Found myself walking past the Devialet shop, popped in and and asked if I could have a quick demo.
They have a decent sized demo room at the back of the shop, with the seats facing away from the walkway of the mall. In it they had a pair of Phantoms, some their own Experts, I think they are called, and a large white pair of £16,000 Kefs.
The bigger speakers are linked up to 120, 200 and and dual mono units. The Phantoms have their own inbuilt amps.
The guy doing the demo, Jeremy Garnham, gradually worked his way through the speakers using his laptop, Tidal and Devialet's neat remote. He said you can get top metal disc sounds from a Blu-Ray player and had an Oppo hidden away.
I'd briefly heard some Phantoms in Harrods quite a while ago, in their tiny demo room, where they didn't really make that much of an impression. In the Devialet shop though it was completely different. The bass and soundstage of these futuristic speakers is amazing.
The conventional looking Experts had more detail and weren't as bright as the Phantoms, while the Kefs featured prime bass.
Everything about the Devialet equipment seems so well designed. I put it to Jeremy that one of my worries is as digital technology takes off, those who buy equipment now will be left behind. He said Devialet have an Evol, or evolution, philosophy to hi-fi. Things will improve but customers will be brought along on the ride with software and even hardware upgrades.
As for the DAC components used, well their reproduction sounded excellent to me.
Jeremy said you can obviously put the output of record decks and cartridges through a Devialet system. I pointed out that you would be converting analogue to digital at the end and he went, Sure but try listening to it yourself.
I didn't get a chance to. I hadn't set up the demo properly and Jeremy had already given me a lengthy taste of Devialet. I mentioned to him that I know somebody who has mint condition first pressings of original Beatles and Rolling Stones records, which I might try and buy at some point.
Jeremy said that if he bought them he would digitally convert the Beatles and Stones albums, using the Devialet and ancillary equipment, and then seal them back up. The result would be albums of fantastic quality to listen to. If you wanted to play them physically, you could dial in the details of whatever cartridge you were using and make minute adjustments for the sound.
As you might have gathered, I was a lot more impressed by the Devlaiet equipment than I expected to be. Even the bottom end pair of Phantoms, with a Dialog box, can achieve a lot. This runs from pumping out CD music, PS4/Apple TV and television programmes, to vinyl via a 3rd party converter.
One thing we both agreed on though is analogue, especially via valves, sounds different. In a perfect world, you'd have both.
Jack
An Impromptu Devialet Demo
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