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Advice sought: Phantom's worth it?
#21
2 Golds and I don't even check any of the hifi forums or classified sites anymore; following twenty years of upgradeitis!
I moved from a setup that was about €15k to €20k (802 Diamond speakers, B&W subs, DAC direct into Power AMP) and the Golds are better, way better.
I have no problems with the App - I stream 90% of my stuff from Tidal and the rest is Airplay with iTunes on a Macbook.
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#22
so I am basically looking into getting two Phantom Gold as well, but after reading tons of reviews and posts I still have a few questions. I am coming from B&O Beolab 20 active speakers and I am trying to decide now between the Phantoms, active Dynaudio Focus XD60 speakers or a passive combination consisting of B&W 804D3 and an amplifier. I will use the speakers for listening to vinyl, TV, some PS4, a Meridian Music Server and Blu-Ray.

1) As far as I understand, the TV, PS4 and BluRay performance of the Phantoms will not be usable, because of the sound delay. Is that correct?

2) There is no stand-by, so the speakers are basically on all the time (like Sonos)?

3) There seems to be only one optical input. How can I connect all the above mentioned devices? Are there any pre-amps or DACs with optical outputs?

The Devialet are a lot cheaper than the other mentioned alternatives, giving me about a 5.000€ savings. So in addition to the Devialets I could get a Bose Lifestyle for all my TV and Blu-Ray needs.

Thanks for any advice!
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#23
I have two golds, absolutely great! I heard about the Phantoms some time ago but found it too fancy to consider. This spring I was looking around to find a decent sound system and stumbled over the Phantoms again. The gold series totally got me. 

What I like is: 
  • AirPlay out of the box. You'll need the Dialog anyway to have stereo. I don't get it why one would have only one Phantom anyway. It just works, no hassle. I tried Tidal, but most of the time I use AirPlay or radio. The radio feature is actually quite good. If found the streams for all my local radio stations I listen to.  
  • Absolutely zero cable mess. I use the sync method via power, no ethernet. I heard it is even better using ethernet, but for me it is already perfect this way
  • With the TreePod they look even more amazing. I never liked the other stands, was one of the reason why I did not buy them. You need stands, don't put them on the floor. It really makes a big difference. They need some air around them as the bass evolves around the speaker
  • Last but not least: the sound is incredibly great. Not only powerful but just absolutely awesome. When it comes to power, it is incredible that this small form factor is capable of this crazy pressure, but this is just the obvious awesomeness. If you sit down and listen, you'll get a great stage, you'll here every detail. I mostly play Jazz with piano, sax and voice. Just great. For pop with heavy bass lines - you won't believe it. Old Pink Floyd albums sound great as well. I'm not so much into classic, there I found it very depending on the recording quality. 
The only drawback I found so far is the fact that the device seem to be unreparable. Since the woofers are quite exposed I can imagine that at some point someone will damage them, if not my kids then probably the friends of my kids ;-) There is some kind of insurance you can buy from devialet, but this seems a bit of a rip-off to me. 

I have no comparison to the silver. But what I heard the difference is quite noticeable, so go for the gold if you can afford. If not, save more and then get the gold ;-)
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#24
Thanks to all for the feedback. I've heard quite a mix in all these responses.

However, I took the plunge yesterday. My SO and I went to listen to a few different speakers (B&O, Sonos, etc). Then I took her to listen to the Phantoms. She had tears in her eyes. Partially this was because of the money we were about to spend, but the music sounded so good...

So two golds, a dialog, two trees and the care package (we got 5 percent off everything).

So far everything went almost without a hitch (trying to signup for a Devialet account in Spark fails miserably).

But it sounds fantastic, no clicks, pops, hisses, anything. Very surreal experience setting them up - this alien fish that hums and huffs and puffs then sings beautifully!

Many thanks to the forum for the feedback.
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#25
Super. May you have many years of enjoyment. There's really nothing quite like it on earth - so small and yet plays like a full sized floor stander, and without all the cables. This of course when it works properly which it does for me.
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#26
After the latest Spark update I suffered from drop-outs in streaming from both Qobuz and Tidal. It turned out that this coincided with a FW update of my Asus router due to security problem. After lots of configuration changes I could more or less iron out a stable hires streaming. So it is not always Devialet to blame and network or more precise internet streaming audio will remain a challenge as long as the entire chain can not be managed by one manufacturer. Streaming of local files always worked flawlessly, which brought me to try to find the problem outside of Phantom/Dialog/Spark. And indeed the problem came from a new router FW unluckily timed together with a Spark update.
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#27
(28-Apr-2017, 16:00)da2001 Wrote: Always. Sad
doesn´t matter if wifi, cable or PLC


Thank you da2001!
Dac plays @ 24bit/192kHz with dialog in optical connection or no more than 44kHz?
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#28
(06-May-2017, 22:50)paolo_c Wrote:
(28-Apr-2017, 16:00)da2001 Wrote: Always. Sad
doesn´t matter if wifi, cable or PLC


Thank you da2001!
Dac plays @ 24bit/192kHz with dialog in optical connection or no more than 44kHz?

The optical inputs on Phantom and Dialog supports 24/192
Living room: Kii Three/BXT with Control.
Den: Tannoy Precision 8 iDP with TS112 iDP subwoofer.
In the cupboard, waiting for a sibling: 1st gen. Phantom Silver running DOS1
My Phantom Voyage
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#29
I got 2 Golds, no problem what so ever. I finaly stop looking for upgrades and save my selv a lot of money. I use them on tv/film and music spark, tidal, spotify all sound very good.
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