19-Jul-2019, 15:42
Thanks to Ian for writing up the questions and answers, to Mathieu and Alex for being there and especially to Jon and the team for hosting and looking after us.
It was the first time I've met people from Devialet and it was a worthwhile visit. The responses above give a good view of all the topics covered and the additions from people's side chats with the guys. A few observations that stood out for me were
- The company has grown and also changed over the years. The work on the Expert range provided a successful, new approach to delivering high quality sound in a quality and lifestyle product. They were then able to use this to trickle down to lower priced but much higher volume products, enabling more people to get good sound at good value.
- The product strategy and prioritisation is dynamic and and people get moved around in bulk accordingly. As Ian notes the Reactor prep, launch and support has been their signficant focus for the best part of a year to the exclusion of other enhancement work. Also increasing work on partneships like the Sky deal.
- They have acknowledged their customer support challenges and put real effort and people into this to help customers get the best from their kit. Networking issues form the majority of the issues arising and so they want to balance providing better app/web configurability without introducing more complexity and tech issues.
- Mathieu has been at the heart of the Expert design for many years and remains commited to it being their flagship that is progressed... but there are many competing requests for resources alongside massive retention challenges to find and keep the engineers they need.
- Good phono for the Expert is a priority (and Mathieu's preferred source!) and it should be working well for all. Clear and great message that any and all issues around this should be submitted to him for investigation and resoultion - hopefully that will help several here.
- Devialet are keen to understand what users would like to see so do provide them feedback. I think the platforms provides huge potential for areas like room correction which could be a very sellable benefit on each of the platforms.
- The Expert platform was good at the start and has been improved over time... however the previous approach of announcing and providing regular firmware and feature updates has resulted in an established platform with no need or plan for regular changes. I got the impression that further improvements should not be expected in date or scope, but will arrive occasionally and be based on alignment to the overall platforms and the top requests from users.
- Style and lack of communication was raised several times. I think this with the point above gets to the heart of some of the challenges many have had here. Depending on when you bought into Devialet the company, and on which product, they provided a view and emails of an evolving platform with trailled and committed enhancements. This was not committed into the company's roadmap and they changed priorities over time. I think they saw these as potential futures rather than absolutes, but the subsequent failure to deliver led to disappointment for several.
Devialet do appreciate the support that they receive now and over the years from all the people here, though I think the expectations for evolution don't align to the company's approach to create further new products and grow their market rather than enhance the current set. They have evolved some products much more than other companies and many here appreciate that.
As many have said the products sound brilliant and work well, which is a good place to be for us in the audio world! Future improvements should be a bonus rather than an expectation when they arrive and whenever that is. It was mentioned that there have been some dealers who've set client expectations beyond the current platform... Perhaps this is one area where Devialet could provide wording for their use around platforms to avoid this.
I do think the commitment to making the Expert platform and support superb for all is a key outcome - and so we should all be contacting Devialet and Mathieu directly about any problems to make it work for us all.
Here's to next year!
Jonathan
It was the first time I've met people from Devialet and it was a worthwhile visit. The responses above give a good view of all the topics covered and the additions from people's side chats with the guys. A few observations that stood out for me were
- The company has grown and also changed over the years. The work on the Expert range provided a successful, new approach to delivering high quality sound in a quality and lifestyle product. They were then able to use this to trickle down to lower priced but much higher volume products, enabling more people to get good sound at good value.
- The product strategy and prioritisation is dynamic and and people get moved around in bulk accordingly. As Ian notes the Reactor prep, launch and support has been their signficant focus for the best part of a year to the exclusion of other enhancement work. Also increasing work on partneships like the Sky deal.
- They have acknowledged their customer support challenges and put real effort and people into this to help customers get the best from their kit. Networking issues form the majority of the issues arising and so they want to balance providing better app/web configurability without introducing more complexity and tech issues.
- Mathieu has been at the heart of the Expert design for many years and remains commited to it being their flagship that is progressed... but there are many competing requests for resources alongside massive retention challenges to find and keep the engineers they need.
- Good phono for the Expert is a priority (and Mathieu's preferred source!) and it should be working well for all. Clear and great message that any and all issues around this should be submitted to him for investigation and resoultion - hopefully that will help several here.
- Devialet are keen to understand what users would like to see so do provide them feedback. I think the platforms provides huge potential for areas like room correction which could be a very sellable benefit on each of the platforms.
- The Expert platform was good at the start and has been improved over time... however the previous approach of announcing and providing regular firmware and feature updates has resulted in an established platform with no need or plan for regular changes. I got the impression that further improvements should not be expected in date or scope, but will arrive occasionally and be based on alignment to the overall platforms and the top requests from users.
- Style and lack of communication was raised several times. I think this with the point above gets to the heart of some of the challenges many have had here. Depending on when you bought into Devialet the company, and on which product, they provided a view and emails of an evolving platform with trailled and committed enhancements. This was not committed into the company's roadmap and they changed priorities over time. I think they saw these as potential futures rather than absolutes, but the subsequent failure to deliver led to disappointment for several.
Devialet do appreciate the support that they receive now and over the years from all the people here, though I think the expectations for evolution don't align to the company's approach to create further new products and grow their market rather than enhance the current set. They have evolved some products much more than other companies and many here appreciate that.
As many have said the products sound brilliant and work well, which is a good place to be for us in the audio world! Future improvements should be a bonus rather than an expectation when they arrive and whenever that is. It was mentioned that there have been some dealers who've set client expectations beyond the current platform... Perhaps this is one area where Devialet could provide wording for their use around platforms to avoid this.
I do think the commitment to making the Expert platform and support superb for all is a key outcome - and so we should all be contacting Devialet and Mathieu directly about any problems to make it work for us all.
Here's to next year!
Jonathan
