Any feedback on Phanotom from Paris and/or London?

[PhilP]

In the Phantom white paper, the Dialog spec says that it  has 1GB of RAM memory and 2GB of flash memory (which I presume is like a USB flash drive). And in terms of CDs I think (though I know little here) that that is equivalent to around 2,000 discs?


PS At Harrods, they have been pretty sneaky - because the Audio floor is the same as the Toy floor including all the electronic "little boys toys" which are also "bigger boys toys" and which you cannot avoid if you use the wrong escalator or lift. So your son (or you yourself) may spend all your money before you arrive at the Devialet shop. Good luck!

Yes, I forgot about the 2Gb 'flash'.   The CDs I've ripped average 640Mb AIFF or uncompressed FLAC per disc so 2Gb will only hold 3!  I think maybe they're referring to the ability to store data on HDD.

Thanks for the warning about Harrrods' sneaky layout

[IanG-UK]

In the Phantom white paper, the Dialog spec says that it  has 1GB of RAM memory and 2GB of flash memory (which I presume is like a USB flash drive). And in terms of CDs I think (though I know little here) that that is equivalent to around 2,000 discs?


PS At Harrods, they have been pretty sneaky - because the Audio floor is the same as the Toy floor including all the electronic "little boys toys" which are also "bigger boys toys" and which you cannot avoid if you use the wrong escalator or lift. So your son (or you yourself) may spend all your money before you arrive at the Devialet shop. Good luck!

Yes, I forgot about the 2Gb 'flash'.   The CDs I've ripped average 640Mb AIFF or uncompressed FLAC per disc so 2Gb will only hold 3!  I think maybe they're referring to the ability to store data on HDD.

Thanks for the warning about Harrrods' sneaky layout

Whoops that is me mixing my Tb and my Gb. So 2,000 (or more correctly 3,000) becomes 3. If you go, perhaps you could ask Yann to clarify. But there must be a size limitation with Dialog as even the latest NAS boxes with the latest SSDs are 12" x 9" x 1.5". Give it a year and they might be down to 6" x 3" x 1".

[mixart]

Man, I can't desire if I should go for Devialet Phantom Silver or Devialet Ensemble. I was not impressed by the bass of Ensemble, when I got a demo at home. I have just sold my B&W XT4 floor speaker, which were not a high-end speaker (cost €2750 for a pair) but I want to get rip of all cables and amplifiers. Maybe I should just be patient and wait the for Devialet Phantom Silver, which I order and ship at the end of march, but I can't ignore when many says, that Devialet 120/200 sounds much better with a decent loudspeaker, like the B&W speaker Ian talk about. I don't know what model it is but it doesn't look high-end.

[NickB]

Splendid summary Ian, thanks! One point I would make, if you look at the AIR user survey on this very forum, the white noise issue effects 38% of respondents, rather more that the 2 to 5% reported by Devialet. Maybe we are an unlucky bunch here, maybe Devialet are trying to talk down the issue? My view? I suspect Devialet are perhaps understating the issue a touch.

You don't think that maybe people who don't have a problem don't take part in surveys about problems?

[IanG-UK]

Man, I can't desire if I should go for Devialet Phantom Silver or Devialet Ensemble. I was not impressed by the bass of Ensemble, when I got a demo at home. I have just sold my B&W XT4 floor speaker, which were not a high-end speaker (cost €2750 for a pair) but I want to get rip of all cables and amplifiers. Maybe I should just be patient and wait the for Devialet Phantom Silver, which I order and ship at the end of march, but I can't ignore when many says, that Devialet 120/200 sounds much better with a decent loudspeaker, like the B&W speaker Ian talk about. I don't know what model it is but it doesn't look high-end.

The speaker being used, now I am home and looking at the B&W website, might have been a B&W CM8 which must be around €2,000.

You need to listen - but clearly a Devialet 120 plus CM8 speakers must be around €7,000 which is around twice the price of a pair of standard Phantoms.

I think Devialet would accept that the quality and input/output flexibility you get with the former is better than with the latter, and to my eyes visually much more acceptable.

[IanG-UK]

I may be in London later this week so I may drop in to take a look. My 6 year old son would love Harrods

When they say the Dialog has huge storage I'm not clear what they mean? According to the white paper it has 1Gb RAM and there's no mention of an internal HDD. Do they just mean that you can connect a USB HD to it?

Yes, a bit strange. This is the first time I'm reading that the Dialog has internal storage. And then to say 'it's huge' rather than just what size hdd is inside... weird.

BTW, thanks for your report Ian. Going to work for Stereophile next?

Think their communication on storage and its location was (at least) unclear.

By the way, at Stereophile (or at HiFi News or at HiFi+ or ...) I think you have to have the ability to write pages of harmless commentary to offend no one and create enough pages to intersperse lots of advertisements, month after month. 

I would fail comfortably on all three criteria! And therefore be quickly sacked.

[Gremlin]

I'd like someone to measure the things. Zero distortion? Even their own graphs show distortion! And noise. No word on that.

[thumb5]

When they say the Dialog has huge storage I'm not clear what they mean? According to the white paper it has 1Gb RAM and there's no mention of an internal HDD. Do they just mean that you can connect a USB HD to it?

Well I got the impression that one only needed a Dialog and either a Phantom or an Expert plus speakers; and that the library capability was 'huge". 

In the Phantom white paper, the Dialog spec says that it  has 1GB of RAM memory and 2GB of flash memory (which I presume is like a USB flash drive). And in terms of CDs I think (though I know little here) that that is equivalent to around 2,000 discs?

I expect the 2 GB flash memory will be to store the embedded operating software (firmware); it's too small to be any reasonable form of built-in music storage.  (One CD can store about 670 MB = 0.67 GB so 2GB would only be enough for 3 CDs, without compression.  With compression that might stretch to 5 or 6 CDs, perhaps.)  So when Devialet talk of "huge storage" they probably mean "capacity to access/manage/index huge music libraries, stored externally" and it's losing something in the translation...

[ETA: I see you've already had this discussion...must read the whole thread before replying!]

[Confused]

Splendid summary Ian, thanks!  One point I would make, if you look at the AIR user survey on this very forum, the white noise issue effects 38% of respondents, rather more that the 2 to 5% reported by Devialet.  Maybe we are an unlucky bunch here, maybe Devialet are trying to talk down the issue?  My view?  I suspect Devialet are perhaps understating the issue a touch.

You don't think that maybe people who don't have a problem don't take part in surveys about problems?

You might be right!  On the other hand, it could be considered that this forum is a bit of a Devialet fan club, so maybe people might make an extra effort to defend the cause?  One thing that is for sure, the number of respondents is too low to be statistically accurate and the results will in part be based on old versions of AIR etc.  I still suspect Devialet's 2 to 5% is an underestimate though.  There is no way of proving this, but I suspect the real figure is somwhere between Devialet's 5% and the 38% from this forum's survey.

Or to put it another way, I have little trust in anything that comes out of Devialet's communication machnine at the moment.

[Jwg1749]

I dropped in at Harrods on my way into town today, as one does. Time was short, and I only spent 10 mins listening (the Gergiev Walküre streamed from Qobuz).

Putting to one side the absurd hype about zero distortion, the Silver Phantoms do pretty much what it says on the tin. They deliver a remarkably rich and full sound that goes very loud without any signs of roughness or hardness -- a proper orchestral sound that could fill a decent-sized room (I'm guessing) with a satisfyingly big picture. Being point-source speakers, they do sound very coherent. It's hard to say much about imaging and soundstage, since they were placed fairly close together. Clearly they can't approach the sound-stage of a single-driver line-source speaker (my reference point), but that's not what they're for.

The sound reminds me of some other active stand-mount speakers I've heard: punchy, smooth and coherent. There's no evidence of the top-end fizz or flabby bass that you get with many passive speakers.

My reservations concern the mid-range. There's something about the presentation that feels nasal and closed in. I'm not sure I could live with the slightly plasticky sound (OK, that may be expectation bias: a plastic speaker will obviously sound plasticky ...). As Ian noted in his write-up, there's a lack of ease and space towards the top of the mid range. I also suspect (admittedly on the basis of a very short listen) that they'd have difficulty reproducing instrumental timbres accurately.

Having said that, they do what they do in a mightily impressive way. And IMO they will sell, especially to younger folk who enjoy the sheer weight of bass the Phantoms can produce. In fact I'd go so far as to say that if you don't want your music "implosive", they probably won't be right for you. If I were in the market for a smallish pair of speakers priced around £3.6K, I'd go for some active monitors, an MDAC and a Sonos.

The SPARK app looked nice enough, though there's no excuse for designing a poor app these days. The DIALOG was hidden behind a curtain. (Er, why?) I didn't ask any penetrating questions about the roll-out of a fully functional Devialet ecosystem, though I was reassured to hear that they plan to have the DIALOG working with the "Expert" amps in time for Munich. Until then the DIALOG I have on order can sit in a cupboard.

Matt