Is the Phantom still bad for a home theater?

[kmjy]

I’ve watched movies with a Phantom cinema setup and it absolutely does produce the lower frequencies with as much, if not more authority than a subwoofer. I picked my own movies and damn was it impressive. People say the Phantoms can’t hit even a solid 20Hz at higher volume levels but I’m not sure on what basis. In all my experiences they play from 20 all the way up very very impactfully. I’ve had my White Phantom’s vibrating the house on those lower frequencies. And even the ones I can’t hear. Can feel it. But I do suppose it depends on the setup. And environment. And locations and all of that.

For cinema each Phantom is delivering the equivalent of two subwoofers worth of bass (and the reason I say subwoofers is because they are actually subwoofers, there’s some really advanced technology going on behind those domes), and those drivers together are heading up past 17” in diameter. You add a second or third or fourth Phantom and you’re essentially adding another 2, 4 or 6 subwoofers if you wanna look at it that way. Sounds outrageous but really adds an impact. The setup I got the privilege to mess with was 7 Silver Phantom’s. Three front. Two side. Two back. Setup with Devialet’s method. It was breathtaking. Gold’s being twice as powerful as Silvers, having 25% more woofer excursion, and a more advanced range of output I would think even a four Gold setup would be incredible. Capable of those lows. No problems. I think in my listening environment two would be fine and I’d be more than happy with the bass output. But diversity in preference is what makes this field so enjoyable.

The highness is fair. Although in my experience the environment and positioning makes a big impact on how Phantom’s sound. A very very big impact.

The thing about these Phantom’s is that unless they’re being fed the absolute right source they’re not putting out their full potential of sound. With the right source that bass will thicken up incredibly. You may notice with a dedicated LFE track heading into Phantom the range of bass may increase. As well as the depth and thickness. And authority of sound. I’ve noticed this in the past.


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You keep mentioning you've seen the Phantoms in a proper cinema setup, is this something Devialet has actively been showing off/working on? If so, could you provide me with some links and reading material?

Right now I'm thinking of doing Sources > HDMI matrix switch w/ separate optical out > Dialog + Projector.
Kind of hoping the inherent delay from using a projector vs a TV will help with the audio delay. If not, I will use a PC as the main source for movies and manually adjust the delay values.

TBH I'm leaning towards getting a proper setup with some DefTech speakers, but the girlfriend really likes how the phantoms look and hate how typical home theater speakers look lol.

They showed it off at a few audio conversations, you could go in and mess with it. And some of their flagship stores still have the cinema listening area. It has both a setup of Phantom’s with a proper decoding setup. And an Expert amplifier with ordinary speakers. And they compare the two in there.

I got to really test it properly when the dealer close to me temporarily had it all set up (7 Phantom’s in cinema) and had a special order from Devialet the decoding equipment they were using. But they had to send it back. Was incredible.

It is something Devialet are actively working on. But as I said this is something worth doing right before launch and currently their setup for theatre is a bit complicated.
They’re going to need either a new Decoder bridge to go into the network to do all the necessary processing or a firmware update to Dialogue (depending on the capabilities of Dialogue). Currently Dialogue is just a director and commander. Not a processor. Phantom’s process all audio internally. No matter if they’re in a pair or not. Dialogue just streamlines that to say this Phantom gets this. This one gets this. Then they do the work themselves and send timing information back and forth with Dialogue and themselves to stay times and synced. So either Dialogue is incapable of high end processing or since it’s already not being used for that it has power to spare to potentially do theatre processing.

From what I know they want to have a HDMI input so I would suspect a special decoder would make sense. Something that pairs in with Phantom’s and Dialogue and takes all the audio input and splits it correctly to each Phantom and does all the processing/speaker protection on its end specifically for theatre. This would also create zero delay as that little bridge will handle the levels of output each Phantom can have. Temporarily removing a real time SAM monitor of the incoming audio which generally causes the delay. While Dialogue does it’s own ordinary things.

That’s similar to how Devialet are doing it currently in their demonstrations. But with a bit more complexity. It’s not consumer friendly currently.

That idea is not a problem but you won’t get the true audio decoding of a theatre setup as Phantom’s/Dialogue currently don’t support that. Even if the source is being sent in say 7.2. It will all get mixed into a stereo output and won’t have necessary balancing. I hope there won’t be any delay.

Yeah, that’s the tough thing with them. They’re extraordinary for their compactness and design. But of course. Can always go for a traditional setup.


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