Devialet Chat

Hello.
I have two Phantoms I 103 dB and want to create a wired stereo pair between them and serve the sound to them via cable from MacBook Pro 16'' 2021 and iPhone and sometimes via AirPlay.

As I understand, in order to create a wired stereo pair I can just connect Phantoms with Ethernet cable directly without any other network equipment (router, switch, hub), right?

In order to serve the sound to such a wired stereo pair via cable, I should use optical input of one of the Phantoms, right?

I want to avoid analogue to digital conversions, so I don't want to use a headphone jack on MacBook. Is there a device that can take audio from the HDMI or Thunderbolt 4 (USB-C) port of MacBook and serve it to the optical input of Phantom? It would be great if this device also would have the ability to take the sound from iPhone's Lightning port as well, but if not I can use Lightning to HDMI Adapter to get a digital sound from iPhone.

Will AirPlay still work in such a setup?

Maybe you have a better idea of how to achieve this?

(06-Jan-2022, 09:19)SuprAnd Wrote: [ -> ]Hello.
I have two Phantoms I 103 dB and want to create a wired stereo pair between them and serve the sound to them via cable from MacBook Pro 16'' 2021 and iPhone and sometimes via AirPlay.

As I understand, in order to create a wired stereo pair I can just connect Phantoms with Ethernet cable directly without any other network equipment (router, switch, hub), right?

In order to serve the sound to such a wired stereo pair via cable, I should use optical input of one of the Phantoms, right?

I want to avoid analogue to digital conversions, so I don't want to use a headphone jack on MacBook. Is there a device that can take audio from the HDMI or Thunderbolt 4 (USB-C) port of MacBook and serve it to the optical input of Phantom? It would be great if this device also would have the ability to take the sound from iPhone's Lightning port as well, but if not I can use Lightning to HDMI Adapter to get a digital sound from iPhone.

Will AirPlay still work in such a setup?

Maybe you have a better idea of how to achieve this?

Hi SuprAnd,

1. Yes, apparently you can connect Phantoms in stereo pairs directly via Ethernet. I have not tried this myself but other users here have reported that it works fine. You need to configure the L-R pair in the app with Wi-Fi or PLC first, connect the cable and then reboot the Phantoms. I will however say that I have my Phantoms connected via Wi-Fi (line-of-sight to my AP) with no sync/stability problems whatsoever.

2. Yes, other than Ethernet, optical is the only wired connection available for connecting source components to Phantoms.

3. To avoid unnecessary digital-to-analog-to-digital conversions you will need adapters/dongles with USB-C (USB 4/Thunderbolt 4) or Lightning inputs and Toslink outputs. There are several examples of each available (on e.g. Amazon) although I have not seen any that offer both Lightning and USB-C inputs. I don’t see any need or advantage to transitioning through HDMI which would entail additional dongles and cost.

4. Yes, Airplay functionality would be unaffected.

This is the simplest way I can see to achieve the wired connectivity that you are after, although again I have not found a need for wired connectivity for either SQ or stability in my set-up. And particularly with mobile sources (phones, laptops) wireless connectivity is a big part of the convenience benefit.

However I should stress that in my setup my main source is a streamer (sonicTransporter) that is wired directly to my switch and the phones and laptops are just control points. My children however connect directly from their iPhones via Wi-Fi using Spotify Connect and that also works fine.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk