I pulled this question from user hk6230 over at the Computer Audiophile forums.
I’m using Mac Mini and Devialet. How do you enable higher than 16/44.1 bitrates to Devialet AIR? Currently, all music is streaming only 16/44.1 to Devialet even though the music source has higher bitrates.
Also, will Roon+Tidal automatically select the highest bitrate for playback in accordance to user’s Tidal account?
Thanks in advance for your reply.
If you use exclusive mode on the settings->audio page on the devialet air virtual sound driver, it should work fine at above 16/44.1khz. Please do let us know how this works out for you, as we don’t have a Devialet box to try out yet.
Roon asks for Lossless streams from TIDAL. If TIDAL returns us otherwise, you will see it in the Signal Path feature (it’s the little glowing dot next to the currently playing track on the bottom);
Devialet AIR on Mac can’t use Exclusive mode.
I dont have a box in front of me to play with, but their website suggests you have to have the “Bit perfect” option enabled in the Devialet AIR application’s settings.
Just double checking, but did you try that?
Yes, I had. AIR works bit-perfect for iTunes. When I use JRiver or Audirvana+, exclusive mode will not work with AIR. Deviate’s website is under maintenance now and I can test Roon with USB. Once their website is up by tomorrow, I will test it again with USB. But honestly, AIR is one of the selling points of Devialet.
I met with them 2 months ago, and we signed an NDA… but our companies have been so busy, we never actually got around to making AIR work natively.
Soon I hope… especially now that we are launched.
Great，I would very much like to subscribe to your lifetime program. May I know what would I get for the lifetime subscription and what to expect for new functionality in the future.
Thanks for your quick reply.
Well, first, you stop getting bugged every year to pay for another year 
The future holds quite a bit in stock for us. MQA and DSD support, Android support, iOS support, better classical structure, improved metadata sources, more types of metadata. We are adding more streaming protocols and will be adding some DSP functionality as well. Our TIDAL integration is the bare minimum of what we thought would be acceptable to release, and will only get better.
Basically, buying the Roon Lifetime membership gives you everything Roon will offer in the future. There will no features you wont have access to that a future Roon customer won’t have access to.
This is a well known problem with MACs/ Air - it is possible to get it to work on a track by track basis but this is not really practical. Roon works beautifully with Devialet on Red Book CD but it would be great to get it working natively so that we can avoid chipmunk sound, especially now that Devialet have today updated firmware to allow it to accept DSD.
What is the problem with Air?
Play a red book CD track followed by a hi res track and the hi res track sounds like chipmunks. Do it the other way round and the red book track is too slow. Just tried so no different with latest firmware. Currently Roon is streaming to Devialet ethernet input (having been through the cycle described) and there is no sound at all. Will probably need to reboot Roon to regain sound.
That didn’t work - still no sound. Devialet seems to be in a funk on ethernet input. I don’t think this is a Roon issue as it is also a problem via ethernet with JRiver on MAC. I haven’t tried the USB input on the Devialet but I’m guessing that will work fine.
OK, I pinged my contact at Devialet last night to hurry up and send me AIR protocol specifications 
Any progression on fixing the air problem?
Devialet has been one of the very few manufacturers that have been unresponsive 
Their customers asking them for Roon support would be helpful.
I have two friends with Dev’s and both say AIR is crap.
I’m a Dev 200 owner and have been following the AIR issue for some time. When it works AIR sounds fantastic, but unfortunately it isn’t stable and despite loud protests from the user community, Devialet has not fixed the problem. My guess is that they are trying, but they are unable to figure it out. However, since they don’t communicate with their customers on the progress, it raises the ire of the folks who paid good money for this feature.
Anyway, I’ve long dismissed AIR as a viable way to listen to music, since it generates too much frustration - the anti-thesis to why I listen to music. My life has become much more pleasant since switching to the USB input and Roon. This combination produces stable, high-quality music.
Crap’s probably a bit unfair. 
On OSX it’s as frustrating as hell - it sounds amazing but lots of users (myself included) experience pops and crackles at random intervals. This makes it very unenjoyable as you’re always wondering if it’s the music or the onset of this crackling noise. Restarting The Air application fixes it for me.
From what I understand Windows users have it worse and also have ‘white noise’ issue where the sound just goes somewhat static.
It seems Devialet blame the fault on bugs in both operating systems, and after an eternity have seemingly got no closer to a solution. This of course could simply mean they’ve done nothing about it while focussing all energies on Phantom and expansion.
For what it’s worth USB sounds slightly worse than Air in my setup (and I hate the whole cable quality argument) but for something like Roon I’d probably go USB just for the reliability and lack of frustration.
A happy Devialet/Roon owner here. It was with some trepidation and expecting horror-audio stories that I installed both Roon and Devialet Air (I use a D200) on a cheap used £100 Intel Atom convertible (HP Envy 11") that runs only 2GB RAM and a paltry 64GB SSD using Windows 8.1 (will take SDXC cards though, packing a 64GB in this one to store TV shows for travel) and I have none of the problems. In fact I am chuffed to bits with the arrangement. Roon works really well as a touch-screen interface and aside from the Windows Logo at the bottom of the screen I am never really aware of actively using Windows (I usually only use Linux these days).
It has just two jobs: 1 Run Kodi for local and server held files and 2: whatever latest release of Roon is for server music and Tidal. The media is stored on a QNAP 669L that plugs into my Projector via HDMI and Roon/AIR has zero problems. Ok now I have posted this I have buggered myself but so far so good. I thought I should have to examine ways of safely stripping away at Windows cruft so there is as little as possible needed but so far the combo is great!. Plus I have headphone listening in bed as well. Chuffed. It is like living in the future to me…
