Phantoms - mids

[davidadamson]

I have written this elsewhere but at the risk of boring people I have in front of me in my listening room at the moment, a pair of Goldmund Epilog 1&2, the best speakers I have heard, a pair of Tune Audio Anima horns and a pair of Silver Phantoms.
The Phantoms are close to the Goldmunds but have a quite different presentation to the horns.
The Goldmunds are better, to my ears but are over 30x times as expensive.
I have KEF LS50s but haven't done a direct comparison, the immediate impression is that the Phantoms are in a different league. For me, music is about the whole performance,not just mid. Maybe somebody who mainly listened to the sort of easy listening female vocalists so popular at shows would hear something I don't notice.
OK they don't have beryllium or diamond tweeters but the mid is superb IMO. They have the superb clarity that first attracted me to the Devialet D-Premier in the first place.

It does depend on taste though. Some listeners "clear" is another's "bright".
Listeners who prefer the sound of the extra overtones added by the SET amps and their like (the OP mentioned this sort of thing) may well find them not to their taste.

I think you nailed the explanation. 
The Phantoms are different than anything I have listened to and often shock me on a particular track at how different (read better, crisper, clearer, more separation, fuller, richer ) they sound to my conventional speakers ( Quad Esl's, Martin Logan Theos) . Yet on some tracks the phantoms can be too clear and I yearn for a tube buffer to mellow them out. 
Is that the Phantoms problem - I do not think so, I think it is probably the recording which sounded fine on a conventional dac /amp/speaker and all the associated wiring. 
One can only assume so many interfaces dull the mix and what you hear with the Phantoms is so much purer. That said I would rather listen to what sounds wonderful on the Phantoms and skip the ones that do not until Devialet comes up with a software equivalent of a tube buffer.