Bumped up to Phantom 103dB (Classic) - placement guide

[supaDean]

Good to hear that you have taken the effort to place the Phantoms in a proper position in the room. And thank you for sharing your set up.

Far too many people, including so-called reviewers and even some HI-Fi retailers, treat the Phantoms as lifestyle Bluetooth boom boxes.  It frustrates me to see Devialet continue to market them as such... 

I read an interesting interview with one of Devialet’s founders. He spoke about wanting to disrupt the audio space when they were developing their entry into the speaker world. They already had success with their amplifiers. Their first speaker design was a conventional box speaker which they scrapped because they felt it would get lost in the space. Then they released their first Phantom in 2016. I remember their marketing was all about being wireless and I completely dismissed them even though it was a high end audio retailer who wanted to show them to me. I feel their current mainstream marketing has certainly improved in terms of marketing them as a high end offering, but it’s still designed to be disruptive in the market. On the other end they’ve done some cool things with the opera line and installation with Opera Paris. 

Their lastest firmware appears to be buggy which is such a shame because it is affecting the Phantom’s wireless and even Ethernet stability. Hopefully it’ll be on the mend with a future update. 

I do find the Phantom to be a revealing speaker. Poor recordings will pay the price. Excellent recordings sounds amazing. Not to be misinterpreted as revealing. I’d say there are more revealing speakers available. But when you consider these are much more than a speaker… they’re a DAC, amplifier, speaker with DSP, built in high resolution streaming etc. Not to mention the specs… their low end is jaw dropping. I love not having separate sub woofers taking up space anymore.