Devialet Phantom
- Thread starter Jeff Fritz
- Start date
Well they either were not run in or wrong environment.
I heard them in a listening room on the stands in stereo mode running Tidal and they were astonishing for the money. Had AE1's off the devialet 130 pro alongside and phantoms were just so good. The 130 with a 10k pair of speakers may have given them a run, but for money they are exceptional. Spent 2 hours, all genres and never caught them out. Even fast harsh difficult tracks were made musical. They are of course not a miracle, but not to be underestimated.
+1
Just plain awful. Maybe they sound good outside, or a car, seems like rooms are not good for them
I have a pair. I have been able to compare them with quite a few speaker amp combinations now. They are certainly very sensitive to where they are set up in the room, not least because they go much lower than most speakers, regardless of size, and because the virtual point source means they have much more to lose by poor positioning than easy to do speakers with rectangular boxes and non-coincident drivers (ie most).
They have a frequency balance fairly similar to my Goldmund Epilog 1&2 and are fast and boom free. They almost match my LS3/5as on speech, which was a surprise, they are much more accurate on dynamics than any of the BBC type speakers I know, and much cleaner in the bass than most reflex speakers.
Overall I think they are spectacular value for anybody wanting a clean clear, fast boom free sound.
They won't suit every taste, obviously, but I could live with only them if I had to.
They haven't got quite the mid range magic of LS3/5as but they have much more dynamics and have 2 more octaves of clean bass, certainly I would always prefer the Phantoms for the sort of music I mainly listen to if I could only chose one or the other.
Compared to the Yamaha NS1000 they are quite similar though again the Phantoms go an octave lower have slightly less air but less tendency to harshness on poor recordings.
Compared to Tune Audio Anima horns they have a more up front balance but get close on dynamics.
Compared to the Goldmunds, which are the best speakers overall I have ever heard they are simply slightly weaker in every way, but the price difference is around 18:1 before an appropriate amp is included.
In fact the only things wrong with them is the sensitivity to placement, which is common to all full range speakers obviously, and the irritating marketing of the post-LVMH investment in the company.
They have a frequency balance fairly similar to my Goldmund Epilog 1&2 and are fast and boom free. They almost match my LS3/5as on speech, which was a surprise, they are much more accurate on dynamics than any of the BBC type speakers I know, and much cleaner in the bass than most reflex speakers.
Overall I think they are spectacular value for anybody wanting a clean clear, fast boom free sound.
They won't suit every taste, obviously, but I could live with only them if I had to.
They haven't got quite the mid range magic of LS3/5as but they have much more dynamics and have 2 more octaves of clean bass, certainly I would always prefer the Phantoms for the sort of music I mainly listen to if I could only chose one or the other.
Compared to the Yamaha NS1000 they are quite similar though again the Phantoms go an octave lower have slightly less air but less tendency to harshness on poor recordings.
Compared to Tune Audio Anima horns they have a more up front balance but get close on dynamics.
Compared to the Goldmunds, which are the best speakers overall I have ever heard they are simply slightly weaker in every way, but the price difference is around 18:1 before an appropriate amp is included.
In fact the only things wrong with them is the sensitivity to placement, which is common to all full range speakers obviously, and the irritating marketing of the post-LVMH investment in the company.
I heard the Gold version at the recent RMAF show. I don't think anyone would confuse them with a very good speaker but they were pretty good and fun to watch.
Have you heard the Goldmund Mk2 speakers yet, ie ProLogos, Satya, Anatta or Apologue?. They blow away the Mk1 versions, so I am confident they blow away the Epilogs.
I agree that the Phantom Gold are MUCH better than the Silvers. Only request will be to be able to control the bass electronically. I would like to tone it down a bit. If I see Antoine in December, I will personally pass on that request!
I am very suspicious of "blow away", usually a bit of an exaggeration IMO. There is actually very little new in this business, Devialet and Goldmund one amongst the few not re-hashing the ancient.
So did you hear them or not?
Let's not quibble over semantics.
I have heard the Mk1 Apololgues and both the Mk2 Anatta and the Satya sound better(and they are significantly cheaper). i have been told that the Mk2 Apologues beat them, so....
I have an open invit to hear the Mk2 Apos in NY, so I will close that loop one day. The others I heard at Chez Goldmund and at the Warsaw show.
This is ALL new as its software refinement by Dr Adam and the price uplift is ginormous. The Mk1 ProLogos is $55K and Mk2 is $70k, so they must have something to justify that. This is all about Proteus/Leonardo.
No. As a Goldmund user for over 30 years I have an invite to Geneva but haven't been since I am now retired and that sort of expenditure is no longer sensible, and anyway the AHD and SAM technology gets very, very close to state of the art sound at a tiny fraction of the cost.
IMHO it is no longer necessary to spend a fortune to get wide frequency range low colouration sound even if that is also be the route by which the absolute state of the art is being achieved by Goldmund at the top end.
It seems to me that most expensive hifi nowadays is either a styling exercise or a re-hash of old technology at vertiginous prices, or a combination of both.
If we are not going to use high technology there is little or nothing new today which is any better than the best vintage kit IME.
I heard the massive Apologues at Pietro in Italy. Not sure if they are mk1 or 2. That's his second system. His first is the Yamamura horns. And I would have done the same in his place. I prefer f1eng's Animas to his Epilogues
I do quibble. I find "blow away" to be an off-putting phrase which says nothing substantive any more than does "better" and implies that the device makes all others irrelevant. That, in modern audio, is never happens. It makes me discount whatever other content accompanies it. Similar to all posts that ask about "world's best."
Can you tell us what was this particular vintage kit that has "blown away" everything else?
They are still learning and probably the performance is limited by the speaker units - miracles are not possible at such low prices, specially at the levels they usually demo the speakers. Current Devialets's are much more listenable than the old Devialet Premier, and still need a lot of matching and tweaking.
I have listened to the Phantoms several times and did not enjoy the type of sound. However it was only at shops or shows, never brought one in my listening room.
If someone wants cheap great sound, they should get the Smyth Research headphones realyser. This was demoed at Munich for their kickstarter, and will soon become reality. They had a multichannel Atmos speaker set up. You sat in the chair with the headphones, and they calibrated the sound to your head height with test tones. Then, as the music played, you toggled the headphones on and off. As the headphones went off, the speakers came on, and vice versa. Thing is, one could not distinguish whether the sound was coming from the speakers or from the headphones. It was that seamless.
What this means is, you can carry around room settings, and listen to a particular room or set up via your headphones. Short of fighting a room with a restored Apogee or getting the Western Electric 16a, this is what blows me away.
What this means is, you can carry around room settings, and listen to a particular room or set up via your headphones. Short of fighting a room with a restored Apogee or getting the Western Electric 16a, this is what blows me away.
Did they use a standard stereo HD800 in this system or a modified unit with more than one unit per side?
Not sure. KAL has a review in stereo phile with details. If you go to smyth research website you will see it. I was just listening to headphones in Munich to see if any worried for me (I don't like headphones) and seriously this was the most astounding thing at Munich
Bonzo, this is not new. PT audiophile reviewed it 3 years ago and there was a forum where people were exchanging speaker setting files.
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