Phantoms and Dialog in limbo

[steve_denney]

Went to the Devialet session today at Oxford Audio, presented by Mathieu and Joachim.
Main theme of the session was to roadmap the Expert range but it was stated that Devialet recognised their recent failings and intent to focus on the UK market with a new management team appointed.
Anyway, I did get to ask about their roadmap for Phantoms/Dialog and it wasn’t good news really.
Their main focus for Phantoms is to get worldwide certification and that will take all of their development resource for the forcible future.
The new app for the expert range is not compatible with Phantom and therefore nothing new for Spark coming soon!
I was hoping to hear better news about UPNP integration for Spark but this is not on their roadmap for now. Their research found that only 10% of users were using the Spark app so not really an important update in their eyes.
Nothing new on the Dialog front either so a bit in limbo for now it seams.

One other interesting point I found out was that the Phantoms are not capable of resolving true high def 192 and will downsample higher res files with this being done dynamically by the Dialog. I was thinking of getting Qobuz sublime plus for their HD streaming but this isn’t worthwhile based on this statement so I will be sticking with Tidal. No plans for MQA support either!

Hope this is interesting to other Phantom user.
Cheers


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[steve_denney]

Apologies for some of the predictive text spelling errors.


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[ragwo]

Thanks! Interesting but depressing. In short; no further development in foreseeable future. And the downsampling of hires files was a bit of a shocker.

[jonstatt]

Not sure the downsampling is correct. You can feed 192 directly to a phantom without a dialog. I think it’s more likely they meant greater than 192

[steve_denney]

I double checked this with them and they stated that Phantoms are not designed to cover the high frequencies of HD and if I really wanted true 24/192 then the Expert and high quality speaker system was the right way to go. I specifically discussed Qobuz hi res and was told that the Dialog will dynamically downsample hi res with one of the factors being available bandwidth so it might be downsampled lower than 24/96 was even suggested.


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[Confused]

What Steve is saying above is an accurate report of what was said, but I think it may be possible to misinterpret the intent. What I took from the discussion is that the Phantom is not capable of dealing with ultrasonic content, I presume this is because cannot make it through the Phantom's DSP. Thus, it makes zero difference if the feed is 192kHz or 96kHz. The 192kHz feed may have a little more ultra high-frequency content, but the Phantom cannot reproduce it, so it is irrelevant. So it is not the case that the Phantom cannot deal with the resolution, it is the case that the Phantom cannot reproduce ultra-high frequencies. I know there are many theories regarding the importance of the "stuff you cannot hear directly", but last time I checked I can hear absolutely nothing above 16kHz. Personally, I think this is an absolute non-issue.

Regarding the downsampling, this is something the Dialog will do if there are bandwidth issues, in other words, poor wifi performance due to multiple device use or interference. So if the bandwidth is reduced and the sample rate is not reduced, the music would stop. (drop outs) So material is not routinely downsampled, this only happens if wifi performance is poor. If you are running hard wired Ethernet the bandwidth is so high that this will also be an absolute non-issue. A "glass half full" interpretation of this is that this is actually a very clever way of maintaining stability in a wireless system.

[Gremlin]

"Their research found that only 10% of users were using the Spark app..."

I wonder if they've asked themselves why only 10% of users use Spark.

[Confused]

"Their research found that only 10% of users were using the Spark app..."

I wonder if they've asked themselves why only 10% of users use Spark.

I think they have!  When this was discussed the gist of what they were saying is that Phantom users clearly prefer the solutions that already exist on the market, so from Devialet's perspective, they would be better off putting their efforts in supporting the third party options that already exist, rather than spending time developing something that is never likely to become the prime method of use even if it is improved.  They did mention that they are looking at other "tie-ups", but nothing specific was mentioned as I recall.

[thumb5]

Indeed, that's the impression I got too. And it's consistent with what they're doing with Expert - working directly with the streaming service providers, for example.

[Gremlin]

"Their research found that only 10% of users were using the Spark app..."

I wonder if they've asked themselves why only 10% of users use Spark.

I think they have!  When this was discussed the gist of what they were saying is that Phantom users clearly prefer the solutions that already exist on the market, so from Devialet's perspective, they would be better off putting their efforts in supporting the third party options that already exist, rather than spending time developing something that is never likely to become the prime method of use even if it is improved.  They did mention that they are looking at other "tie-ups", but nothing specific was mentioned as I recall.

Missing the point that they sold the Phantoms as having a great app accompanying them and failed to deliver, forcing people to find workarounds. They are now adding insult to injury by using their customers' ingenuity against them.