Roon RAAT for Expert Pro

[David A]

Confused quoted "- MQA, TIDAL and web radio compatibility" and that begs the question of what "compatibility" means. MQA encoded material plays on devices that don't have any form of MAQ capability so it can be argued that Devialet devices are already "MQA compatible". That highlights the big problem of releasing product which is only partially functional at the release date with further functionality promised down the road. No one has any idea of what this statement really means until it is delivered on and then we're likely to start hearing complaints that what is delivered isn't what is promised when exactly what was promised anyway was never clear.

I'll put a different spin on the lack of info or apparent action on delivering all of those things. Early this year I remember Devialet stating that RAAT was their first priority for future CI board features. If they meant that statement then what that probably meant was that RAAT was the next thing which would be delivered because delivering on something else before RAAT would indicate that whatever was delivered first was the first priority, not RAAT. On that basis I haven't been expecting to see or hear other things before the RAAT update.

I'll also note that the statement Confused quoted had MQA and Tidal in the one "promise" and Tidal is the main source of MQA content at present so perhaps delivery on MQA is dependent on delivery of Tidal, whatever both of those promises mean. Is Devialet considering some sort of deal with Tidal which results in Tidal delivering an app which streams to the Devialet something like Roon currently does using Devialet's AIR protocol or is Devialet planning to come up with its own interface for accessing Tidal? They've also promised an improved remote control app which would work for both the Experts and the Phantoms, and an app which controls the original Phantoms and the new Reaktors. The odds are that that's one app for all 3 product lines and an app has been promised for sometime in the first half of 2019 so perhaps we'll see that app include a Tidal interface. There's probably going to have to be a FW update to work with the new app and they could roll out first unfold MQA capability in that FW release but I do remember seeing a statement that second unfold MQA capability wasn't on the cards because it caused problems with Devialet's ADH technology. My bet on "MQA compatibility" is that it doesn't extend to anything past first unfold capability but we don't know because Devialet have never stated what they meant by that and I have a sneaking suspicion that it means different things to some people here than it did to Devialet when they wrote that statement.

Now if they had had all of these things ready to go when they released the CI board we wouldn't be arguing about what we are going to get and when we are going to get it, but we also wouldn't have the CI board yet and that wouldn't be sitting well with anyone given the promises made about the CI board when they introduced the Expert Pro line. All of this mess and confusion comes from introducing products which are intended to deliver more than they can deliver on release but that seems to be as much a Devialet trait as failing to meet their stated time line for feature releases.

I use Roon so I already have first unfold MQA and Tidal functionality built into Roon so I'm not really worried about their timeline or lack of info for whatever they're doing in relation to those things but I can understand people who don't use Roon being upset about progress. I'd just like to see the RAAT update delivered quickly and I'm annoyed at the failure to deliver on that in accordance with their promised time frame.