Just Discovered Devialet Air

[AdamEOS]

Heads up to Devialet crew, it’s kind of easy to be confused between Air and Airplay. We’ve been using Airplay as the wi-fi streamer from Apple mobile devices. I like the convenience of Airplay but ultimately preferred the USB because the sound was clearly better. Until tonight. We finally figured out that Air was not the same as Airplay, with the former being bit-perfect and the latter is not. Downloaded Air to a Macbook Air, which was super easy to do. We use Qobuz, which for sound quality is easily the best of those We’ve had. Put on a Chuck Loeb 16/44 album. It took only a minute or two to confirm that Air sounds MUCH better than Airplay. I am a bit miffed about it all, because we’ve been wracking our brains for almost a year now wondering why we couldn’t get Airplay to sound as good as USB. On cursory listen Air, to my ears, seems to be every bit as good as USB. I will do some careful comparisons tomorrow to confirm what I am hearing. The only downside is the Air application is for laptops and not iOS devices such as iPad or iPhone.

While i’m at it, can someone describe the sound quality differences between the single box 220 and the two box (440?) solution. When do you know that you could benefit from more power? Driving a pair of Magico S3 or Evolution Acoustics Micro One.

Thanks