My devialet d premier had arrived

[Andrewjvt]

They would rather skip the long boring conversation about room acoustics so just say it sounds good.
Job done.

They can enjoy music from most sources without thinking about the equipment like men.
They just don't give a **** and are more carefree as a result.

They would give a **** if they knew the cost of said equipment.
(Not just women, partners in general).

That's just making sure money is not being wasted unnecessary and nothing to do with sound quality.

 

[insider9]

My wife who was so happy with me junking my 2 channel system , went for her afternoon nap. And I shifted the devialet with the PMC's to my dining room again.

I was supposed to wake my wife up at 1630 today, for my daughter's music class. And I started playing her favourite tracks at 1600. And when I brought her out at 1630 as promised, she was blown by the improvement in sound.

As I mentioned before, my wife uses my system almost 8 hrs a day even when iam not there. So she knows about sound.

And 20 mins into listening, she herself suggested we keep the system in the dining room from now on. So target achieved.

So all in all the devialet is a great peice of kit, and especially so considering that I got it for a bargain. Iam yet to try her out completely. Will post a review thread as soon as I can. Thanks a lot for reading 🙂

Great to hear you've got an understanding wife. Excellent trick making her think it was her idea *biggrin*

Looking forward to your review.

 

[newlash09]

My wife who was so happy with me junking my 2 channel system , went for her afternoon nap. And I shifted the devialet with the PMC's to my dining room again.

I was supposed to wake my wife up at 1630 today, for my daughter's music class. And I started playing her favourite tracks at 1600. And when I brought her out at 1630 as promised, she was blown by the improvement in sound.

As I mentioned before, my wife uses my system almost 8 hrs a day even when iam not there. So she knows about sound.

And 20 mins into listening, she herself suggested we keep the system in the dining room from now on. So target achieved.

So all in all the devialet is a great peice of kit, and especially so considering that I got it for a bargain. Iam yet to try her out completely. Will post a review thread as soon as I can. Thanks a lot for reading 🙂

Great to hear you've got an understanding wife. Excellent trick making her think it was her idea *biggrin*

Looking forward to your review.

Unfortunately after some shuffling around of kit the speakers are back in my living room again. The mirrored wall in the back in the dining room was spoiling the imaging with its reflections . So they are back in my living room now 🙂

 

[newlash09]

After trying out my speakers in various locations in my room. They are again back in the living room. And everywhere they just sounded crap. Made me even wonder why I got into this hobby. Then certain things happened, which cheered me up , Gave my drooping spirits a uplift and showed me promise. And unfortunately most of it is what is deemed snake oil territory. But in my desperation to get my system right, I've gone over to the dark side, and found it works with me.

So here starts my journey of small but incremental gains with my pairing of the devialet + PMC kit.

1. Power management - one of my local forum members is a bio medical engineer. And he also runs a devialet setup. He mentioned that the devialet is capable of a noise floor of -135db. But needs lot of end user care to get it there. He spent 18months crawling around his house with sensitive equipment that he borrowed from his office. And kept measuring interference in Tesla's. What ever that means 🙂

As per him the devialet has a switching mode power supply which dumps high frequency interference into its return line. And this will corrupt the clarity of the digital source in use.
And upon his insistence I bought a proper isolation transformer. And there certainly is a lower noise floor.

2. Power cords : The above improved my clairty and noise floor. But the biggest surprise came when my friend lent me a cardass power cord to run my devialet. The previously mentioned over whelming bass is gone completely. I have to buy my own power cords yet, and the most suggested one at the moment to pair the devialet is 'pangea ac9 se mkii'. Checked it up on audioadvisor.com a USA website and goes for only 250usd. That will be a definite buy for me next.

3. Amp post isolators : again as per my friends insistence I bought some RCA jack interference isolators. And can't say for sure if I can hear any difference. But I still have them in place now. Just in case.

4. Speaker cables : I've upgraded to some high end master class German handmade speaker cables. And the difference is really there. The clarity has gone up a notch again. A small but incremental gain over the supra classic 3.4 I have been using so far.

5. Dirac : I have to start with a big thanks to ellisdj. Thanks Ellis for posting such a informative video on your channel. I did my entire calibration just watching your video and pausing it in steps. It was so easy and informative. I had tried REW before. But was pretty much lost pretty soon. So I went Dirac. I just finished measuring my room yesterday. And Dirac has got me a nice juicy target curve. Will have to listen tomorrow and see what the difference is. Will surely update tomorrow.

6. Musicbee software : As you all know I tried roon a few weeks back but was disappointed. In the interim I tried jplay ( without jriver media management), and even HQ player. The HQ player was a pure abomination. Maybe there are sonic gains to be had. But the user interface was pure hell. No wonder most users use it as a plug in for room. After trying lots of other programs I've lost track of. I landed on the musicbee software. Absolutely free and designed with the average user in mind . I find it extremely user friendly. I have down samples everything to 96khz, which is the same setting in my devialet air. And iam really liking it. Maybe jplay and HQplayer are superior sounding . But I don't want to faff with audiophile complex software just for sonic gains. Iam happy with musicbee after trying roon, jplay and HQ player. And I have set the music bee to load the entire track being played into RAM. Though I can't hear any immediate improvements.

So my music chain on my pc is music bee > Dirac live > devialet air > devialet d premier > PMC twenty 26. And it sounds really good now. I never ever thought I'd go this deep in BS to get my system right. And iam still far away.

My next priorities are to get my room treated. And some Gaia ii speaker islators atleasr for now.

Thanks for reading so far. And iam sure there will be a lot of flak from non believers . So I will get my fire suit on 🙂

 

[ellisdj]

You might need to adjust the dirac target curve - the stock target curve can sound a little lean and overly safe at the same time ime

See how you get on - adjusting the curve is easy though - also when you load up the Dirac processor you have arrows to the left and to the right,

Left arrow is your gain level - you might be able to raise that a little bit - dont raise it into clipping.

This can help with the perceived fullness of the sound.

The right arrow is your level and gain adjustment for L and R - try this on and off - I seem to prefer off

 

[newlash09]

You might need to adjust the dirac target curve - the stock target curve can sound a little lean and overly safe at the same time ime

 

See how you get on - adjusting the curve is easy though - also when you load up the Dirac processor you have arrows to the left and to the right,

Left arrow is your gain level - you might be able to raise that a little bit - dont raise it into clipping.

This can help with the perceived fullness of the sound.

 

The right arrow is your level and gain adjustment for L and R - try this on and off - I seem to prefer off 

I remember you mentioning in your video that you prefer keeping the gain off. And I have just started out, and iam yet to even listen fully to my diraced sound now. But on paper what Dirac did looks impressive. Will listen to how it sounds tomorrow and will come back. And if you have any other tweaks that you prefer please let me know. My trail period is too short to try everything out. Thanks again.

 

[insider9]

So here starts my journey of small but incremental gains with my pairing of the devialet + PMC kit.

1. Power management - one of my local forum members is a bio medical engineer. And he also runs a devialet setup. He mentioned that the devialet is capable of a noise floor of -135db. But needs lot of end user care to get it there. He spent 18months crawling around his house with sensitive equipment that he borrowed from his office. And kept measuring interference in Tesla's. What ever that means 🙂

As per him the devialet has a switching mode power supply which dumps high frequency interference into its return line. And this will corrupt the clarity of the digital source in use. And upon his insistence I bought a proper isolation transformer. And there certainly is a lower noise floor.

2. Power cords : The above improved my clairty and noise floor. But the biggest surprise came when my friend lent me a cardass power cord to run my devialet. The previously mentioned over whelming bass is gone completely. I have to buy my own power cords yet, and the most suggested one at the moment to pair the devialet is 'pangea ac9 se mkii'. Checked it up on audioadvisor.com a USA website and goes for only 250usd. That will be a definite buy for me next.

3. Amp post isolators : again as per my friends insistence I bought some RCA jack interference isolators. And can't say for sure if I can hear any difference. But I still have them in place now. Just in case.

Hmmm... Isn't dynamic range of 16 bit recording 96dB? Could your speakers play continuosly over 105dB or so? I'm a sucker for good specs but be interested to hear what that actually means. Not to mention actual noise floor of the room usually being 30-40dB.

Not to put a downer, as I'm genuinely happy for you, but what would worry me is the amout of effort you had to go through to get an amp of $17k RRP working properly.

5. Dirac : I have to start with a big thanks to ellisdj. Thanks Ellis for posting such a informative video on your channel. I did my entire calibration just watching your video and pausing it in steps. It was so easy and informative. I had tried REW before. But was pretty much lost pretty soon. So I went Dirac. I just finished measuring my room yesterday. And Dirac has got me a nice juicy target curve. Will have to listen tomorrow and see what the difference is. Will surely update tomorrow.

You've done so much, but I would not be surprised at all if 99% of improvement came from room correction.

6. Musicbee software : As you all know I tried roon a few weeks back but was disappointed. In the interim I tried jplay ( without jriver media management), and even HQ player. The HQ player was a pure abomination. Maybe there are sonic gains to be had. But the user interface was pure hell. No wonder most users use it as a plug in for room. After trying lots of other programs I've lost track of. I landed on the musicbee software. Absolutely free and designed with the average user in mind . I find it extremely user friendly. I have down samples everything to 96khz, which is the same setting in my devialet air. And iam really liking it. Maybe jplay and HQplayer are superior sounding . But I don't want to faff with audiophile complex software just for sonic gains. Iam happy with musicbee after trying roon, jplay and HQ player. And I have set the music bee to load the entire track being played into RAM. Though I can't hear any immediate improvements.

Do post more thoughts on this in a while, please. I've seen others using Musicbee on other forums. Also visited their website. There's an interesting Upnp plug-in which might be useful (in case you missed it).

My next priorities are to get my room treated. And some Gaia ii speaker islators atleasr for now.

I'm surprised you haven't started from there. I admire the amount of effort you put into all this so far achieving maybe 20% gain. Acoustic room treatemnt and isolation would solve 80% of your issues. I know I don't have to tell you this *unknw*

 

[newlash09]

Yeah getting the devialet to sound better than the parasound + chord combination has been painstaking. Probably the same effort with my previous combination could have given similar results 🙂

Dirac has certainly tightened up the bass a lot. The difference between Dirac on / off is too pronounced. Iam sure room treatment would give me superior results. But good looking room treatment seems to be expensive. So will have to postpone it to December, when funds become available again.

The low noise floor of the devialet is quiet apparent in comparison to my previous combination. And I only wanted to take it as low as possible, even though it might be hard to hear it. The power cable has certainly made a readily apparent difference. And so has the cheap isolation transformer I bought.

The musicbee software is very simple , almost as easy as itunes. And all settings are easily available and understood. I have kept output sampling rate at 96khz. As higher than this might lead to audio dropouts from devialet air. Iam not sure what bit depth the musicbee is outputing at. But there is a option to output at 32 bits, which I have kept ticked. So not sure if it will pass native 32 bit content at that bit depth, or will convert everything to that bit depth. Considering this is a simple software, the more audiophile centric players might sound better due to better sampling conversions. Will have to see if there are any other softwares that might be simple and easy to use, but give superior sound at the same time.

 

[insider9]

I get it that's the same for everyone, visuals are usually a concern. I'm glad you're not accepting sub par performance, even if you're getting there in a different way to what I'd do.

I've spent more time on acoustic treatment in my room and the effects are even better. Still, I think I'm only 80% there.

 

[ellisdj]

Newlash I meant to ask you, if you end up buying Dirac Live will you please do so via the link below my guide video.

That would really help me out towards making more. I am sure loads of people have bought it without using my link because they wasnt aware of it.

It should be in the video description for the step by step guide video. I really appreciae it

 

[newlash09]

Newlash I meant to ask you, if you end up buying Dirac Live will you please do so via the link below my guide video.

That would really help me out towards making more.  I am sure loads of people have bought it without using my link because they wasnt aware of it.

 

It should be in the video description for the step by step guide video.  I really appreciae it 

I was aware that I could buy from your video post, as you had mentioned it in the past. If I buy the Dirac live, it will be certainly from your link. Thanks.

 

[ellisdj]

Top Man thanks doesn't cost you anymore btw just letting you know