New Devialet Phantom Ultimate - listening impressions

[struts]

Just running in my new pair of Phantom Ultimate 108dBs in Light Pearl on Tree stands.  Like many here I have been on the Phantom journey since the beginning.  I started with a pair of the original Phantom Classics (plus Dialog, remember them?) upon their first release in Jan 2015, then upgraded to Golds with the "Upgrade to Gold" campaign in Oct 2017, and those served me well for the intervening 7 years.  All three generations have served as a second system for my open plan kitchen/dining room and as such have proven to be by far the most used system in the house and the only one that is used by everyone.

Early days, as the speakers are still no doubt burning in, but some first impressions (I sold my Golds before taking delivery of my Ultimates so didn't get a chance to compare back-to-back):

• System set-up with the new app was problem-free but fixing the speakers to the Tree stands was extremely fiddly and required patience.  I can readily imagine people inadvertently damaging the woofer domes (or worse) while trying to mount them as they are round, slippery and very heavy relative to the stands.  I ended up sitting on a sofa with the speaker in my lap with the tweeter pointing down between my legs and the bottom facing away from me while my son held the tree in position and I gingerly held back the spring clip and tried to get the lugs to enagage.  Would probably be worth a Youtube video!  Once fixed however they are very stable and all is good.
  
• I am connecting over Wifi on a dedicated Wifi network (now switched to run at 5GHz, the Golds were 2.4GHz-only) and locked to the nearest access point which is 3m from and line-of-sight to both speakers.  System has proven rock solid on Spotify Connect (now at CD-resolution, yay!), as were the Golds.  The acid test will be stability with Roon/RAAT as this was problematic on the Golds with frequent dropouts and dropped streams.  Haven't had time to test that or higher resolution files yet.
  
• The new finish is really nice and the new (for me) "squashed" hand cream remote is much nicer than the old "tall" one.
  
• The rear buttons are a much easier push than the old ones with a nice tactile click and start-up from stand-by much quicker making Automatic Switch-off a viable setting now.  The family found waking the Golds so difficult (long press on a really stiff and indistinct button) and temperamental (sometimes only one would wake) that I abandoned it and went back to always on.
  
• Most importantly I like what I hear.  First impression is that the sound is smoother and more relaxing than the Golds but with a better resolution of fine detail such as timbre and decay tails.  However a caveat: the Ultimates are positioned on the long wall on Tree stands firing across the room towards the kitchen whereas the Golds sat on window sills on the short wall firing down the length of the room.  The latter positioning was probably far from ideal so undoubtedly not a fair comparison.
  

So, first impressions are positive.  Let's see how I feel after a couple of hundred hours of burn in.