Like the A3 before it, the A5 is very unfussy about positioning due to the sealed-box design and evenness of its off-axis response. I have a reflective tile floor and a reflective glass roof so this is very important in my case.
My room is not dedicated to entertainment - it's the main room of the house and includes the open-plan kitchen. It's rectangular, 3x as long as it is wide, with the speakers positioned about halfway down the long axis, 4.5m apart, either side, firing down the long axis. So there is no rear wall behind them, and they are approximately 30cm from the side walls. Toe-in is about 10 degrees on one side, 30 on the other, adjusted by ear. But I hasten to add there is no noticeable "sweet" angle, just a very minor preference change.
The 30-degree speaker is "forward" of the other. This is due to room layout as the seating is concentrated on one side, 3m in front of the speakers, and the other side forms the main passage through the house - between the speakers! Depending on exactly where I sit, I use a mild balance adjustment.
On paper it's not an ideal situation for audio but in practice works very well. I've heard the A3 in a treated room and don't feel that I'm missing anything. The biggest problem is some huge modes at around 100hz. Every speaker I've used has excited these, acoustic treatment is not practical and so I've used parametric EQ correction to great effect. The A5 is very powerful in this frequency region but not excessively so; the correction needed is very similar to that for the A3 and the Quad ESLs, so it's clearly the room that's the problem not the speakers. I'm now using Sweet Room to do this and am very pleased that Devialet have made this available.
I have not tried the "constrained layer damping" feet yet, but apparently they make another improvement. I do however have the grilles, due to the room situation. To my ears they do not degrade the sound at all, and I do not feel the need to remove them for listening, even though this is very easy due to the excellent design with self-locating magnetic attachments.
I have noticed mine sounding better over time. They did not have many hours when I acquired them. So some of this may be break-in, but some of it is likely just getting accustomed to them, and improving the subwoofer integration.
I still struggle to describe just what an incredible speaker I think the A5 is. Others who have heard it here have also been amazed. The best I think I can do is go back to my Quad ESL benchmark. After getting used to them, I could hear the box coloration in every cone speaker, and the beautiful liquid coherence of the midrange - where most of the music is - was never replicated. It took the D-Premier, by the way, to fully realise that midrange. Because of these strengths, I could tolerate the weak bass, rolled-off treble, and low dynamic potential.
The A3 was a big surprise as to my ears Magico solved the box-coloration problem at a (somewhat) sensible price. The weakness of the A3 versus the Quad was that the midrange, excellent though it was, only got to about 70-80% of the perfection of the ESL. Still an amazing achievement for a cone driver. For bass/treble power and extension the A3 was of course hugely better. Overall I felt the A3 was the one I wanted to live with, and sacrificed some of the midrange purity.
Then along came the A5. After having spent the time with it I have, I'm now quite confident that the A5 has a substantially *better* midrange than the ESL. Even with the D-Premier (which I had used for the Quads and the A3s) I heard new things in *every single track*, even at low levels, and enjoyed the music more than ever before. That's before we even consider the crazy levels of precision and clarity in the bass. For this I can compare the A3 - which for me was a benchmark in bass - and rightly so. Compared to the A5, the A3's bass is mushy and ill-defined. You can follow every bassline perfectly, there's so much music down there.
There's no weakness, nothing missing, no artifact to draw attention to itself, no lack of capability to get in the way of the music. They're just so good they're actually intimidating. There's a sense of awe at having the privilege of living with such an amazing creation. It's very hard to stop listening, skipping tracks as they come to an end is painful as the perfect illusion of the venue bursts, and they do their thing perfectly at -60db on the volume for late-night listening.
And they seem to thrive on the ADH amplification, the more exalted the better!
I think you'll be absolutely delighted ICUDoc, and you'll soon forget the long wait. I think the group of listeners who'd be disappointed will be those who want their speakers to add colourful euphony, charm, and magic to the sound, to sing along with the recording, and be their cuddly friends. That's fine if it's what they want, but they probably won't be Expert owners anyway. The A5 is at the opposite extreme - all about no coloration, hyper-realism and transparency. I know which camp I'm in.
Mine will be pried from my cold dead hands. (If I could pick them up, which I can't)
My room is not dedicated to entertainment - it's the main room of the house and includes the open-plan kitchen. It's rectangular, 3x as long as it is wide, with the speakers positioned about halfway down the long axis, 4.5m apart, either side, firing down the long axis. So there is no rear wall behind them, and they are approximately 30cm from the side walls. Toe-in is about 10 degrees on one side, 30 on the other, adjusted by ear. But I hasten to add there is no noticeable "sweet" angle, just a very minor preference change.
The 30-degree speaker is "forward" of the other. This is due to room layout as the seating is concentrated on one side, 3m in front of the speakers, and the other side forms the main passage through the house - between the speakers! Depending on exactly where I sit, I use a mild balance adjustment.
On paper it's not an ideal situation for audio but in practice works very well. I've heard the A3 in a treated room and don't feel that I'm missing anything. The biggest problem is some huge modes at around 100hz. Every speaker I've used has excited these, acoustic treatment is not practical and so I've used parametric EQ correction to great effect. The A5 is very powerful in this frequency region but not excessively so; the correction needed is very similar to that for the A3 and the Quad ESLs, so it's clearly the room that's the problem not the speakers. I'm now using Sweet Room to do this and am very pleased that Devialet have made this available.
I have not tried the "constrained layer damping" feet yet, but apparently they make another improvement. I do however have the grilles, due to the room situation. To my ears they do not degrade the sound at all, and I do not feel the need to remove them for listening, even though this is very easy due to the excellent design with self-locating magnetic attachments.
I have noticed mine sounding better over time. They did not have many hours when I acquired them. So some of this may be break-in, but some of it is likely just getting accustomed to them, and improving the subwoofer integration.
I still struggle to describe just what an incredible speaker I think the A5 is. Others who have heard it here have also been amazed. The best I think I can do is go back to my Quad ESL benchmark. After getting used to them, I could hear the box coloration in every cone speaker, and the beautiful liquid coherence of the midrange - where most of the music is - was never replicated. It took the D-Premier, by the way, to fully realise that midrange. Because of these strengths, I could tolerate the weak bass, rolled-off treble, and low dynamic potential.
The A3 was a big surprise as to my ears Magico solved the box-coloration problem at a (somewhat) sensible price. The weakness of the A3 versus the Quad was that the midrange, excellent though it was, only got to about 70-80% of the perfection of the ESL. Still an amazing achievement for a cone driver. For bass/treble power and extension the A3 was of course hugely better. Overall I felt the A3 was the one I wanted to live with, and sacrificed some of the midrange purity.
Then along came the A5. After having spent the time with it I have, I'm now quite confident that the A5 has a substantially *better* midrange than the ESL. Even with the D-Premier (which I had used for the Quads and the A3s) I heard new things in *every single track*, even at low levels, and enjoyed the music more than ever before. That's before we even consider the crazy levels of precision and clarity in the bass. For this I can compare the A3 - which for me was a benchmark in bass - and rightly so. Compared to the A5, the A3's bass is mushy and ill-defined. You can follow every bassline perfectly, there's so much music down there.
There's no weakness, nothing missing, no artifact to draw attention to itself, no lack of capability to get in the way of the music. They're just so good they're actually intimidating. There's a sense of awe at having the privilege of living with such an amazing creation. It's very hard to stop listening, skipping tracks as they come to an end is painful as the perfect illusion of the venue bursts, and they do their thing perfectly at -60db on the volume for late-night listening.
And they seem to thrive on the ADH amplification, the more exalted the better!
I think you'll be absolutely delighted ICUDoc, and you'll soon forget the long wait. I think the group of listeners who'd be disappointed will be those who want their speakers to add colourful euphony, charm, and magic to the sound, to sing along with the recording, and be their cuddly friends. That's fine if it's what they want, but they probably won't be Expert owners anyway. The A5 is at the opposite extreme - all about no coloration, hyper-realism and transparency. I know which camp I'm in.
Mine will be pried from my cold dead hands. (If I could pick them up, which I can't)
1000 Pro / Magico A5 / REL Studio III
