ICON

Owners are able to save their personal
settings onto an SD card which is loaded
into a reader on the rear of the amp. Using
the middle ‘Bass’ button on the remote
control it’s also possible to adjust various
of these settings on the fly – including the
SAM level (0-100%), mute, absolute phase,
subsonic filter, ICM (Intelligent Cinema
Mode), DPM, high pass and input trim for
line inputs, and RAM (eq, input sensitivity
and loading) for the MM/MC phono input.
Enabling or disabling
inputs, however, can
only be achieved via the
Configurator utility. I
have found some slight
subjective advantage in
disabling the Wi-Fi, S/PDIF,
network and analogue
functions when intending
to use either this amp, or the ‘Le 800’,
via its USB port with, in this instance, the
Melco N1A media library [HFN Aug ’15].
Depending on the range of inputs you
really intend to use, it’s worth defeating
the rest. Oh, and I’ve one request of
Devialet – when are we going to see
THE ‘MAGIC WIRE’
‘It’s a digital
instrument that
projects a huge
analogue vista’
some visual feedback of level or input on
that big, blank space in the centre of the
handset’s dial?
pOWER WITH PANACHE
Interestingly, I felt less inclined to invoke
Devialet’s ‘Speaker Active Matching’
– already available for B&W’s 802 D3
loudspeakers [HFN Dec ’15] – with the
Original d’Atelier than I had with its lowerpowered
‘Expert’ stablemates. Sure enough
the deep, almost subsonic
bass rhythm and thrilling
samples that bind Massive
Attack’s ‘Unfinished
Symphony’ [Blue Lines
(2012 remaster), 96kHz/
24-bit download] ripped
from my B&W 802 D3s
as if it were preparing to
tear the drivers from their frames.
With SAM, of course, the amplifier is
programmed to take the loudspeaker to
its limits, but never beyond, and yet the
performance was just a little freer, more
refreshing with SAM removed from the
configuration. Bass, you see, is neither in
All Devialet’s ADH amplifiers represent a unique twist on Quad’s ‘feedforward’
Class A/B Current Dumping technique, first applied in its 405 power amp over 40
years ago [Wireless World, Dec ’75]. In this new-age implementation, a very high
quality analogue Class A (voltage) amplifier is directly coupled to the speaker
while a digital Class D stage provides the current to maintain this voltage across
the speaker load. Hence the term ‘ADH’ or ‘Analogue/Digital Hybrid’.
In practice the Class A preamp is a transconductance stage that converts the
current output of the amplifier’s PCM1792 DACs into a voltage. By keeping all its
processing in the digital domain until the final output, Devialet has engineered
an analogue stage with a minuscule signal path. It calls this its ‘Magic Wire’.
It’s this Class A voltage preamp – not the rugged Class D dumpers – that defines
the quality and performance of the amplifier as a whole, and this includes the
filtering of its switched PWM output. So, unlike conventional Class D amps, the
Original d’Atelier is free of an invasive LC filter network just ahead of its speaker
outputs and its performance remains unaffected by speaker load impedance.
ABOVE: Each rose-gold coated Original d’Atelier
case is fashioned from a single alloy casting –
32mm thick, gently radiused and polished to a
perfect mirror finish. White gloves are supplied!
short supply or under-damped with this
hugely capable incarnation of ADH in the
driving seat.
Midband clarity, too, is typically
breathtaking. This particular quality of the
Original d’Atelier’s CV was illustrated by
two tracks in particular – Livingston Taylor’s
‘Isn’t She Lovely’ [World’s Greatest... Chesky
96kHz/24-bit download] and Gregory
Porter’s ‘God Bless The Child’ from Be Good
[Motéma 233488]. The closed-miked,
whistled harmonies of the former sounded
exquisitely realistic, and it took little very
imagination to feel his breath tickling my
cheek as it passed by.
Porter’s throaty baritone, by contrast,
I could feel in my chest, the tails of each
word revealing a dark and ambient
acoustic lit only by the booming power
of his voice. Once again, the Devialet
amp – and B&W 802 D3s – crafted an
astonishingly open and polished sound,
sharply focused but never ‘sharp’, always
in control but never coerced. The resonant
colour of instruments and voices alike were
painted true-to-life, its depiction that of a
large format photograph rather than the
euphony of an impressionist oil.
READY, STEADY, GO...
Moreover, the Original d’Atelier has an
indefatigable energy, a robustness that
refuses to be blunted by the most ferocious
of recordings. And by ferocious I don’t
mean messy, although it’ll unpick the
densest of recordings with the best of ’em.
Listen to Yello’s Touch [Polydor, 48kHz/
24-bit DVD-A rip] and the terrifying pace of
reimagined classics like ‘The Race (2008)’
will, loudspeakers permitting, thunder forth
with a disarming intensity.
www.hifinews.co.uk | REPRinted FROM HI-FI NEWS
032-035 Devialet Original d'Atelier_v8_PFSPCBPM.indd 33 2/9/16 4:05:20 PM