Phantoms delivered this afternoon

[davidadamson]

Truth in advertising.......
From the devialet site
SPARK is the most advanced application in the world to feel the power of music physically impact you. Enjoy it on your own or with your friends, in a small group or at parties with more than 100 people connected on SPARK...
I would like it to connect one person reliably. ..me

[Rufus McDufus]

Going back to AIR and its problems, and a lot of guesswork on my part but hopefully relatively (!) informed guesswork. AIR appears to be built on the QT framework which provides multi-platform capability and a nice environment to develop software fairly rapidly. I'm taking a guess here and thinking that AIR has been based on that framework from conception. Now I don't feel that AIR is a fairly typical QT framework implementation. It has real-time requirements that are fairly uncommon in most apps. It is possibly more low-level in terms of hardware than most implentations. I'm taking a guess that Devialet have become a slave to the framework and its insufficiencies and this had led them up something of a blind alley regarding bug-fixing. I'm guessing they've found themselves in a situation where they can't fix problems because it's in the framework, and that's beyond their control unless they start hacking that framework, which is a dangerous route to start taking.
Linn had a similar problem with Kinsky. They based it on the Mono framework and led them to a situation where most of the issues were being caused by framework bugs or going beyond the capability of the framework. One of the steps they took with Kazoo was to dump Mono, and (I think) build from the ground up. The investment required in time and money to do this was not insignificant.
Now with Dialog at least they have a single piece of hardware on which to develop. From that perspective, with any luck it's going to be a lot easier for them to find quick resolutions, and not to have to rely on third parties to implement framework fixes. I don't know if the SPARK client frontends are a ground-up development or not though?

[f1eng]

Truth in advertising.......
From the devialet site
SPARK is the most advanced application in the world to feel the power of music physically impact you. Enjoy it on your own or with your friends, in a small group or at parties with more than 100 people connected on SPARK...
I would like it to connect one person reliably. ..me

IO feel sure that their intention is/was that Spark will become all those things.
At the moment none of it works properly for long here

[f1eng]

Going back to AIR and its problems, and a lot of guesswork on my part but hopefully relatively (!) informed guesswork. AIR appears to be built on the QT framework which provides multi-platform capability and a nice environment to develop software fairly rapidly. I'm taking a guess here and thinking that AIR has been based on that framework from conception. Now I don't feel that AIR is a fairly typical QT framework implementation. It has real-time requirements that are fairly uncommon in most apps. It is possibly more low-level in terms of hardware than most implentations. I'm taking a guess that Devialet have become a slave to the framework and its insufficiencies and this had led them up something of a blind alley regarding bug-fixing. I'm guessing they've found themselves in a situation where they can't fix problems because it's in the framework, and that's beyond their control unless they start hacking that framework, which is a dangerous route to start taking.
Linn had a similar problem with Kinsky. They based it on the Mono framework and led them to a situation where most of the issues were being caused by framework bugs or going beyond the capability of the framework. One of the steps they took with Kazoo was to dump Mono, and (I think) build from the ground up. The investment required in time and money to do this was not insignificant.
Now with Dialog at least they have a single piece of hardware on which to develop. From that perspective, with any luck it's going to be a lot easier for them to find quick resolutions, and not to have to rely on third parties to implement framework fixes. I don't know if the SPARK client frontends are a ground-up development or not though?

I could be showing my ignorance here but if I understood correctly Air was originally conceived as a Mac only programme using iTunes as the front end. Version 1 was just about de-bugged when somebody decided to change tack and version 2 was, I believe, a completely different concept and programme. V2 runs on PC and Mac and is a sound-card emulator I believe.
Do you thing Air V1 was based on QT or was that a decision taken when a late decision to completely change Air's functionality was made?
It certainly seems to me that changing tack on Air has had bigger implications than expected.

[IanG-UK]

Like Frank, I've had a D-Premier from the start (early 2011) and a second one from soon after (late 2011) which coincided with the introduction of AIR V1.

My original experience with V1 was that it was imperfect (but without the sustained and material white noise which occurs after between a few minutes and many hours, which one gets now) but I assumed it was due to network inadequacies which neither I nor my dealer understood. Wifi and channels and dynamic/fixed/static IP addresses were a mystery.

But my suspicion is that V1, the original concept, would have worked whereas, now I (probably helpfully) understand networks and channels and wifi and IPs more, I cannot get V2 to work though I can improve it significantly by interventions that, of course, should not be seen as necessary for Devialet customers.

It is a pity Devialet are tight-lipped about the issue. But probably commercially wise.

[Lemarchand]

Greetings everybody. This is my first post and I am not a Devialet owner. I have to admit that I am intrigued about the concept of the Phantom.

On the other hand I am curious about something if somebody can enlighten me. It seems that the Phantoms at the demo stores are working correctly through Dialog.How come no ACTUAL customer has managed to make a stereo pair work right through dialog? Is there a possibility they use a different firmware or something else?

 I found the marketing strategy a bit too much initially but  I hoped that the outcome would make Justice.Unfortunately, with the problems I hear I have no intention of buying and I guess there are more people like me that are cautious at the moment. This is not good for the image of the Devialet. 

[Rufus McDufus]

Going back to AIR and its problems, and a lot of guesswork on my part but hopefully relatively (!) informed guesswork. AIR appears to be built on the QT framework which provides multi-platform capability and a nice environment to develop software fairly rapidly. I'm taking a guess here and thinking that AIR has been based on that framework from conception. Now I don't feel that AIR is a fairly typical QT framework implementation. It has real-time requirements that are fairly uncommon in most apps. It is possibly more low-level in terms of hardware than most implentations. I'm taking a guess that Devialet have become a slave to the framework and its insufficiencies and this had led them up something of a blind alley regarding bug-fixing. I'm guessing they've found themselves in a situation where they can't fix problems because it's in the framework, and that's beyond their control unless they start hacking that framework, which is a dangerous route to start taking.
Linn had a similar problem with Kinsky. They based it on the Mono framework and led them to a situation where most of the issues were being caused by framework bugs or going beyond the capability of the framework. One of the steps they took with Kazoo was to dump Mono, and (I think) build from the ground up. The investment required in time and money to do this was not insignificant.
Now with Dialog at least they have a single piece of hardware on which to develop. From that perspective, with any luck it's going to be a lot easier for them to find quick resolutions, and not to have to rely on third parties to implement framework fixes. I don't know if the SPARK client frontends are a ground-up development or not though?

I could be showing my ignorance here but if I understood correctly Air was originally conceived as a Mac only programme using iTunes as the front end. Version 1 was just about de-bugged when somebody decided to change tack and version 2 was, I believe, a completely different concept and programme. V2 runs on PC and Mac and is a sound-card emulator I believe.
Do you thing Air V1 was based on QT or was that a decision taken when a late decision to completely change Air's functionality was made?
It certainly seems to me that changing tack on Air has had bigger implications than expected.

Ah, it could well be v1 was fairly native to Mac and they decided to go with a QT framework-based version for v2 to run on Windows (and others possibly). I've done a bit of debugging of recent/current AIR through Microsofts 'windbg' debugger (without the source code, which makes it tricky, but you can get an idea) and I  get the impression a lot of their problems may well be due to the fairly sizeable framework around the code which seems to have lots of dependencies on the OS and fairly disconnected aspects (to AIR) of the OS.  I do wonder whether they could just compile it down with a bare minimum of libraries necessary to reduce these dependencies, as a possible quick fix. Of course they might have already got it down to the bare minimum

[stonedragon]

Greetings everybody. This is my first post and I am not a Devialet owner. I have to admit that I am intrigued about the concept of the Phantom.

On the other hand I am curious about something if somebody can enlighten me. It seems that the Phantoms at the demo stores are working correctly through Dialog.How come no ACTUAL customer has managed to make a stereo pair work right through dialog? Is there a possibility they use a different firmware or something else?

 I found the marketing strategy a bit too much initially but  I hoped that the outcome would make Justice.Unfortunately, with the problems I hear I have no intention of buying and I guess there are more people like me that are cautious at the moment. This is not good for the image of the Devialet. 

What does this mean? How come no ACTUAL customer has managed to make a stereo pair work right through dialog?

Mine are working fine. Yes the software is buggy, but the stereo works fine.

[davidadamson]

Mine also, no one has actually said that they could not get it working in stereo, rather that the software/dialog interface is poor and introduces dropouts and reboots.

[f1eng]

Yes mine work in stereo but the software doesn't work very well. From CD optical into one Phantom it sounds fine. Streaming from music on my computer I get stuttering from one channel at the start of every track.
Sometimes one speaker stops working altogether and looking at Spark shows it has "lost" that speaker as it no longer shows up in Spark.
A software reset of the Phantom and then re-doing the Spark setup is then necessary. The setup almost always hangs at a "setting up your Phantoms this could take 1 or 2 minutes" page.

I have given up using mine, it seems pointless until a working version of Spark, or maybe the internal firmware of the Phantom, is distributed.
I have not had a listening session yet without a crash or reboot.
Mine is not yet a useable system for listening to music, IMO.
I felt the same when I had a demo Linn Klimax DS system here. It was unacceptable as a bit of domestic hifi. The Phantoms are a bit worse though, in terms of software stability.