Devialet Paris…..our visit to one of the most important companies today.
It may sound pretentious, but when in its catalogues, on its website and in its promotional texts, a company with a very short business history states that the product with which it became known made its “the most spectacular debut of the audio history High End” means that something very special has happened.
And in Super Sound We have seen first-hand that, indeed, this has been the case. Few – in fact very few – brands have had such spectacular beginnings in the history of truly exceptional audio as the French one. Devialet.
And what is Devialet? Simply put, an ambitious project led by a team of fans of high technology, industrial design and music reproduction led by Pierre-Emmanuel Calmel, inspiration for the revolutionary technical innovations developed by the brand (with professional experience in the communication networks) and accomplished sax player.
A project materialized in the D-Premier, a formidable combination of preamplifier, digital audio processor and power stage that not only dazzled professionals, amateurs and specialized journalists from all over Europe present at the 2010 edition of the Munich High End event. but also to the jury of the prestigious and influential association of specialized magazines EISA (“European Imaging and Sound Association”), which awarded it the Award for Best European High End Audio Product of the Year 2010-2011.
This jury, made up of the directors of 50 specialized European publications in fields such as High Fidelity, Home Cinema, Video, Car Audio and Mobile Electronics, was impressed by the level of innovations incorporated into the D-Premier, and reflected this with these words: “From France comes the most advanced and innovative amplifier that has appeared on the Hi-Fi scene in recent years. Its striking industrial design hides a patented hybrid of analog and digital technologies that provides outstanding technical and sonic performance.
It includes several inputs that can be configured by the user while its unique remote control (desktop) with radio frequency control allows you to control it without having to have it in sight. It also features a dedicated Wi-Fi connection and two HDMI jacks for future improvements, including using the D-Premier as a transparent HDMI repeater between a source and a TV. To listen to this amplifier is to enjoy stereo music like never before for the simple reason that it sculpts a truly memorable performance into the atmosphere around you. High Fidelity will never be the same again!”
Founded in Paris in 2007, Devialet has its strong point not only in a breathtaking design but in a unique technology in the field of high-level audio: the so-called ADH, acronym for “Analog Digital Hybrid” (“Analog-Digital Hybrid”) and which, in In the words of its creators, it allows us to provide something unique to music lovers:
A truly natural feel in music reproduction, a vital, uncompressed sound that is as close as possible to what musicians and sound engineers have captured and subsequently transferred to their recordings.
In Devialet They are firmly convinced that it is the artists, and not the devices, who make the music, so the brand’s primary objective from the first moment was to develop a completely transparent audio component and, above all, practically “invisible”.
The result was the aforementioned ADH hybrid amplification technology, which achieves unprecedented results in terms of listening pleasure, that is, warmth, thanks to its treatment of four key amplification mechanisms that usually deteriorate the sound and which are the following :
Harmonic distortion, intermodulation distortion, thermal distortion, noise and signal losses on their “journey” to the speakers. He Devialet D-Premier reduces each of these phenomena that harm sound to levels never seen before so that the demanding music lover has only and exclusively what is in each recording and also has everything.
Thus, both the total harmonic distortion plus noise level (THD+N) and the intermodulation distortion level are 0.001% at full power while the signal/noise ratio is 130 dB, the thermal distortion is immeasurable and the output impedance is 0.001 ohms, to which must be added a bandwidth that covers (with speakers with impedance between 2 and 8 ohms) from 0 to 87,000 Hz at the digital input and from 0.1 to 87,000 Hz on analog input.
These benefits are absolutely guaranteed “by law” since each D-Premier that leaves the manufacturing chain is exhaustively measured and evaluated, being authorized for sale only and exclusively if it fully satisfies the design specifications established by Devialet.
From a technical point of view, what makes them possible is a completely new electronic design (with more than 2,500 components mounted directly on the board and without any soldered cables, which guarantees exceptional long-term reliability) based on the following elements of design: 100% digital internal transport of the signal (which guarantees no deterioration in the signal), the use, in digital circuits, of the shortest possible signal paths, a lossless path for the signals of current that go from the D/A conversion system to the Class A amplifier and, finally, the extreme linearity of the unity gain voltage amplifier in Class A.
The maximum output power available is 2×240 watts continuous into 8 ohms which is combined with a high current delivery capacity (the Devialet It can easily handle loads of up to 2 ohms, which guarantees its compatibility with the vast majority of speakers available on the market) with extremely high efficiency (over 85%) as most of said power is supplied by digital amplifiers. located inside the ADH block.
