Sound quality - Roon RAAT vs Roon Air

[David A]

I don't want to start an argument, and am not an apologist for Devialet, but the fact that there are problems with RAAT but not AIR over Gigabit Ethernet to a Devialet can equally be seen as evidence of a problem in the implementation of RAAT, albeit one which is triggered by some aspect of Devialet's Ethernet interface (software and/or hardware).  It is the combination of RAAT, Devialet and a GbE physical link which results in incorrect behaviour, and isolating any single part of that combination as "the problem" is perhaps premature.  Just for the sake of neutrality and balance...

You're right in a sense. RAAT apparently works without problems with Roon Ready devices from numerous other manufacturers but there's a problem with Devialet. That does indicate that it's a problem with the implementation of RAAT on Devialet devices but implementing RAAT on Devialet devices is Devialet's responsibility, just as implementing AIR within Roon was Roon's responsibility. Roon got AIR right when they introduced it in their software, Devialet did not get RAAT right when they introduced it and, as @mdconnelly has stated, Devialet did acknowledge that it is their problem but it did take them several months to do so..

Roon is not entirely without responsibility in this. They have a certification process which is intended to ensure that manufacturers get the implementation of RAAT in their devices right. For some reason the Devialets slipped through Roon's certification process without the fault being discovered and Roon OK'ed the release of Devialet's Roon Ready firmware update.

So Devialet is responsible for creating and for fixing the problem, Devialet and Roon share responsibility for the release of a faulty implementation to users.

Our problem is that only Devialet can fix the issue. If Roon could fix it they would have fixed it by now—anyone who has been using Roon for any length of time will now that Roon is very good at acknowledging and fixing bugs in its software quickly. Devialet, on the other hand, is quite slow at acknowledging problems and even slower at fixing them. Take a look at the history of AIR over the years prior to Roon implementing it in their software, take a look at the problems with Sweet Room and the inability to use the full number of correction points if you're using SAM that is now almost a year old without a fix. The fact that we're still talking about this problem over 2 years after the Expert Pros became Roon Ready is pretty  much a repeat of the situation that many users had with AIR when Devialet introduced it. Devialet make great hardware but they are nowhere near as good with their software and they are very slow to acknowledge and to fix their software problems.