My Silver Phantoms one year later

[Jamington2004]

Ditto - the gauge for me is the undeniable fact that I have never once since the day I got them set up properly, even remotely entertained the idea that I would ever want to change them!!

Not constantly wondering what this box and that cable and this combo might just do to improve my sound slightly - is the single biggest compliment I can pay them

Coming from a serial box swapper - the journey was endless! Always another tweak to try and fit in with, or improve on, the last.

But with the Phantoms I have arrived and am staying for ever (doubly so since the last update cut out the last remaining stability issue of optical crackle)

Even if I won the lottery I would simply by a shit load more of them!!

My pennies worth

[AlanD]

Agreed, Martin! There can be no difference. Doesn't seem to stop people imagining it though.

Yes.  This is especially true when it comes to the Phantom because it transfers data to an internal buffer.  So it's still the least common denominator.
What you have with traditional transport/DAC is 
a) RFI/EMI
Put a cellphone next to a cheap alarm-clock-radio.  When you get a phone call, there is a lot of static/noise that reaches the analog speaker.  In a setup with a coaxial SPDIF setup, there can be RFI/EMI transmitted from source to DAC. 

I think with the Phantom, really dirty power can contribute to this -- but I think the Silver's baseline amplifier noise is pretty high that using the stock power cables are fine.  I haven't listened to the Golds.

b) Jitter
This gets exaggerated to sell more expensive gear, but the easiest concept is to imagine that your source has zero jitter but the DAC has some jitter.  As it is converting the digital to analog signal, instead of new information at a sample rate of 44.1kHz it was now sometimes 44.0 and 44.2 kHz.  Since there is an analog component to it, can affect the results, especially with traditional oversampled DACs.

http://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/digital-myth


A NON-reclocking DAC will get whatever signal is sent from the transport and that gets carried onto the eventual analog signal.

Again, in the Phantom, the whole thing is buffered.  With Spark, the actual FLAC file can be transferred into the Phantom's on-board memory. Therefore, you cannot modify the jitter in the system without internal modifications.

[Rodrat2]

I have owned mine since July last year. Fortunately I have not suffered from any of the issues others have reported and they have been very stable. I just wish they would sort spark so that it can display in landscape on a tablet. It is a real PITA when you have a tablet in a keyboard case. I am surprised that Apple didn't insist this was sorted before selling the. They have largely cured me of box swapping although I still use separates in my main system.

[peramos]

In my case, I miss better software. I don't particularly like Spark. Also, I would like to use the phantoms in an A/V configuration but delay is still an issue. I talked recently with a manager from Devialet who told me they are working in a dedicated A/V solution integrating the phantoms so I might not need to wait too long for that.