Optical vs Dante for Home Theater

[Nputcha]

Hi all 

Am about to change my current sonos centric living room home theater to a devialet system. I am trying to understand the trade off between Devialets “phantom theater”, which is built around a jbl sdp-58 + dante ethernet based connectivity (w dante to optical at the last step) vs just using the pre-outs from any Dolby avr processor to feed into an analog to optical converter and connecting those directly to the devialets (after putting the phantoms into direct optical mode) 

Going w the jbl and Dante I’m sure will be great (mostly because the jbl will have Dirac room correction) but that whole setup seems incredibly complex w all the conversions and PoE switches etc. not to mention the expense. 
For my relatively simple home setup with no super long distances for cables, I feel like optical is the best bet. 

Any feedback appreciated for a first time Devialet adopter! 

Thanks!

Hi Nputcha,

This may work if you're going to build a system using purely Phantom 1 but if you plan to use Phantom 2 in the system you will likely come across latency issues because Phantom 2 doesn't have a direct-optical mode and there's a minimum latency of 60ms (see https://devialetchat.com/Thread-Reactors-for-deejaying).  I think there's another thread somewhere of someone trying with Phantom 2 and adding a delay to try and match the Phantom 2s but ended up switching to Phantom 2 custom units, unfortunately I haven't been able to find the thread yet.  It looks like someone has created a home theatre setup without Dante and Phantom 2 here -  Phantom II Custom 5.0 surround system experience and suggestions (devialetchat.com)

Thank you for the reply!!

Yeah it seems like going the phantom 2 custom route for the rears will be my best bet, particularly based on the second link you posted. Thanks so much!