Does Devialet produce "alive" music?

[ogs]

Thanks a lot for sharing, I’m not saying dev does not sound good, it does. Just that when you can clearly hear a voice “in the room” that makes my hair rise and now this feeling is not as I would like it to have.

In the old days (around 1970-80) it was 'common knowledge' among audio circuit designers that the distortion spectrum of an amp was part of it's character. Modern designs like ADH in Devialet does not follow this thinking (same as most other amp designs of today). This distortion graph from Stereophile's test of the D-Premier is a good illistration:
   
Note that 3rd, 5th, 7th etc distortion is dominant while 2nd, 4th, 6th etc is generally lower. With the old thinking it should be 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th etc for the amp (or circuit) to sound neutral. That was all analog design.

The new switching amps are different, but it is important to remember that Devialet also differs here as ADH (Analog Digital Hybrid) contains a pure class A analog voltage amplifier in parallel with the switching amp (it is rumoured that Devialet considered a tube stage for the class A amp, but abandoned the idea). The graph shows distortion is very low in level. Many will argue that at these low levels, distortion is not a factor any more. Others disagree and feel that a low distortion tube amp, which typically has the classic distortion spectrum, will sound more "in the room".
There are of course many other factors that may be more important than the distortion spectrum.