user updateable. Most other high end companies make it dealer only or difficult in the rare case where an update is possible, mostly it isn't of course.

I understand that upgradability is not necessary nor possible in most platforms.  Although I was surprised to find that that the dCS Debussy which I bought years ago is still being updated with new improvements, this time quad DSD or something like that.  

But with the new computer audio where technology keeps changing, people expects some upgradability for high end components.  While you may not think much about this feature, upgradability and versatility are key reasons why we bought this machine.

And do not forget that we paid a handsome sum to have a next generation upgrade, not update.  It is something that was paid for like a new component.

So I respectably disagree when you think Devialet is doing us a favour by having their machine upgradable and promise new upgrades.

[Hifi_swlon]

Just to be clear, my intention was to see whether anyone else felt there would ever be future, free, feature upgrades in line with Devialet's EVO blurb which they still use as a selling point for the Experts.

Whether or not they should have offered this in the first place, or whether we need new features, is somewhat immaterial. As are any conversations about the Pro line or streamerboard - the Pros were a new model (or paid hardware upgrade), and the streamerboard simply a part of the Pro that wasn't ready in time - so neither relate to this notion of regular free updates and new features.

As for needing them, there are plenty of useful features that are still missing from the experts - like Room Correction - which would be great to have.

But I can't think when the last time a genuine new feature came along.  

If of course Devialet took the line of some comments here and said "you know what we don't think you need any more new features so we're not doing any" then that would be one thing, but that's not what they're saying.  Maybe they're working on something big? But if it relies on the Pros or the streamerboard, then it won't really be keeping true to the EVO principle for all non-Pro owners....

Meanwhile, contrary to popular belief, it is in fact possible to enjoy listening to music while pondering whether Devialet will ever add something new to the Experts - they're not mutually exclusive.  

@agentsmith I'd love to know what they're "ahead of schedule" on.

[Confused]

Some good posts on this thread so far, I agree with much (but not all!) that has been said.  I have reached the point now where I have moved Devialet the company to a special place in my mind.  I thoroughly enjoy my amp for what it is and how it performs now, and any thoughts as to what might happen in the future I use for general amusement, in no way do I worry about it too much.

I do have some thoughts on Hifi_swlon's original question though.  There was a kind of golden period just after the 'Expert' was launched, when every six months or so there would be a firmware update with some new goodies, and roughly once a year there would be something significant, such as SAM, RAM or whatever.  So this lead to the feeling that new goodies would keep on emerging.  Of course, no one needs any new features, but it was nice to think that maybe one day something would come along that would be fun or enhance your enjoyment.  Quite good for those hopeless upgraders too, you could at least resist replacing the amp with the thought that some kind of upgrade or new feature is coming.

Then all this stopped.  There were firmware updates, but no new features of any significance.  At the time many speculated that this was directly related to the Phantom project.  With the new Phantom & SPARK besieged with bugs and issues to fix, clearly the software guys had no time to develop new toys for the Expert, a case of limited resources and clear priorities.  Indeed, it could be argued that this barren phase has simply continued to the present day, due to the focus being on continued work on SPARK etc. and latterly the OS Board.

This takes us to the key element of this thread, predicting the future, or at least predicting what Devialet will do.  One observation I can make is that historically Devialet have proven to be utterly unpredictable.  Indeed, there has been a predictions thread on this forum for a couple of years and every year the result is much the same, we all predict lots of stuff, very little of it happens, Devialet do something else.  The one thing you CAN predict about Devialet is that they will be unpredictable.

So here are my predictions for new features:

Using optimism:  The Phantom / SPARK project is now maturing, when Devialet have finalised the OS Board there will come a period where Devialet have lots of resources available and a lot less bug fixing to do, at this time Devialet will have time to get back to all the little pet Expert projects that they have had in mind for a couple of years or so.  So a new golden age will begin, new TLA's new features, EVO updates will be back like we have never seen them before.  Indeed, we should remember SAM was actually a spin off from the Phantom project, so imagine with Devialet expanding into car audio, TV's and other areas, there could be all kinds of surprising new things that develop from synergies from other projects and can be integrated into the Expert EVO platform.

Using pessimism:  Devialet will never get on top of the bug fixing for SPARK, the OS Board or anything else, so there will never be resources for any EVO related toys or updates.  Furthermore, there is no desire now within Devialet to further develop the Expert anyway, the focus will be on ADH car audio, TV's and many other projects.  The Expert is drifting ever further away from Devialet's main focus.

Meanwhile folks.......   Enjoy the tunes

EDIT: I have just had a thought.... Regarding SAM, RAM and other fine Expert features, they all appeared absolutely out of nowhere. As far as I am aware, they were predicted by no one.

[Music or sound]

I do not expect any significant new upgrade of the amplification part of the experts after Pro but DSP can be further developed. I would be interested in better cross-over functionality and speaker correction past 200Hz but I am thinking that would be not a priority for most expert users.
I am all for speaker correction but room correction is a misnomer as one alters the speaker output and does not correct the room. The room has to be corrected by acoustical means so I hope Devialet continues to not implement room correction.
The main aspect that has to be improved and updated is connectivity to digital data. So one can hope that the "upcoming" streamer board will be a major improvement and make the experts competitive with others recent high end DACs/amps. I am thinking that USB will be never the optimal link and a more audio optimized connection like Ravenna or something similar will/should be the developed. That must be with a wider platform accepted by many more companies as Ravenna is now (Merging and Genelec).

[GuillaumeB]

The main aspect that has to be improved and updated is connectivity to digital data. So one can hope that the "upcoming" streamer board will be a major improvement and make the experts competitive with others recent high end DACs/amps. 

Speaking of which I tested a Linn KDS/3 this am.

It took me minutes to connect to Qobuz WITHOUT a computer in sight. It also found my library on my SonicTransporter (which is where Roon server resides) in seconds. Nice iPhone interface too.

No need for a standalone streamer, just an ethernet connection to the network.

If I'd wanted to I could have used the room correction that Linn offer too.

Guillaume

[petrik]

I am all for speaker correction but room correction is a misnomer as one alters the speaker output and does not correct the room. The room has to be corrected by acoustical means so I hope Devialet continues to not implement room correction.

I hope that it's ok if I disagree on this part In my opinion it would be great to have both, digital room and speaker correction so that one could enable/disable and tweak those features freely.

I have found digital room correction working extremely well for me. It requires a lot of tweaking to find a preferred target curve but it's all worth it - the results are so great. I could not even think about listening without digital room correction now. I have many acoustic panels and bass traps in my listening room but I only got minor improvements with those. I have a small room with many acoustic problems (like several -10 and -15db dips and then a massive +24db mode at 40hz). I got much better results by using digital room correction.

Therefore, I would hope Devialet to support both of these DSP features in the future.