@ogs – something got lost in translation there…
There is nothing broken in Roon to “fix”, just to get native support for AIR, which clearly can not handle real-time use as a virtual sound card.
As for AIR working with other software, the Devialet Chat forums would disagree with you there… AIR’s virtual sound card model is a disaster, and those that get it to work on some days are the lucky ones.
Native AIR support is something we’d love to do, but we need Devialet’s cooperation to do that.
@danny
I expressed my doubts to John Darko in my initial comment to him about this. There seems to be a misunderstanding between Darko and Roon. There is nothing lost in translation between Darko and me here - the quote in my post above is Darkos own words, copy-paste.
I know AIR is broken, I am not using it myself because of this. In addition I said to Darko that this does not agree with much of what is written on Devialet Chat about AIR.
…hopefully we’ll get the gossip after the ‘showdown’ 
I believe they’re planning a part II to that ‘review’, but with a different author I think.
@ogs – I apologize for that implication that you made the error in translation. It was clear you were just passing on a quote. The misunderstanding was between Enno (CEO of Roon Labs) and Darko.
I wouldn’t go as far as to say that AIR is broken, just that the real-time-virtual-soundcard-driver model is not tolerant to the realities of home networks. If Roon was to speak AIR natively, we could take advantages of filling buffers and dealing with the nature of home networks in ways that a real-time-virtual-soundcard-driver can not. Still hoping we can get that done with Devialet’s help.
There’s few things in life that I really wish for (a man of simple needs here) but Devialet opening up to Roon is one of them 
Your professionalism is respected here @danny, but sadly for many of us with ‘average’ home networks (aka fully installed cat 6 gig-e networking in my house), we consider AIR to be broken since it doesn’t run reliably, and hasn’t done for quite some time. Ever in fact in my case. 
I am not waiting with bated breath to see what Devialet bring out by way of firmware or software updates, but you never know, they might surprise us owners. Such a shame, because the hardware is terrific.
Honestly, the only reason I haven’t pulled the trigger on a Dev is because of AIR. I want to be able to stream via Ethernet to the Dev and have it just work.
Well it’s worth it if you can get a home demo - AiR definitely works for some and for those lucky people they say it sounds fantastic. The most success seems to be win10, despite it being officially unsupported. I can’t remember how it sounds it was so frustrating I just abandoned it.
It’s a great bit of kit but it does highlight issues with all-in-ones and putting all your eggs in one basket. DAC technology and related firmware marches on, so unless the company behind it keeps the pace up it can be outdated pretty quickly. It’s a lovely looking/sounding thing though, and although I find it hard to recommend the brand, the hardware is good. But there are other more customer focused brands out there. I hang on to mine as I bought and sold too much kit in a row and don’t want to lose any more money. Plus it looks beautiful. If AiR worked it would probably have been a great buy.
I count myself as one of the lucky ones, insofar as AIR works frustratingly close to perfectly in my system; I get (very) occasional drop-outs but nothing worse than that. (Don’t get me wrong, even that is not acceptable when spending Devialet kind of money.) 99.99…% of the time AIR does sound very good. This is on a Mac, by the way.
That said, when I tried Roon it was certainly not giving me the sound quality I normally get from AIR. There must be something else going on there that’s particular to Roon over AIR, I guess. To my untrained ear it sounded as though there were periodic very small drop-outs or “clicks” every few seconds. I’ve never heard that running (e.g.) iTunes or Qobuz over AIR.
If you’re considering a Devialet I’d echo Steve’s suggestion to get a home demo if you can, and see how it works in your network.
I assume until Devialet integrates Roon, or fixes/improves the AIR issues, that you could just connect a Macmini with Roon installd - to the Devialet via USB and output that way ?
Yes or one of the new RoonReady devices.
Couldn’t agree more.
I hate to say it but I just plugged in a $35 Chromecast Audio. Even that works and sounds much better than AIR – which does not work. How can this be tolerated? I really don’t understand this.
Yup, I got one too for internet radio and was just amazed at the device even ignoring its low cost. After battling AIR I just expected it not to work, especially as its over wifi in a part of my house without great reception - whereas AIR was on wired gigabit ethernet - but its rock solid. I can’t really compare SQ as Im only streaming internet radio, but I do remember AIR sounding very good before I abandoned it to save my sanity.
I really don’t know why it’s tolerated to be honest. Many of us complain fairly hard and pretty often to Devialet, while other users seem content that it works ‘sometimes’ or ‘most of the time’ if they’re lucky, and then there are a few who think Devialet can do no wrong with statements like ‘AIR is amazing, I managed to listen to music for 10 minutes solid last night before getting white noise and dropouts’. (OK I’m exaggerating, but only a bit)
Devialet are a company driven pretty much exclusively by PR these days, and while they do have amazingly innovative hardware, their software utterly sucks.
But more importantly, in a sense who cares if they can’t fix it as long as they man up and provide a viable replacement - be that RAAT or something else.
Oh, can you use the Chromecast Audio as an endpoint for Roon now? I didn’t know that was do-able, although I saw a thread here discussing the possibility.
(Sorry for the noise if I misunderstood your post.)
I think that is still in the works. There is a thread in here about it.
I totally agree with your repy Jeff.
It’s very frustrating to see that lots of Devialet Expert owners are struggling with AIR and Devialet simply refuse to offer a good working solution for this problem.
To me it seems that they prefer to invest their time completely to the development and marketing strategy of the Phantom.
Despite lots of complains from Devialet Expert owners they refuse also to collaborate with Roon etc.
I really love the sonic performance of my LE 200, but the arrogance of this French people is a real ‘‘pain in the *ss’’ for me and other people.
A couple of months ago I tried many different AIR settings with my CAPS renderer, and discovered that the Devialet AIR driver is the cause of all the experienced problems, especially when Windows 10 will be the OS on the renderer.
With Windows 8.1 I experienced more satisfactory results, but to say that it was 100% stable…no !
So I left the AIR path and switched to the usb path which gave me a far better and more reliable result
So, to me Devialet must listen to their customers and get out of their lazy and arrogant attitude and develop a stable and good working driver for AIR which was their ‘‘treasured endeavor’’ years ago.
It was after my time but I believe AIR was originally a paid upgrade! Hard to imagine really.
Its unfathomable that Roon have gone from launch to version 1.2 of their software - including writing an entire streaming architecture as just one aspect - in much less time than AIR has remained broken. Any other company would be utterly embarrassed, yet Devialet crank up the attitude, send out stock emails, and continue to market AIR as a USP. Oh, it’s unique alright! 
@Steve Totally agree with your opinion.
Devialet AIR indeed was an originally paid upgrade… hard to imagine now that they asked an additional more price for something that was/is full of problems and not working stable and reliable