Phantom Remote is so dumb that it is dangerous.

[Phs]

At Devialetchat, we're all audio savvy enough to probably agree that :
- Phantom is an impressive acoustic and audio hardware achievement
- Everything that is related to User Experience is rather weak ( Setup, Spark, no Airplay, poor communication with users ... )
- The constant bragging of Devialet about how good they are could positively be replaced by more listening to users, and considering seriously real life use cases.

I already wrote in this article how much I felt Devialet was ignoring UX, and at the time, I thought this could only improve. But receiving the Remote a few days ago proved I was wrong, it could get worse... By a lot.

Being in pro audio for 35 years I used many audio level controls in my life. Although they sometimes look a bit different, they normaly share in common to be:
- a rotary control (except faders), where turning clockwise increases volume
- have some graphic indication of level (numbers, dots, LEDs ...)

There is a good reason for this graphic scale to be present: it allows the user - at a glance - to know the current volume setting before actually playing audio through a system.
Anyone controling a powerfull speaker system - in P.A. or studio - knows that you definitely prefer to use your eyes than your ears to find out that the audio volume is way to high.



So here's what happened to me saturday:
- I was playing music - through optical input - around level 40 with the Remote being paired
- At some point I paused music to place a phone call
- A bit later I decided to play music again and it was crazy loud
- Phantom level was at 100 because someone in the family fiddled with the attractive Remote while the music was stopped ...
- How could I know that ???

The Remote is now removed from my system for obvious safety reasons.

So here is a new award to the Devialet team: they created the stupidest volume control in the history of audio. The one that says to the user of a 3000 W 105 dB system: "guess what the volume is ?".

Can you imagine that this was put to market instead of the initial project which was providing the level info to the user ?

How can this happen ? Probably driven by the urge to sell, reduce development time and costs, someone said: " do we really need the display on this remote? ". And everyone agreed it was a very good idea to remove it, and that the price could even stay the same!

In that meeting I can tell you that no one was representing the user.

I'll leave the conclusion to Steve Jobs who said in 1997 at WWDC:

"You've got to start with the customer experience and work back to the technology — not the other way around. I've probably made this mistake more than anybody, and I've got the scar tissue to prove it,"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iACK-LNnzM starts at 52:00:00

One more thing ...  
A quick and dirty software fix would be to disable the Remote volume change when no audio is played.

PH