I attended the OAC event. First I have to say that @thumb5 produced an excellent and accurate summary of the Q&A with Mathieu Pernot, post #78. I sat through the Q&A, and chipped in here and there, but full credit to Ian, he worked hard getting the answers for a sometimes reluctant to say too much Mathieu, a good job done.
As for the mood of the event, @brit pretty much sums up my feelings in post #79.
I have a little to add. For me, Mathieu seamed very downbeat, maybe a little dejected by things. That said, I came away with the distinct impression that Mathieu cares deeply about the Expert range, and wants Devialet Expert owners to continue to be happy. However, it seams to me that the focus within Devialet in now firmly aimed at the mass market products, and this is where the available recourses will be concentrated. I suspect that in the future any new features or improvements to the Expert software / CI Board will arrive as a "trickle down" form Reactor / Phantom development. (which was also the case with SAM, as it happens) Note the comments in #78 about the unified remote control app being released for Phantom and Reactor before the Expert series. This is the future I think, new goodies, streaming service compatibility and similar will be developed only for the more mass market kit, and then ported to the Expert later. One interesting statistic came up in conversation, apparently there are about 7000 Expert amps sold, the Phantom & Reactor range is now heading over 100,000 units and counting. Also consider that the Expert is the older product and hence has been available longer.
A related factor to this is availability of resources. Apparently Devialet have staff on the software side of things that end up being offered deals in the USA for three time the salary, this is clearly making staff retention an issue. OK, you could argue that Devialet should spend the money to get the staff they need, but if demand exceeds supply then this gets very expensive, and ultimately it is the customers that pay for this. It is what it is I think.
The discussion about the phono stage hiss was interesting. Mathieu was taking this issue very seriously, almost personally, and he did state that if anyone has a noisy phono stage the reasons for this should be established and the issue fixed. But he is a man who likes data, it is all very well one guy saying the hiss is excessive and another saying it is OK, what Mathieu likes is data. A others have mentioned, Mathieu's suggestion is that anyone who has the phono hiss should make a digital recording of the hiss and send to him. This is a great idea I think. If enough people can do this that it would help establish if this is a general issue, or if there are significant variations between the phono stages. Data is good. (perhaps something for another thread)
Now for a bit of trivia. Mathieu and OAC's Jon were having a chat, and the topic of 1000 Pro's came up, apparently there is a "cluster" of 1000 Pro owners in the broad area around Oxford, more than anywhere else in the world. What this might tell us about middle Englanders or the deals at OAC I really could not say.
In terms of the rest of the event, I listened to the second session run through from 140 Pro to 1000 Pro. This time everything was pretty slick. It is not possible to make any definitive statements based on a very rapid run through four amplifiers, with unfamiliar speakers & music. The speakers were Wilson Sabina's and the 140 Pro appeared to do a perfectly good job driving them. Oddly enough, for me the biggest delta in sound quality between the models was between the 440 Pro and 1000 Pro, but it was a super quick listen between four models with unfamiliar speakers, so I could be kidding myself here. What I find is that irrespective of the amplification, I start to build judgments on the speakers, which distracts for the amplifier comparison. As a final bit of trivia, it was nice to see that the participants in session 2 were not all male, yes, ladies present. To be clear, I am not talking about wives / girlfriends / partners who were dutifully sitting next to their male audiophile better halves pretending to take an interest. Indeed, in this case we had one young lady who was talking knowledgably about the Devialet range and her KEF Ref 5's. I might be wrong, but I suspect that this was our forum's Laura. Great to see I have to say.
EDIT: How rude of me! I forgot to thanks to Jon and the guys at OAC. A very well organised event, great hospitality and good fun all 'round. Top class!
As for the mood of the event, @brit pretty much sums up my feelings in post #79.
I have a little to add. For me, Mathieu seamed very downbeat, maybe a little dejected by things. That said, I came away with the distinct impression that Mathieu cares deeply about the Expert range, and wants Devialet Expert owners to continue to be happy. However, it seams to me that the focus within Devialet in now firmly aimed at the mass market products, and this is where the available recourses will be concentrated. I suspect that in the future any new features or improvements to the Expert software / CI Board will arrive as a "trickle down" form Reactor / Phantom development. (which was also the case with SAM, as it happens) Note the comments in #78 about the unified remote control app being released for Phantom and Reactor before the Expert series. This is the future I think, new goodies, streaming service compatibility and similar will be developed only for the more mass market kit, and then ported to the Expert later. One interesting statistic came up in conversation, apparently there are about 7000 Expert amps sold, the Phantom & Reactor range is now heading over 100,000 units and counting. Also consider that the Expert is the older product and hence has been available longer.
A related factor to this is availability of resources. Apparently Devialet have staff on the software side of things that end up being offered deals in the USA for three time the salary, this is clearly making staff retention an issue. OK, you could argue that Devialet should spend the money to get the staff they need, but if demand exceeds supply then this gets very expensive, and ultimately it is the customers that pay for this. It is what it is I think.
The discussion about the phono stage hiss was interesting. Mathieu was taking this issue very seriously, almost personally, and he did state that if anyone has a noisy phono stage the reasons for this should be established and the issue fixed. But he is a man who likes data, it is all very well one guy saying the hiss is excessive and another saying it is OK, what Mathieu likes is data. A others have mentioned, Mathieu's suggestion is that anyone who has the phono hiss should make a digital recording of the hiss and send to him. This is a great idea I think. If enough people can do this that it would help establish if this is a general issue, or if there are significant variations between the phono stages. Data is good. (perhaps something for another thread)
Now for a bit of trivia. Mathieu and OAC's Jon were having a chat, and the topic of 1000 Pro's came up, apparently there is a "cluster" of 1000 Pro owners in the broad area around Oxford, more than anywhere else in the world. What this might tell us about middle Englanders or the deals at OAC I really could not say.
In terms of the rest of the event, I listened to the second session run through from 140 Pro to 1000 Pro. This time everything was pretty slick. It is not possible to make any definitive statements based on a very rapid run through four amplifiers, with unfamiliar speakers & music. The speakers were Wilson Sabina's and the 140 Pro appeared to do a perfectly good job driving them. Oddly enough, for me the biggest delta in sound quality between the models was between the 440 Pro and 1000 Pro, but it was a super quick listen between four models with unfamiliar speakers, so I could be kidding myself here. What I find is that irrespective of the amplification, I start to build judgments on the speakers, which distracts for the amplifier comparison. As a final bit of trivia, it was nice to see that the participants in session 2 were not all male, yes, ladies present. To be clear, I am not talking about wives / girlfriends / partners who were dutifully sitting next to their male audiophile better halves pretending to take an interest. Indeed, in this case we had one young lady who was talking knowledgably about the Devialet range and her KEF Ref 5's. I might be wrong, but I suspect that this was our forum's Laura. Great to see I have to say.
EDIT: How rude of me! I forgot to thanks to Jon and the guys at OAC. A very well organised event, great hospitality and good fun all 'round. Top class!
1000 Pro - KEF Blade - iFi Zen Stream - Mutec REF10 - MC3+USB - Pro-Ject Signature 12
