After all the updates since April last year a Dialog is a good choice for serving one or multiple Phantoms. Try to have Phantom(s) and Dialog on the same branch of the power outlets and without power surge filters such that the built-in PLC works. Then you will be fine for internet streaming (Qobuz, Tidal...), internet radio stations and also local streaming from devices running the Spark SW. All Lossless up to 24/192k streams without hick-ups, interrupts, signal loss etc. There are still things to improve: Spark got now very fast, i.e. usable, has a decent search function, but gapless play is not (I hope yet) implemented. Metadata like genres is ignored, so catalogs are not more than one dimensional. Also there is a new bug that doubles local albums when you search by artist. I'm using Qobuz with the possibility to stream purchased albums in Hires. However, only the latest 50 purchases are shown. Don't know if the limitation is a bug created by Devialet or comes from Qobuz. In the Qobuz native app the limitation does not exist.
I find it great and amazing that I can control the Dialog streaming simultaneous with multiple IOS, OSX, Android and Windows devices with synchronization of displays/playlist, volume control all in the 100ms range. This is really a real-time feeling that even or unfortunately AppleTV/iTunes lost over the last years. Not to mention that Apple is nowhere in Hires music. Multi-room works perfect with my 3 Phantoms. However, on the IOS and Android app in Multi-room when rooms are merged there is not anymore the possibility to control the volume independently. This is a design flaw that came in after version update to 1.4 and has not been reversed since. Indepent control of unmerged rooms fortunately works and is essential as room sized differ. On the Windows and OSX versions of Spark independent control of the volume of merged rooms, e.g. importent for multi-room party setup is still working. Hopefully Devialet engineers will one day have a house party with different sized rooms and realize that it would be useful to play the same music in full synchronity at volumes that fit to different sized rooms. The full synchronity of multiple Phantoms (the big challenge) they solved excellent (20us precision), but usability is not yet their full competence. Maybe not enough time to really use their developments.
I find it great and amazing that I can control the Dialog streaming simultaneous with multiple IOS, OSX, Android and Windows devices with synchronization of displays/playlist, volume control all in the 100ms range. This is really a real-time feeling that even or unfortunately AppleTV/iTunes lost over the last years. Not to mention that Apple is nowhere in Hires music. Multi-room works perfect with my 3 Phantoms. However, on the IOS and Android app in Multi-room when rooms are merged there is not anymore the possibility to control the volume independently. This is a design flaw that came in after version update to 1.4 and has not been reversed since. Indepent control of unmerged rooms fortunately works and is essential as room sized differ. On the Windows and OSX versions of Spark independent control of the volume of merged rooms, e.g. importent for multi-room party setup is still working. Hopefully Devialet engineers will one day have a house party with different sized rooms and realize that it would be useful to play the same music in full synchronity at volumes that fit to different sized rooms. The full synchronity of multiple Phantoms (the big challenge) they solved excellent (20us precision), but usability is not yet their full competence. Maybe not enough time to really use their developments.
