Should Apple acquire Devialet/Phantom?

[streamy]

And as for your sons being impressed, G? Just curious? How old? They are definitely impressive, seeing the bass modules flapping and hearing such bass come out of such a small package. I don’t know what the setup or room was, but the overall balance - even in my space which is large and trapezoidal/wedge shaped - was too bass heavy with recessed mids. Youngsters like such a shift with the bass heavy music of today. Plus, perhaps they have better mid/high hearing so it doesn’t sound as recessed? Lol  But it is another software DSP complaint - no tone/tilt control whatsoever??? Not even a rudimentary way to room compensate? Again, I did better in the 70’s! It smacks of a waterproof Bose Bluetooth mono speaker.

I’ve only been a devotialet (see what I did there?) for a short time, but in all my readings, it seems that the overriding complaint is that the rudiments have been promised and the retort is that it is coming. Even here, I still hear... they will get there. They are adding people. Etc. If these basics have not been produced, they need something more than this. They need help. For cripes sake, there is a freaking car with a mannequin orbiting the sun for the next billion years. They can’t do multichannel Phantom Dialogue, or at the very least stereo with some tone control?

The problem is that the Phantom does not really fit with the rest of the company which is basically high end electronics. The Phantom is a completely separate product/division/vision, sitting orphaned and languishing. It could become Devialet’s iPhone if properly managed...

I‘m very sorry for you that you could not get the Phantoms working as a networked system and couldn‘t experience their full quality as one of the best integrated audio networked system that I‘m able to enjoy day by day, this for a few years up to now.

In my opinion this has little to do with the SW programmers at Devialet. On one hand it could be a failure of you and your home environment, but that’s also not true. A product should be designed that a consumer can set it up without need of specialized knowledge about the technology and the environment where the technology is used, unless it is clearly specified what this knowledge is or what qualifications the consumer or service provider needs to have to properly install it.

The main flaw of the current (fixed from many initial bugs) Phantom/Dialog system is its design to be only a part of the system that it actually needs to properly function. The system relies on a power network (for PLC) and a wifi network (for control and some content streaming) and a ethernet network (for content streaming and control) of the Dialog that is able to provide high bandwidth and low latency and is provided by the consumer. Most consumers have no idea what the real capacity and latency of their network infrastructure is. Our consumer level networks are not specified to provide low latency for microsecond precise synchronization of a stereo setup. As a result the Dialog/Phantom combination only works reliably well when all power plugs are on the same copper wire (for PLC) or all is ethernet connected to a single switch/router.

I assume your problem was that you could not fully satisfy these conditions and therefore could not get the system running. This is not the fault of the Devialet programmers, but a problem of the requirements that are not sufficiently or not at all specified. Devialet’s customer service can not even tell you what guaranteed latency and bandwidth your network needs to have and also not how you as user could even measure it.
For Devialet it should have become clear that they need to either provide the network installation service or deliver a system with a closed wired network with control over bandwidth and latency.

Alternatively, they could go the way of Sonos, Apple, Google (Cast) and reduce the requirements, allow more latency, jitter and less hires streaming. It would be a pity and have a negative impact on the SQ for those that have a working network but improve SQ for persons like you that are not able to setup the system that it properly works due to external factors.

I‘m a happy ‚lucky winner‘ with three rock stable working Phantoms (2 in stereo setup + 1 mono in tripole configuration for room filling party mode), but unsatisfied that others cannot replicate what I can get out of the Phantoms. This impacts a bit my possibility to recommend this terrific system to others.
But I‘m strongly convinced it is not a SW issue but a systemic.

The Devialet Pro systems with the new CI board won‘t suffer that much as long as there remains a cable linked connection for stereo reproduction. For multi-channel reproduction the requirements maybe can already be reduced in terms of delays to ms range and not microseconds. And multiroom reproduction also only requires ms precision.

[Gerronwithit]

And as for your sons being impressed, G? Just curious? How old? They are definitely impressive, seeing the bass modules flapping and hearing such bass come out of such a small package. I don’t know what the setup or room was, but the overall balance - even in my space which is large and trapezoidal/wedge shaped - was too bass heavy with recessed mids. Youngsters like such a shift with the bass heavy music of today. Plus, perhaps they have better mid/high hearing so it doesn’t sound as recessed? Lol  But it is another software DSP complaint - no tone/tilt control whatsoever??? Not even a rudimentary way to room compensate? Again, I did better in the 70’s! It smacks of a waterproof Bose Bluetooth mono speaker.

I’ve only been a devotialet (see what I did there?) for a short time, but in all my readings, it seems that the overriding complaint is that the rudiments have been promised and the retort is that it is coming. Even here, I still hear... they will get there. They are adding people. Etc. If these basics have not been produced, they need something more than this. They need help. For cripes sake, there is a freaking car with a mannequin orbiting the sun for the next billion years. They can’t do multichannel Phantom Dialogue, or at the very least stereo with some tone control?





The problem is that the Phantom does not really fit with the rest of the company which is basically high end electronics. The Phantom is a completely separate product/division/vision, sitting orphaned and languishing. It could become Devialet’s iPhone if properly managed...

My sons are in their 30s and 40s and have better ears than me. I think they are appalled at the amount of money I have spent on current gear but, hey, they're not getting it all - the money I mean not the HiFi gear. Naim have exactly the same problems with software development that Devialet has. Have a look at their forum to see the number of bugs in their current extensive range - they like lots of boxes in Naim. 

[snbeall]

Lol Gerronwithit.

Streamy,

Yes, I had network difficulties, but those might have been able to be worked out. It was the multifaceted shortcomings that turned me off and put me on the sidelines until they mature. And much of it is in fact software related (hardware might need upgrades to support such software). I want multichannel support. There is no basic control over tonal balance, if only bass/treble. Ideally, at this price point and sophistication it should be able to room correct to a degree, let alone gross bass/treble adjustments. I could do all of this in the 70’s. Spark is evolving but has shortcomings. The most troublesome is the complete lack of serviceability. It’s an interesting paperweight if anything goes wrong out of warranty. Or heaven forbid someone bumps into and dents a woofer or mashes a mid-ring or tweeter. This last one, because of the nature/novelty of the manufacturing process, well...I don’t know how you solve that one. They can extend duration of devialet care at higher insurance costs, but what actuary can correctly estimate the number of clumsy children, cats, dogs, adults, drunken adults, and general mayhem that will dent these things? So it was not just networking - although I agree with all your comments about just making it work in the tough home environment. Or as you also suggest, don’t market it as a “wireless” network speaker.

[snbeall]

Here you have an idea of what the cinema potential is. Just not yellow. Leave that on the Renault race car. Black Phantom

[snbeall]

       

[snbeall]

Whoa... that’s a new record for going off topic. My apologies. Back to the topic....