Is the Phantom still bad for a home theater?

[Cyral]

New member here. I tried out the Phantoms a few weeks ago at the showroom here in NYC and I loved them. I'm thinking of getting a pair of them for the TV, and later getting another 2 as rear channel.

From what I understand, the Dialog doesnt support anything more than stereo yet right?

I also saw from some older reviews that the Phantom doesn't work well for TV because theres a noticeable amount of latency. So noticeable that lips on the screen look out of sync with the audio. Is that still true?

Unfortunately they are not great for home theater in my opinion. I really tried to make it work, but in the end I missed the proper .1 channel (LFE) and in order to get satisfying volume/impact out of the speakers I needed to turn the volume quite high. But then I had another problem, while there was some pretty good mid bass punch, the highs were too hard and bright for me. Some scenes simply hurt my ears.

Recently went back to a 2.2 system with proper subwoofers and the golds dont compare at all. But for the size and it being a stereo set up they are fine. Can't expect a proper home cinema experience with speakers this size.

I didn't have lip sync issue's when they were connected to my tv or beamer. Only noticed it when I connected them to my pc monitor.

It’s not that the Gold’s don’t compare. It’s literally what you said. They weren’t receiving the proper LFE channel. Which is a problem when it comes to balancing out the overall sound. The highs are too bright because of the same issue. The correct channels aren’t being decoded properly. And rather just becoming a mash of everything.

The Gold’s would truly outperform most Home Cinema setups. Including some (some) actual cinemas. Just depends how it’s being done.

Devialet have been showing Phantom home theatre off for a while and the way they execute it is astonishing. Really takes my breath away. It just takes quite a bit of extra components to do atm which is why it’s been held up. It needs to be practical before release. But once it does launch you’ll have a hard time comparing it to much else.

What they eventually want to do is have something like an all in one Dialogue which will do. Connectivity (Wi-Fi, optical, Bluetooth, HDMI) as well as the processing and decoding of the cinema audio. All channels being send out properly to the intended Phantom. With that all in one unit also doing the processing for each Phantom and setting a ‘maximum’ output level of them so Devialet can remove the current processing method from the Phantom itself (without risk of blowing the speakers by having no SAM real time monitoring enabled) and have the all in one unit do that processing but in a way that it’s pre-determined so we can have 0 sync issues and still have a safe and well performing system.

In time. It’ll come. In time.


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Yes, I agree that having the channels being decoded would surely help. But even when the channels are decoded properly, they will not hit subwoofer levels of bass, at high volume they won't be able to produce hz in the lower freq range with authority.

The high's were also too bright for me with music, so I think that isn't a fair argument when talking about home cinema performance.

Comparing the Phantom Golds with a subwoofer set up is comparing apples and oranges. However, I must say there's no alternative this small with the amount of bass the Phantoms can produce. (for music absolutely plenty)