To Doug Schneider,
I have had a D-Premier for a year now (I live in the UK) and agree with everything you say in your review. I have never owned an amplifier that remained so revealing after this length of time. Usually as the ear and brain become experienced with audio equipment, then troubling subtleties start to emerge, but this is not so here. (My previous amplifier was a Krell).
I am a very long-term (25 years) Quad electrostatic fan and today have their 2905s. I do suggest that you get the opportunity to listen to the D-Premier via these speakers as the Quad’s properties of high resolution, high linearity, fast rise time and ultra-low distortion are an ideal match for this amp. One unexpected benefit of the combination that I found was an extension to the bass response of the electrostatics when compared with the Krell. I put this down to the point you noted in your review that the D-Premier's output impedance is vanishingly small at all frequencies whereas the Quads vary from <2 ohms at 50Hz to over 20 ohms at higher frequencies and this causes difficulties for some amps -- but not the Devialet.
Regards,
Gordon
This is a very interesting e-mail because I haven’t known anyone who has had this amplifier that long -- you must have bought it the day it came out! I’m very happy to hear that your experiences mirror mine and that they hold up over time. Your comments about the bass response are interesting but, in ways, not surprising. Subjectively, the D-Premier’s grip on my Revel’s woofers was vise-like; objectively, its measured performance shows an extremely low output impedance and incredibly high damping factor. So it all correlates. I also think this amplifier raises the bar for performance in many areas and those who think that only huge, bulky amplifiers can do bass extremely well will have to re-think their position.
Before I find some electrostatic speakers to hook the amplifier up to, though, I’d need to get a D-Premier back. My review sample is long since gone; however, I will say that this is the first piece of review gear that’s come here for a long time that I was extremely sad to see go. . . . Doug Schneider
