Not impressed so far...

[dasun]

This week I received one Phantom Gold, I will receive a second one next week. Without the stereo setup, I am not convinced so far, that I will keep the Gold. The sound feels kinda 'muddy' at lower levels, yet picks up at higher levels. Still, it feels like mids are somewhat missing. My wife mentioned, it sounds like as if a blanket is covering up the speaker. I am even wondering, if I received a faulty unit.

 Unfortunately, I suspect it is the corner placement of the Phantom on its own stand - however I have no other choice of positioning. On the left and the right the distance to a wall (sideboard, respectively) is only about 15cm, the back wall ist about 18cm apart.

Is there any way of adjusting the bass and the mids? So far my other active speakers (Beolab, B&M Prime) had a option, to switch from corner to wall to a free standing option.

Does anyone else use the Phantoms in a corner setup?

[dasun]

here is how the right speaker is positioned right now...

[Taucher669]

Do you have a Dialog already? How are you connected to your Phantom? Bluetooth, WiFi, PLC, Ethernet? How do you feed the Phantom? What kind of material and source do you use? Are you sure you feed Phantom with lossless material? For me it seems you feed Phantom either with lossy material or/and connected via bluetooth... I have never heared about somehow muddy mids in Phantom. My 4 Phantom Golds do deliver a cristal clear sound with lossless material. (Tidal, Roon, Bluesound Node II)

[iamwappie]

That indeed is an acoustic challenge and may certainly be of influence. Just for testing sake; if your couch has separate back pillows, stack them in the corner behind the phantoms and listen to the difference. You may be amazed. Any speaker will suffer from this as it is the room acoustics but the effect may vary somewhat as it also depends on how the speaker radiates. If you really can't place them somewhere else a bass trap/tube may be the only solution. It's just not that attractive as currently your phantoms perfectly fit and blend in to the environment.

[daibaron]

The sound quality with a (single) mono Phantom is not impressive at all.
From my point of view, you've misplaced the speaker.
This setup is only good for playing a source as ambient sound but awful from a listener's standpoint.

[dasun]

I have not yet installed the dialog, since I am still waiting for the second speaker to arrive. So far I have just installed the Spark app on my ipad and listen to the radio stations or the playlist on my ipad. I have signed up for the tidal trial, but apparently there is no way of using tidal with the spark app when using only one speaker. Btw, Devialet is advertising a free three-month trial with the purchase, however, I do not find any information on this anywhere (e.g. a coupon code or similar)?

[Hifi_swlon]

Why on Earth Devialet still haven't provided any user-adjustable DSP like Room Correction with these things is beyond me.

In any case if that's your only position, and I'm guessing you don't want ugly bass traps and diffusers plastered around your lounge (or to tear the room down and rebuild it) , the only way to really deal with it is to measure it, and adjust with DSP. In fact, I wholeheartedly recommend Digital Room Correction anyway unless speakers are used in a dedicated, treated room, or you just happen to get lucky with good acoustics - neither if which seem the case here. The trouble you have is getting it in your chain.

I use a 250 not Phantom, but I've just made new filters with new measurements for my room, and adjusted the speaker positions very slightly. I'm talking a tiny adjustment to make them about a degree tilted back, and a cm move. The two things combined transform the system. It's more profound than any other box of tricks I've ever bought in the past to try and better the sound.

You're probably not hearing a fraction of what they can do. I'd strongly recommend getting a mic and having a go - it's cheap related be to your Phantoms. Just needs a bit of time invested.

[iamwappie]

I only recently discovered the major impact of acoustic treatment but only experimented using my own hearing but would like to do it more measurement based. Any recommendation on programs to use and mic without the need of an academic study required to interpret the results?

[Hifi_swlon]

A umik-1 USB mic at about £80.
REW software which is free.
(If you want to do log sweeps/phase measurements a mic stand is also pretty much a necessity.)

That's a pretty good start - certainly all most people will need unless you want to get seriously serious.

I'll link to the guide for Room correction in Roon using REW and continuous pink noise measurement (later when I can find it). It's specific to convolution filters in Roon but I think it's a really good measurement approach and is very visual so can easily see what's going on.

You'll probably have to do some reading but that guide will get you started

[iamwappie]

Thanks. I do some research on your suggestions. Sounds like a lot of fun to experiment