New phantom reactor available on october 10 for €990

[WesCrackin]

My thought is that when using the analogue input the reactors would function as a typical active speaker such that latency would not be an issue and one could control the volume and DSP primarily with a Pre-amp.

I'm afraid that may not be quite right, ADH is a digital process. The analogue inputs will go through an AD converter to become a digital signal that can be used with the ADH logic. There is no pure analogue signal path through any of the Devialet products.
That does not necessarily mean high latency as that is more a design choice depending on what the delay is used for.

On the Expert models there are no latency issues when using analogue inputs, even though ADH is in effect..

[ogs]

That is correct. I guess there is a millisecond or two of delay through Experts too, whether analogue or digital but that is so little one can't hear it. Most of the delay in Phantoms is probably buffering as Devialet does not seem to use much DSP for other things than cross overs and ADH/SAM. I have never seen official numbers on any of this from Devialet.

[streamy]

That is correct. I guess there is a millisecond or two of delay through Experts too, whether analogue or digital but that is so little one can't hear it. Most of the delay in Phantoms is probably buffering as Devialet does not seem to use much DSP for other things than cross overs and ADH/SAM.  I have never seen official numbers on any of this from Devialet.

You can not compare the ‘possible’ delay of the Experts in terms of impact with possible delays on Phantoms. In a stereo setup like the Experts offer (both left and right channels are streamed as a package and then amplified and cable wired transmitted to the speakers) a delay of 1-2ms indeed is not dramatic. But when you use the experts e.g. for actively driving single drivers, i.e. bass and tweeters separately with different Experts then sync needs to be way more precise. That’s e.g. the case for dual mono amps, which are cable linked to each other to possibly have clocks synced. The same for Phantoms: Each of the speakers needs to be at least in sync with a precision of 25us, which corresponds to have up to 20kHz without phase shifts. This is what Dialog does very well and is crucial for how the sound stage is rock stable, wide and on a quality level no Sonos system or all the BT speakers perform when paired to stereo. I have so far not seen any analysis of Airplay2 to be of this precision. Lower precision makes the stereo image smear, precise instrument localization of orchestral music disappear. So I’m not so sure if a pure networked SW solution for Phantoms will be stable enough to guarantee left-right delays of less than 25us, i.e. speakers will be sufficiently in sync. It can be that RAAT from Roon has this precision but I’ve not seen published specs. Check this website to see in more details what the challenge is that some manufacturers solve using dedicated networking chips: https://www.design-reuse.com/articles/33...on-ip.html

[thumb5]

That is correct. I guess there is a millisecond or two of delay through Experts too, whether analogue or digital but that is so little one can't hear it. Most of the delay in Phantoms is probably buffering as Devialet does not seem to use much DSP for other things than cross overs and ADH/SAM.  I have never seen official numbers on any of this from Devialet.

I did ask Devialet about the latency through the Expert series (well, actually, through the D-Premier) when I was first considering buying one and was concerned about multi-room synchronisation with other equipment.  As I recall, the latency they quoted at the time was somewhere in the 5-10 ms range -- but don't quote me on that; in any case it may have changed significantly since then with all the firmware updates.

[ogs]

If it is 5-10 ms we're already in the range where 'live' monitoring in a studio is starting to get affected. "Anything over 20ms causes a noticeable feeling of disconnection from the instrument I’m playing" says one poster over at Gearslutz. However, for playback as we do, it's the sync between channels that is important (as streamy talks about above)

[JDtheJD]

Appears I am over my head both technically and experience wise, but my thought is that if setting up for home theater, there might be a latency issue between sound and video, but any latency sound wise amongst the phantoms themselves should be uniform. This might not be true, perhaps,I were trying to integrate the phantoms into a traditional passive HT speaker setup.

[eniriop]

We still do not know if Reactor has the same latency figures as the 'big' Phantoms. Hopefully not, but until Devialet tells us (will they ever?) we can only speculate... If one adds Reactor to a system with normal Phantoms latency must be the same for all. If Reactor has low latency a new firmware will be required for the old ones where latency can easily be adjusted to match Reactor. The Direct Optical routine is far too fiddely for normal use. Besides - the internal volume is bypassed so one might end up with different ways to control volume (unless Devialet has thought of a smart solution...)

I have received the reactor and the Devialet app that replaces Spark for the Reactor has a video sync option that is supposed to reduce latency to make the sound sync with the video. I have not tried it since I use the phantoms gold to watch TV, and I use the reactor on my desktop or on my terrace and swimming pool.