Phantom I Stereo Pair - Music one Speaker constantly breaking-up

[floriz01]

Hi Everyone - I'm new here and unfortunately an unhappy Devialet owner from Amsterdam. Nice to meet you all!!

I was hoping someone could help me since Devialet support is the worse support I’ve ever experienced ! Been with them on and off for 5 months to solve the issue which they haven’t been able to do.

Issue: 
1) every few minutes the music at the (usually left but it can change) phantom breaks up / stops for maybe a second or two and then continues playing. The other Phantom keeps a steady stream of music
2) every week or so both phantoms disappear from the network and I need to restart both phantoms (unplug and replug) to have them show up again.

Configuration: 
- 2 Phantom Golds in Stereo pair connected via Ethernet
- Playing music via Spotify Connect but switching to Airplay gives the same problems
- Using a Deco M9 Plus mesh network (2,4 and 5Ghz which shouldn’t make a difference since they’re connected by cable)

I’ve had the 2 Deviates Phantom Gold in Stereo pair for 6 months; I sent many reports to Devialet Support; they had me change many settings in the app but nothing helped. 

They had me sent one of the phantoms in for repair — when I got it back the phantom was both damage and not working anymore (only static sound!)   Can you believe that?

I turned to my HiFi dealer (should have done that way earlier ) and the guys got me two brand new speakers last week (kudos to them!) However, I installed them, in stereo pair again and one of them AGAIN has the same behaviour as the old ones that every so many minutes there’s a small hick-up in the music stream (both Spotify Connect and Airplay, connected via Ethernet). 

Also, this morning I again had to restart the whole system to get them to show up again.

Needless to say I've lost all faith in Devialet support and frankly also the speakers. 

If any of you has any tips that would be immensely appreciated. The other option is to see if I can still give both speakers back to the dealer before I loose all guarantee and go back to my Sonos system. 

ps: looked at multiple chats in this forum but cannot find an answer.

Thank you so much ! 
Floriz

[cloudkicker]

I've had that issue. I find a lot of problems experienced aren't necessarily with the Phantoms but with the network. There are variances in performance depending on the router, distance, etc. Depending on the placement of the router and the Phantom, it may not reach the Phantom consistently as may drop performance after short distances, especially on 5 Ghz. Also, even if the 2.4 and 5 Ghz are on the same network/router, the router switching the Phantom between the two bands may cause dropouts. I've found what worked best for me was to get an ethernet switch and connect the Phantoms to that.

[ragwo]

Sorry for your troubles! I would try what @cloudkicker suggested, both Phantoms connected to the same switch and the switch connected directly to your router, not a mesh node. If that doesn't work, return the speakers.

[s3kelman]

Same, to me it sounds like a network issue, moreover if the issue continue with 2 brand new phantoms, it's very very unlikely to get 2 different pair of speakers that would have the exact same issue.
Just to troubleshoot you can plug the 2 phantoms with ethernet to an ethernet switch, with the switch wired to your isp router (as someone said above) and I would add that instead of a phone you could try to play music from a computer thag is also wired to the switch or router insead of going over wifi. so there is no wifi involved at all.

Also if you are using a "mesh" wifi, the problem might appear as you are moving around your place, depending of your mesh, some don't play well with airplay and such and can drop the sound or cut every time that your phone "jump" from a mesh point to another one (you can google wifi steering)

[floriz01]

Thanks so much for all of your reply's! The Phantoms ARE connected by Ethernet so no WiFi so I wonder if the Mesh network or the 2,4 of 5GHZ could still be of influence. However, the ethernet cables do go into a separate switch (connected to the router) so I might need to try and connect the cables to the main router directly. Last thing indeed I could try is play the music from the laptop that's wired as well (although I thought that with Spotify Connect that shouldn't make a difference right since it plays the music directly from the Phantoms and not from the device (e.g. phone) that you start the music with.

[supaDean]

Mesh is problematic and a compromise. Hard wire directly to router. If not possible try optical toslink if you’ve a preamp that supports it. Additionally try wireless if you haven’t yet.

It’s rare that the issue is the Phantom. It’s typically a network issue. In my experience. Good luck.

[floriz01]

Thank you, will try it wirelessly also!

[Deezel]

I'm running cable directly between my phantoms, gettng audio from wifi or optical. Has been pretty solid setup for me, the occational hiccup (maybe one every two months).

[njaiswal]

Don't give up on the Phantoms. If you're still having challenges, then I suggest trying my solution. Use the Dante protocol to deliver audio to them. You'll need to get Dante to Optical adapters for the Phantoms and another set of source output to Dante adapters. I have around 20 phantoms in my home running this way and its extremely stable. So much so that the Mrs stopped complaining about them not "working"... :-)

[JDtheJD]

Greetings!

I have owned my phantoms gold going on 6 or 7 years now (I think) and have a “mostly love but a little bit of hate” relationship with them. On the one hand, when they are at their best they are stellar. On the other hand, whenever there is an upgrade of any kind in the music source chain, I am always worried about there being an upgrade that doesn’t cleanly handshake with the Devialet music chain. Anyway, about 3 years ago now, I started having issues similar to yours with no obvious solution. I was so frustrated I eventually told the Devialet, which was very keen on helping, to just call it quits for a bit. Ended up, so far as I can tell, while setting up two seperate in home mesh networks, even though the speakers were hardwired from a mesh router, that essentially one speaker was gravitating to one in home network while the other speaker gravitated to another in home network. Eventually the issue resolved when Devialet, my mesh networks, and Apple all received updates at about the same time. As a result, I swore I’d never buy another hifi product (or car) that’s so software/network dependent.

Regardless, my thought is to take your speakers to another house and see if the user experience is at all different. If they work, then I’d say the issue is local to your home.