The Devialet Expert 220 Pro is an integrated amplifier, but also a whole lot more to boot. Janine Elliot takes this £6990 French Fancy for a whirl.

“Devialet is one of those companies that you just go “wow” whenever you look at their products and, having heard such great things about them over the years, I really wanted to get the opportunity to find out for myself what the excitement is all about. Devialet began in 2007, set up by three friends; engineer Pierre-Emmanuel Calmel, entrepreneur Quentin Sannié, and designer Emmanuel Nardin. Later it was added to by Franck Lebouchard as CEO. They all had a vision of making a revolution in audio, and with one goal; to make it possible for large numbers of people to be able to listen to perfectly produced music using everyday sound devices. In order to meet their objective this Paris based company has registered over 160 patents covering many different areas of sound construction. Their Expert 220 Pro is just one of a series of very clever fully integrated amplifiers using Devialet’s own operating system based a Linux kernel. It is rated at 220WRMS (at under 6Ω) or can be bridged with a second machine to give 440WRMS. Their top Expert 250 Pro can be bridged to go from 250W to 1000W…”

Read the full review here