Phantom soundstage - true stereo?

[michirishi]

[...]I have three questions related to this.

1.  Does the Omnidirectional character of the phantoms require that the position of the speakers be further away from the corners of a room, to avoid bouncing the sound around too much?

Don't worry about that. I have tried placing them anywhere between 50cm-1meter from the rear and 50-80cm from the sides and they always sound fantastic with lots of detail. Bass is very stable.

2.  Using the example of a recording of an orchestra and standing there listening to the playback noting where each instrument is located on the soundstage in the room, with the very omnidirectional Phantom speakers, what effect does this have on the the geographic location of the instruments across the soundstage?  Simply's spread the locations out wider?  Is the Omnidirectional stereo effect - a wider than true soundstage- have any negative effects or is it a good thing?

I do not really notice the omnidirectional nature of the Phantom. That is, other than that one can hardly hear where the Phantoms are exactly located. The music seems to apear out of nowhere. That's probably why they are called 'Phantoms'
On the other hand, instruments and voices are sometimes located with pin-point precision across the room. Mostly between the Phantoms. But on some recordings, they appear to be in front, in the back or even outside of the Phantoms. (sometimes even outside my room). But this depends on the quality of the recordings I guess. Some records are really poor regarding this.

3.  Do the two points above combined so that in a small room a conventional more forward firing speaker set would be better than an omnidirectional speaker set?

I have had smal two-way shelfspeakers and over 1m tall 3 ways over the years. Phantoms are much, much better than anything I have had. (But these were not too fancy btw - 1st gen B&W 805 and B&W 683S2 amongst others).

What is a small room for you? The room my Phantoms are placed is about 4m wide and 9m long. My listening position is about 3 meters from the Phantoms. To me this is a middle sized room, but you may consider it small...

Anyhow. Devialet has a new offer to try Phantom for 45 days. This must be enough to find out if it suits your expectations. Good luck!