Has anyone heard the Devialet D-Premier Integrated Amp/DAC

**Phelonious Ponk** · 01-10-2011, 04:01 AM

The hard bit is that you MUST be absolutely meticulous in your efforts to eliminate that low level distortion, and that is why seemingly only a very, very small number of people reap the benefits ...

Frank

But Frank, you're not talking about low level distortion. You're talking about something you discovered "getting your hands dirty" while fiddling about "under the hood" that rendered all the various noises, distortions and inaccuracies of every recording from Robert Johnson to Justin Bieber inaudible, making all the recordings of all time musical, wonderful and highly listenable right up to the volume limits of the system. You're saying you turned some screw under that hood and performed an audio miracle.

Very specific information will be required or no, the little indulgence cannot be forgiven and I'll just have to assume that the screw was, indeed, turned under you head's hood. Not that there's anything wrong with that. My ability to thoroughly enjoy recordings that are, by modern standards, barely listenable, is absolutely in my head. But it doesn't require some secret tweak (other than the scotch, or bourbon in my case), and I'm not coming onto an audiophile forum and claiming I found it in my system.

Tim

**fas42** · 01-10-2011, 02:47 PM

Tim, I'm sorry if my humour doesn't appeal; however, you are misunderstanding what I'm saying, which I have repeated over and over in numerous posts, particularly on Audiogon.

In spite of what you say, I AM talking about low level distortion. Virtually every system generates it, frequently in spades: put on a "difficult" recording at a volume level where it is getting particularly unpleasant, and put your your ear as close as you dare to one of the tweeters. It should sound like a gawd awful mess: this is SYSTEM GENERATED distortion, not RECORDING distortion. Why I do know this? Because I have used this assessment technique over and over again, and when the system is right that gawd awful mess goes away! Aha, someone says! "Typical metal dome harshness, crappy driver, etc, etc". Wrong, wrong! It is the system telling you that something IN THE SYSTEM is not right ...

And what is wrong I can't tell you. In big capitals, THERE IS NO MAGIC BULLET!! What I did back then, and I repeat again, was to tweak and tweak, over and over again, eliminating every weakness I found or thought might make a difference until that capability was realised in my system. And when it happened for me, it was, to use modern vernacular, a WTF moment! And I repeat, that performance was extremely fragile and ephemeral, I could only capture it for short periods of time, and it drove me nuts for years trying to get a handle on the thing. Many times I could have picked up the whole kit and kaboodle and thrown it into the bin!

My system is not special, I have repeatedly stated that essentially any system can be fine tuned to achieve that performance if one is prepared to put in the effort. Yours, extremely expensive ones, low budget value for money ones. What is required in most part is the mindset saying that it is possible to get there ....

All the tweaks I did and do now have been mentioned over and over again, on forums and websites; far more information is easily accessible now then ever was back then. And whole industries have grown up around supplying solutions in one way or another. So what are the tweaks doing? Eliminating weaknesses in the components and setup. And what are the weaknesses? All the things that have been mentioned over and over again: power supplies, connections, interference from the outside world on the setup, interference of the components with each other, etc, etc.

Couple of last points: you have at least one other member who understands at least some of what I'm talking about, muralman1; and the comments by Marty about the Lamm-Wilson "Travesty" System at CES, contrasting its performance with Steve's version. Obviously Steve has gone to great lengths eliminating and compensating for weaknesses in his setup of those components, so he has gone some or all of the way on that journey that I am talking about.

And finally, the Devialet: one reason it works is because everything is in one box, and you immediately have got rid of a whole lot of weaknesses ...

Frank

**lloydelee21** · 01-10-2011, 02:55 PM

i heard the devialet again today...briefly...running a pair of cremonas and and ARC cd8. i heard the exact same set up with Krell evo 402 and also with ARC Ref amps (110). I will say this...while the Cremonas sounded "nice"...there was a distinct lack of power and deep color tonality that i have heard these speakers deliver. While i am not a personal fan of Homages Series SF with Krell, i do like the Cremona series with the larger Krells. As compared to the Devialet, i will say i left thinking for 15K, i would still prefer to assemble a system that worked better for my speakers. OTOH, if you are looking for relatively simple setup...this is was a solid performer.

**Phelonious Ponk** · 01-10-2011, 03:15 PM

Originally Posted by fas42

Tim, I'm sorry if my humour doesn't appeal; however, you are misunderstanding what I'm saying, which I have repeated over and over in numerous posts, particularly on Audiogon.

In spite of what you say, I AM talking about low level distortion. Virtually every system generates it, frequently in spades: put on a "difficult" recording at a volume level where it is getting particularly unpleasant, and put your your ear as close as you dare to one of the tweeters. It should sound like a gawd awful mess: this is SYSTEM GENERATED distortion, not RECORDING distortion. Why I do know this? Because I have used this assessment technique over and over again, and when the system is right that gawd awful mess goes away! Aha, someone says! "Typical metal dome harshness, crappy driver, etc, etc". Wrong, wrong! It is the system telling you that something IN THE SYSTEM is not right ...

And what is wrong I can't tell you. In big capitals, THERE IS NO MAGIC BULLET!! What I did back then, and I repeat again, was to tweak and tweak, over and over again, eliminating every weakness I found or thought might make a difference until that capability was realised in my system. And when it happened for me, it was, to use modern vernacular, a WTF moment! And I repeat, that performance was extremely fragile and ephemeral, I could only capture it for short periods of time, and it drove me nuts for years trying to get a handle on the thing. Many times I could have picked up the whole kit and kaboodle and thrown it into the bin!

My system is not special, I have repeatedly stated that essentially any system can be fine tuned to achieve that performance if one is prepared to put in the effort. Yours, extremely expensive ones, low budget value for money ones. What is required in most part is the mindset saying that it is possible to get there ....

All the tweaks I did and do now have been mentioned over and over again, on forums and websites; far more information is easily accessible now then ever was back then. And whole industries have grown up around supplying solutions in one way or another. So what are the tweaks doing? Eliminating weaknesses in the components and setup. And what are the weaknesses? All the things that have been mentioned over and over again: power supplies, connections, interference from the outside world on the setup, interference of the components with each other, etc, etc.

Couple of last points: you have at least one other member who understands at least some of what I'm talking about, muralman1; and the comments by Marty about the Lamm-Wilson "Travesty" System at CES, contrasting its performance with Steve's version. Obviously Steve has gone to great lengths eliminating and compensating for weaknesses in his setup of those components, so he has gone some or all of the way on that journey that I am talking about.

And finally, the Devialet: one reason it works is because everything is in one box, and you immediately have got rid of a whole lot of weaknesses ...

Frank

So you were joking about finding a panacea that reduces the distortions of all recordings to sub-audibility? Cool. And what you're really talking about is small tweaks to reduce the low-level distortions present in all electronics? Cooler still. I'll bet we'd all like to hear the details. I'm curious, though. What do you do about the transducers, where all the high-level distortions lie?

Tim

**fas42** · 01-10-2011, 04:08 PM

Tim,

Yes, I only joke about serious stuff ...

Unfortunately the details depend upon the gear you have; in my case way back when this all started a lot of it had to do with connections and switches, which I eliminated as much as possible -- effectively becoming a one box solution, and fiddling with the power supply caps of the amp. As I said, what you need to do will depend very much on how much of this engineering stuff has already been sorted on what you have now.

Surprisingly, the transducers or drivers are the least of your problems, which certainly surprised me and still does! When you hear a cheap bit of almost rubbish pound out a sound volume perfectly cleanly, where it is almost impossible to hear the person talking besides you because of the volume, it is quite amazing. Most of the real problems here are to do with the power supplies in the amp collapsing under stress: a good test is straighforward driving rock and roll with continuous ride cymbal work going on, Status Quo is perfect for this. Start the track at a very, very low level, say equivalent to that from headphones used as speakers, you should be able hear the cymbal work clearly and cleanly. As you wind up the volume, depending how good your amp is, that cymbal work will fall apart and go murky or disappear at some point. This is your power supply in combination the with the amp's circuit topology starting to lose the plot; it is amazing how low this level is on some systems!

Frank

**Phelonious Ponk** · 01-10-2011, 05:21 PM

Originally Posted by fas42

Tim,

Yes, I only joke about serious stuff ...

Unfortunately the details depend upon the gear you have; in my case way back when this all started a lot of it had to do with connections and switches, which I eliminated as much as possible -- effectively becoming a one box solution, and fiddling with the power supply caps of the amp. As I said, what you need to do will depend very much on how much of this engineering stuff has already been sorted on what you have now.

Surprisingly, the transducers or drivers are the least of your problems, which certainly surprised me and still does! When you hear a cheap bit of almost rubbish pound out a sound volume perfectly cleanly, where it is almost impossible to hear the person talking besides you because of the volume, it is quite amazing. Most of the real problems here are to do with the power supplies in the amp collapsing under stress: a good test is straighforward driving rock and roll with continuous ride cymbal work going on, Status Quo is perfect for this. Start the track at a very, very low level, say equivalent to that from headphones used as speakers, you should be able hear the cymbal work clearly and cleanly. As you wind up the volume, depending how good your amp is, that cymbal work will fall apart and go murky or disappear at some point. This is your power supply in combination the with the amp's circuit topology starting to lose the plot; it is amazing how low this level is on some systems!

Frank

I'm sorry, Frank, but I'm still confused. What are these electronic problems you're referring to that cause greater deviations from flat response (distortion) than are present in speaker systems? If transducers are the least of our problems, then would changing an amp or preamp in a system have a greater impact on the sound than changing speakers? Or even your small adjustments - changing some caps or resistors or a power supply - they could affect a greater change than switching from Wilsons to Revels? I'm not quite getting the power supply issue either. I've never experienced the cymbal work disappearing as I crank the volume up, I'm afraid, but I have heard the upper midrange distort when an amplifier runs out of headroom. Are you talking about power supplies with insufficient current to meet the demands of the transient peaks, causing the amp to clip? Is that what you mean by "lose the plot."

One thing I do understand and think we agree upon is simplification and integration. I suspect that is half of the Devialet's secret -- integration eliminates redundant components, power supplies and wiring, all of which are noise and distortion generators. The other half, I imagine, is upconverting everything to 24/192 and keeping all processing and control in the digital domain until conversion to analog just before amplification.

Tim

**fas42** · 01-10-2011, 07:36 PM

Tim,

Yes, I agree with you 100% with regard to the Devialet.

As regards the speaker distortion, my fault, I was referring to non-linear (frequencies being there that shouldn't be there, eg HD, IMD) distortion being the problem whereas you are apparently thinking mostly of linear (the right frequencies at the wrong level or with phase shift) distortion. In my experience frequency response distortion is essentially benign or irrelevant to the listening experience once you minimise the non-linear stuff, a key part of which I would term "nasty" distortion. The latter is what causes the sound to fail the "is it real" test. Obviously speakers suffer badly from linear distortion, but the less non-linear distortion comes out, the more two speakers will sound the same to the ear and brain. The great thing is, and to grossly over-simplify, speaker transducers don't in themselves generate too much "nasty" distortion ...

As regards changing amps, it's a "depends". The trick is to think of the WHOLE system, including speakers, as a one box setup. Remember, a speaker to the amp is just (a) resistor(s) with a lot of other stuff, capacitors, coils thrown in. Any serious tweaker will tell you how much changing one capacitor or resistor in the amp altered the sound, now try changing a whole heap of the amp's components in one go, which is what you're doing changing the speaker -- no wonder the new setup can sound so different! Hence changing amps may or may work depending on how it interacts with the speaker, what people call "synergy".

The power supply issue has to do with a real problem in this whole audio game: we humans are more sensitive to distortion the higher the frequency (would you believe we can't detect distortion of the order of 100% in a subwoofer?); audio circuits typically produce more distortion at high frequencies, and power supplies work less well at supplying current at these frequencies too! Everything is conspiring against us!

So when I say the supply is losing the plot I mean that it is not maintaining a nice steady, say, 60V on the rail -- it is bouncing around like a nice little audio signal in its own right! As a bit of fun, and only if you really, really know what you're doing, hook a speaker up so you can't hear it, in another room covered with blankets, say. Then use the voltage rail of your amp to drive another, just normal amp as if it were an audio input and listen to the result over a second speaker as you wind up and down the volume of main amp. The most ungodly racket will most likely emerge, depending on everything!
I have deliberately not given details here, because this is extremely dangerous to you and your equipment if you don't know what you're doing ...

Frank

**Phelonious Ponk** · 01-10-2011, 07:49 PM

I have deliberately not given details here, because this is extremely dangerous to you and your equipment if you don't know what you're doing ...

Not to worry. My system is your theoretical ideal one-box, Frank. I'm not about to pop it open and screw around with perfection.

Tim

**Mobiusman** · 01-11-2011, 12:19 AM

I have read most of the comments on this thread and thus would like to offer my take after playing with the Devialet for over an hour on Saturday at the Mirage. I do not think it was the single best piece I have ever heard, but it is certainly a contender. While I heard it on a pair of the new Crystal',s it was the Focal La Scala's that I listened to the most, pushing the volume at times well in excess of 110 db, if not more. There was never any sound of strain, nor lack of power. The sound character did not change with volume changes. Plain and simple it did not sound like any other class D amp I have ever heard. It sounded much more like a class A amp with a tiny bit less air. According to the designer with whom I spoke for at least 10 minutes, if I have it right, the class A portion of the amp is sufficiently powerful to actually drive the speakers, but is used predominantly as a referencing/driver circuit for the class D section, which provides the true power.

I think that in addition to some innovative design issues, what makes this unit so special is what has already been alleged, it's reasonable price point, common use of power supplies AND extremely short runs between the different components within the unit. To get a sense of the true size, think of slightly large bathroom floor scale and maybe 2 inches thick. BTW, no one has commented on the remote, which is maybe 4" square with a single large chrome knob that serves as the volume control and three buttons with features to be determined besides input selection. It is much more intuitive that standard remotes.

I could easily live with this piece, although I would not mount it on the wall, because I am use to my bathroom scales on the floor!

**Phelonious Ponk** · 01-11-2011, 06:09 AM

common use of power supplies AND extremely short runs between the different components within the unit

Of course this is common to all integrated amps. The duplicative resistors capacitors, power supplies, cables, etc., that are part and parcel of component stacks has always struck me as at odds with audiophile goals.

Tim