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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!
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I can imagine how enjoyable a Phantom home theatre surround sound setup sounds. I’m using a stereo Phantom 1 setup for music and TV/movie playback, and find it enjoyable on its own.
2 Channel Power / Signal Path: APC H15 → Mistral Audio W-3900 → Custom Roon Server → Silent Angel Bonn N8 → Silent Angel Forester F1 → miniDSP SHD Studio → Mutec MC-3+ USB → Devialet Phantom I 108dB
Headphone iFi Audio iDSD Signature → Grado GS1000i
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So I got the relevant pieces to the puzzle setup, but there’s good news and bad news. My setup is an Apple TV feeding a marantz receiver, analog output converted to digital optical and fed to phantom i in front and phantom ii in back.
Good news:
1) Latency
No issues with latency as Apple TV does a very good job with lip sync. I was able to use regular phantom ii and phantom i without direct optical mode
2) Sound is exactly as good as you think it is. Very satisfying to get surround sound with this quality of speaker in such a form friendly way for my living room (I’ll post a picture if I can sort out how)
Bad / Possibly Fatal News
1) High noise floor
I wasn’t able to get a quality analog to digital box on short notice so I got some random thing on Amazon. It is very noisy and I suspect also curtailing my signal quality non insignificantly.
2) Constant hiss / inability to properly maintain volume control
This is related to point 1 and my biggest issue.. My original plan was to set all the phantoms to ~70% volume (same level they are set to for direct optical I think) and then adjust my avr volume however I liked. Issue is, with such a high noise floor leaving these things cranked to 70% means an audible hiss at all times.
Any thoughts on how to fix this? In an ideal world I could
1) find a better analog to digital converter (open to suggestions!!)
2) find some way to get the phantoms to go into auto standby mode or switch off of the physical inputs. I imagine this situation is not that different from when you have a preamp connected to a power amp (in fact it’s basically identical). Any power amp has input sensing and turns off when there’s no input at all. So the question is How can I setup a similar outcome for my phantoms?
It’s possible this has all been for naught and I just need to give up. I am within the return period for the devialet, though I spent $1000 on the marantz receiver that I cannot return, so I’ll take a loss there. But I’d really like to make this work!!! Getting Dante setup with the jbl receiver doubles total system cost, I suppose I could do that too but man I sure would like to avoid that route.
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Ahh interesting. So they will go to standby! That’s actually quite comforting. I’ll get myself some nicer a/d then. Thanks!
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Fwiw also seems like pre-out from marantz (and other all in one AVRs) is in fact extremely low, and when I turn up gain it clips. So seems like that’s a big part of my problem. The ADIs seem to have ability to adjust preout level and then the digital out level too, so hopefully I can use that to get everything sorted
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Hi There! And congrats on your phantom HT journey. My first phantom HT was using an anthem D2V processor and using ADCs. While the setup worked, I found (and you're experiencing) a constant hiss from the speakers. The other challenge was the amount of outlets I needed to power everything... too many wires for the family's taste. I switched and went the Dante route. I have 2 setups using SDP-55 (older version of the SDP-58) and am extremely happy with the outcome. My system is completely quiet even with the phantoms set to +3 db. I already had a POE switch and ethernet ports at the phantoms' locations. Even with the technical glitches that come with the JBL, I found the investment to be worthwhile. The all digital pathway allowed the phantoms to stay sound large, while I felt the ADCs made the them sound smaller.
Here's my thread on the topic
https://devialetchat.com/Thread-Phantom-...-and-Dante
6 x Phantom Gold, 3 x Phantom Silver, 2 x Phantom Classic, 9 x Phantom Reactor 900, Symetrix Radius AEC-2, 2 x JBL Synthesis SDP-55, Dante