UK event with Mathieu Pernot - 17 July

[Greg]

Prior to purchasing my first Expert, I actually did hesitate about whether I wanted audio equipment that would evolve through firmware updates.  My concern at that point was that it meant a long-term commitment by Devialet that would not likely be generating revenue.  Still, I felt it sounded better than anything else I've heard including systems costing quite a bit more.  When Devialet announced the Pro and CI integration I felt that a) my initial investment never did see much upgrades and b) here I was contemplating another significant investment.  Yet it I jumped because I loved my Expert and figured the 220 (and later 440) would be even better.  Surely once the CI integration was complete, we'd begin to see some real progress including the promised Roon RAAT along with other promised features.

And here we are... Hey, I still absolutely love the way my system sounds.  Roon works fine via AIR and mostly fine with RAAT if I keep network speed down.

Will we ever see more significant upgrades?  I'm not holding my breath and not making any more audio decisions that depend on it.

I think there are a couple of issues here.

First is a different kind of expectation bias. What the punter expects as sale included a promise of continual developmental sound improvement. One has to question how far this can go? It is interesting that there are several members, me included who are totally satisfied with their sound. How can you improve on total satisfaction?

The other question or issue is probably associated with Devialet’s marketing. Hi-Fi/reproduced music lovers are notorious for wanting always to improve their system sound. It has been referred to as hunting down and finding the holy grail. A pointless waste of time as finding the holy grail is unachievable. In other words, the Devialet owner in pursuit of perfection unrealistically expects Devialet to deliver. Well, they won’t and never will!

i like my Devialet Sound because for me, given the limitations of my listening room environment, I get a pretty complete and accurate reproduction of what happened in the recording studio (recording engineer bias accepted) and something pretty presentable with live recordings. My room will never transpose into the original venue, but that doesn’t mean no good quality sound. In terms of domestic sound reproduction, I suspect Devialet may have hit the ceiling. Certainly it is at a height good enough for me.

Grumbling about functionality becomes moot. At the moment, for my needs, I have no issue, apart from my complaint about phonostage hiss and in fairness to Mathieu, he has asked me to send him directly in person, a digital recording of this hiss. I have an exterior phonostage work around, but it is good Mathieu wants to engage with me on this.

Yes, I was disappointed to hear that the Devialet marketing emphasis has shifted away from the amplifiers (I felt Mathieu was empathetic here, but was constrained by company policy) but f*ck me, what needs to be done to make it sound better?

All written subject to my personal circumstance. I appreciate others circumstances and expectation of the C/I board upgrade may be different.