Devialet AIR, Tidal

Cool pic @CliveGrace!! Glad AIR is stable for someone :grin:

I actually have one of those Envys gathering dust in my placeā€¦ Hmmā€¦

Air is stable here with Roon (and mac) as long as i donā€™t use exclusive mode. Not sure if the sound quality is that much better than USB.

If it is non-exclusive mode, then it is not bit-perfect. And, SQ definitely poorer compare to USB on Mac.

@danny I asked Devialet about Roon endpoint support recently and got this answer: ā€œRegarding RoonSpeakers, our Software Team is aware of your query. It also has been escalated to our commercial services.ā€
I like the ā€˜escalationā€™ part. There is hopeā€¦

I got radio silence from my recent queries about this to support (possibly I wasnā€™t as diplomatic as usual in my feelings about Air) - but Iā€™m glad to hear theyā€™re not only aware of it, but have ā€˜escalatedā€™ it! Of course in Devialet terms that pretty much means nothing, but we can but hope. :sweat_smile:

Maybe by now even they have accepted the fact that they canā€™t get Air working (reliably and for everyone), and theyā€™ve upset a lot of their customers with their tardy response to the issues. Offering a working Roon transport built into the Dev would be a huge bonus and might give them some credibility and goodwill back.

[edited to say I did finally get a reply - where they sidestepped the question about RoonSpeakers completely, and said they would be happy to ā€˜help me fix my Air problemā€™, which doesnā€™t seem too encouraging.]

Dear Sir,

Any news on this please ? It would make an excellent Christmas present you know :wink:

Thanks

Since changing from Mac Mini to an Intel NUC running Win10, AIR is working very well for me. It can stream all music bitrates up to 24/192 and DSD64.

Iā€™m pleased for you Gary, but it seems this isnā€™t the case for everyone, even with Win10 (not that it would help me or any other Mac user).

I just wish Devialet would drop the arrogance and at least offer some alternatives, starting by building Roons transport into their firmware as soon as itā€™s available. At least their customers would then have a way to use the hardware they purchased somewhat as intended, instead of being handicapped by Devialets flakey Air.

I was really interested in the Phantom initially, but having experienced devialetā€™s ā€˜customerā€™ support first hand on the expert range, and now read all the issues being posted about the phantom - pretty much entirely software/firmware related - I wouldnā€™t touch it, despite it sounding decent. Also, Spark was horrible compared to Roon (IMO). To my mind Devialet has lost their grip of the software side of the business and its out of control, with very low QA and very poor customer service for those on the receiving end of sloppy code.

Itā€™s about time they woke up and let some other people have a go! And Iā€™ll keep reminding them for as long as Air doesnā€™t work properly!

Of course thereā€™s no guarantees Roons transport will be perfect first time, but I know who Iā€™d put my money on!

Rant over. :cry:

  1. Entirely why Iā€™ve never pulled the trigger on a 200.
  2. Windows nuc can be quite cheap, I suggest giving one a spin and return it if it doesnā€™t work. 8f it solves your Air issue, then hurrah.
  3. Also why I didnā€™t get a phantom. If a company has chronic software issues, it means that there are forces internally keeping it that way. And until those are cleared up, I stay away.

The best hardware in the world can be useless if the software (or drivers) are horrible. See years of AMD video drivers.

Yes, I feel your pain when thing just wasnā€™t working as it should. I wouldnā€™t mind to have our expert system to be RoonSpeakers ready, too. I was having the same AIR problems on my Mac Mini, before I decided to switch to a NUC. In fact, I had been doing lots of trial and errors, including rearranging of network devices and components around, before I finally get a smooth AIR running. And, in my environment now, I found that AIR 2.1.3 is perfect (better than 2.1.4 beta 4). I have yet to share this on DevialetChat forum as I want to monitor it a bit longer to ensure 100% trouble free playing.

Like a lot of loyal Devialet customers, I cannot understand their strategy. Your frustration mimics mine.
Devialet is bad at customer support. Not just ordinary bad, but really bad. So bad that it should be a category of badness in its own.

Only last week Iā€™ve send them a mail asking what AiR version I should install on Windows 10. response : none, because it is not supported.

My Devialet is in another physical room so I cannot use the Devialet Remote so I have to use the RS232 or the app to manage the box.

All the 8.x changes have not been implemented in either the RS232 or appā€¦ In the AIR client, you donā€™t even have the option to selectā€™Ethernetā€™ as the source so you need two devices to get it playing. All software issues ā€¦

It is all about embracing customers and partners: Roon provides customers to get involved, Devialet tries everything to make communication as difficult as possible. It is so strange : they only have to look at Microsoft to see what happens when a successful company becomes arrogant. And Devialet is no Microsoft ā€¦

@ogs, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I can now pretty confidently say that Devialet donā€™t have any plans to make Devialets ā€˜RoonReadyā€™. :cry:

Sorry to hear that Steve. Maybe theyā€™ll come around when their competitors start releasing firmware and every new device is RoonReady. At one stage UPnP and DLNA werenā€™t ubiquitous either.

@hifi_swlon, to be honest I did not expect them to do anything. Devialet has been lying about features they actually have promised. Direct Roon support is not something Devialet has even talked about so it is no surprise they will not add it.

@andybob, Devialet is stubborn bordering on silly. I will be very surprised if they bring any of this. UPnP is still listed for the future of Dialog though so maybeā€¦ but with all the nice features of the Roon protocol UPnP may be irrelevant to us if and when Devialet decides to include it.

@ogs, they seemed to be interested in early 2015 about letting me having the AIR protocol specification, so we could add native support in Roon. They have always told me they were uninterested in our streaming protocols, because they already had AIR.

However, after prodding them countless times, they just stopped responding. Even when I was in Paris last, they failed to respond to an opportunity for face-to-face meeting. I am getting the feeling that the Phantom and similar products are their future, and not the Expert line.

Not everyone wants R2-D2 in their listening space.

@Danny, welcome to the world of Devialet! This is also what itā€™s like as a Devialet customer if itā€™s any consolation. :grinning:

I think youā€™re absolutely right - the Expert line got them into the market, but now they have other agendas. i.e. sell big and fast! Sadly, all the chaotic expansion and rushing has meant the Phantom firmware/software doesnā€™t seem to be any more reliable or stable than the expert series, hence the floods of people posting about the issues theyā€™re having. A real shame, Devialet is built on some pioneering and clever technology and their products are great in the main, but their quality control on the software/firmware side is poor, and their customer supportā€™s in free fall and it makes them a very undesirable brand at the moment.

Having watched Roon evolve since launch, I can say just from your internet presence, you are the absolute opposite of Devialet. They are consumed by marketing and hype and have zero respect for their customers, you guys seem totally focussed on keeping your customers happy and as updated as you can let us be about plans for future developments and fixes. As a user of both, your model is hugely refreshing, while Devialetā€™s is just exasperating. Iā€™m not saying Roonā€™s perfect yet, but you guys are clearly and obviously striving for it, rather than simply saying ā€˜its perfectā€™.

For what itā€™s worth, having Air natively in Roon was of no interest to me, as Air is so unreliable I donā€™t use it anymore. Devialet have no clear plan for fixing it and are in fact in denial about it being an issue. They just hope people will stop asking them about it - the last advice they offered me was that I was free not to use it! It works for some though, but thatā€™s just not good enough on a Ā£5,500 dac/amp (Ā£20,000 for those with D800ā€™s)!

What I was hoping for is Roon natively in Devialet - so we would have a chance of streaming directly to it without having to use Air. This would be a perfect system, clean and simple, and is how they envisioned it working. Its the ā€˜one boxā€™ (plus a computer source) scenario a lot of people were sold on when they brought their Devialetā€™s. However thats not going to happen, I was told only a handful of people have requested it and its not on their roadmap - which seems to be the same answer for any expert line related question.

I think the Phantoms have swamped the company, and theyā€™ve literally lost the plot. Still, my Devialet looks nice on the wall, and Iā€™ve bought it, so for now Iā€™ll use it via USB. Iā€™m seriously hoping RAAT on Raspberry Pi sounds great, or that some other new Roon based streaming hardware comes along soon.
I liked the idea of an Aurender, but theyā€™re expensive, and their iPad App is ā€˜OKā€™ but not what youā€™d expect at the price - certainly not as nice as Roon. Also, since the unitā€™s local storage wonā€™t really be local as such with Roon, and you need Roonā€™s server running on another machine anyway, the whole ā€˜self contained unitā€™ thing sort of goes out the window.

So now Iā€™m putting all my hope on RoonSpeakers (no pressure :wink: )ā€¦.

In the meantime, any Devialet users that want Roon, and/or have issues with Air, donā€™t give up - just keep hounding support and voicing your opinion as loudly as possible wherever you go. They canā€™t hide foreverā€¦ā€¦

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A quick hello to those of you on the Devialet Chat forum. Iā€™ve just started a trial of Roon and was sad to discover that playback via AIR (on OS X) is a little flakey - a great shame because Roon itself seems to be a complete joy!

To clarify what I meant by ā€œflakeyā€: I get no sound at all if select Exclusive Mode, and without that, I hear what sounds like a very slight drop-out or quiet ā€œclickā€ every few seconds during playback. This is on OS X 10.10.5 with AIR 2.1.3 and an Ethernet connection to a D400 with 7.1.3 firmware. Incidentally I donā€™t have any trouble using iTunes to play the same material (all 16-bit, 44.1 or 48 kHz ALAC).

As far as I can tell from reading the threads on this forum and Devialet Chat, it sounds as though thereā€™s not likely to be any improvement in the foreseeable future - is that a fair description of the state of play? What a shame, if so.

@thumb5 -

Correct - discussed in this this thread as well.