This review page is supported in part by the sponsors whose ad banners are displayed below I think that was due to the incredible resolution of the higher frequencies and how much energy they carried. But it wasn't merely about said energy which can be delivered also by far less expensive devices. It was about combining that energy with the full weight of each attack. Those undoubtedly were attributes one generally relates to tube amplifiers. Even the best transistor amps like my Soulution 710, the Accuphase A-200 or SPEC RSA-V1 (which is a class-D amp) can only present some approximation thereof – still great and sufficient for my tastes but not as natural as delivered by a high-quality SET. Imagine then my surprise at this French machine which wasn't merely solid-state but a hybrid switching sort. This realization was followed up by other attributes we usually associate with tubes. The most important of those was how palpably instruments were presented. I could watch them in the most intimate way. One hardly ever sees the words 'digital' and 'palpable' in one sentence but the Devialet was proof positive that digital devices can offer a very palpable instrumental presentation. The problem is not in the digital approach per se but in its particular execution. The best recordings certainly benefited the most. I was a bit concerned when I decided to play Annie Lennox' Bare from the dark times of BMG, Sony and EMI when each major label implemented some sort of copy protection. Specialized hackers cared less but for regular music fans they were a true pain in the arse. In theory Copy Control was supposed to not affect sound quality because it was based on adding inaudible distortion that would make it impossible for a computer to read such a disc. Audible or not these distortions did accompany significantly lower sound quality. Hence I don't listen to Bare too often and when I do it's usually two pieces from an additional DVD that was recorded before the concert. And those cuts are brilliant and unlike the sound delivered by the CD. Now our slim French deck was able to do something special about this as well as the problematic Porcupine Tree Deadwings. Selectivity improved significantly and as much as possible so did resolution. But the most important improvement was the lack of brightness and numbness. I could finally listen with pleasure. And I did as it was hard to predict if and when this might happen again. It was as though the digital processing of the D-Premier was able to fix mistakes made during the mastering or pressing processes. How about high-quality recordings? Amazing! I could reach out and touch the musicians right in front of me in full 3D. Dynamics were beautiful and allowed the music to breathe so that playback felt like taking part in some live event. I thus simply had to listen to a Charlie Haden concert organized for his 50th birthday. It was incredible how real it felt. Selectivity and resolution were fantastic to result in a very close warm foreground which gave me a very good idea of what and where everything was located on stage. And there wasn't even a hint of power shortage. The Devialet delivered a truly great rendering of a live performance with wonderful timbre and slam. What's more, the amp had incredible dynamics. Only two amplifiers I know would compete - the Soulution 710 and the Accuphase A-200. Both have more sophistication but none has this speed of dynamic swings. Devialet offers a hint of what it would be like if you listened to live recording at home with their full dynamic range unleashed. This of course would be quite difficult especially over longer periods as some fragments would be too loud, others too quiet. If you listen to rock or jazz there's no problem. The former is compressed during production, the latter usually involves small bands playing in smaller venues so their real dynamic range is limited. But it doesn't apply to classical music or soundtracks. If you like big orchestral performances you'd better have a large room for the D-Premier. It will allow you to recreate something quite close to live - something very very few amplifiers can deliver. Have a tube amplifier play the same music and you'll know. Although I am a great fan of tube amplifiers, I listen to music not only with my heart but also with my brain and ears. Those parts tell me that some part of tube dynamics is artificial not on the macro but micro level. Even if that creates the impression of larger dynamic range, it's simply because they play certain things louder. To describe the sonic character of the Devialet, I'll have to use very 'un-digital' terms like smooth, spatial and natural. I finally understood why the D-Premier fits so well into Paul Miller's reference system. On one hand its sound is powerful and open, on the other some treble roughness gets somehow smoothed out. Those qualities should work perfectly with his publication's Bowers&Wilkins 802. The same goes for the bass. Its output is slightly on the soft side but delivered with amazing grip at least down to 50Hz. It doesn't hardened and never distorted in any way at least not on my speakers in my room. The Jadis I-35, a great tube amplifier I auditioned shortly before the Devialet, offered a similar bass character. The difference was that when it came to high-output incidents, its bass hardened and lost its natural fluidity. Why? Likely current starvation which caused the amp to dynamically compress. The D-Premier showed the French tube amp's limitations in that regard and not because the I-35 couldn't play as loud but because its transients hardened and the presentation at higher levels was slightly less sorted and more messy. And that's something the innovative Devialet completely avoided. The D-Premier's ability to differentiate was amazing. The better the recording, the bigger better and more natural the sound became. When fed with hi-res files this improved even further. Most files players and D/A converters have difficulties presenting the differences between 16 and 24 bits, between 44.1kHz and 192kHz. Quite possibly many so-called hi-res recordings or files are at least partially to blame as it seems that many sound engineers still don't know how to generate them properly. As such I am 100% certain that all or almost all of the hi-res recording I have acquired could still be improved by remastering. But a few machines like this Devialet or the recently reviewed Ayon system are capable to prove already why there's so much fuss about 24-bit word lengths and higher sampling rates. Such recordings do sound more natural. I would like to use analogue sound but that wouldn't be a proper description (see Michael Lavorgna's The road to analog-sounding digital: are we there yet? in Stereophile's January 2013 issue page 3 here). It's about more beautiful timbres, bigger spaces and loosening up a tie which the CD standard tightened around our collective neck even if we didn't notice it. There's still a long way ahead of us. But already compact disc can deliver things we did not dream about where innovative devices like this Devialet point us in the right direction for the future that is now.