Finally a white power cable with Gold phantom

[MountainGuy]

I'd say whether D200 vs Phantom Gold is downscaling or upgrade depends on the speaker one runs with the D200....

From my own personal testing with a Devialet 200 + pair of KEF Reference 1 Speakers (roughly £4k). A pair of Silver Phantoms will wipe the floor with most speakers in their price class and a lot of speakers above their price class.

Treble, midrange and imaging was close but KEF pulled away on that front. The transitions from treble to midrange seemed a little more abrupt on the Phantom however.

By all accounts the Gold Phantom improves on precisely midrange and treble. In addition a firmware update will apparently bring some of the Gold's new acoustic improvements to the Silver and White Phantoms.

If all the Gold's promise holds true then I wouldn't be surprised if a pair of Gold's push into KEF Blade 2 territory (£15k a pair without amplification). I personally believe the Gold's might end up being a watershed moment with premium HiFi having to come back down to saner pricing levels. It's funny because I suspect the Phantom will impact sales of the Expert series a fair bit too, but guess it's better to compete against your own products than to have someone else compete against you.

A lot of snobbery against the Phantoms in the HiFi press and to a lesser extent on the forums. If and when Devialet sort out Spark and get the whole shebang working smoothly it'll be time for the other audio companies to duck and cover.

My thoughts too.  I believe the Gold will fulfill Phantom's initial promise to outperform larger and most costly systems which are acknowledged to offer high 'value'.