(23-Aug-2017, 17:30)cbleehk Wrote: Anyone had an audition of the 5.5 & 7.7 setup? Would love to hear your review!
I was asking at the showroom and a sales person referred me to someone else and said the 5.5 would cost some USD $20-25k to setup.
I already had 2 Golds, tried many movies and am impressed specifically at the bass effects shifting left & right on top of the superb standard stereo experience. So I was quite sold that a 5.5/7.7 setup would be awesome. I'm renovation a new place and have been contemplating a KEF mixed Reference 5 + R-series 5.1.2 setup.
The system seems to use Xilica which takes in analogue signals from the source (maybe it be your receiver or BD player), transform it to digital signal, send it through ethernet and then converted back to digital signal before entering the Phantoms. While this sounds inefficient doing A2D, D2A, then A2D again, I also wonder how much of a loss there could be. I'm no sound engineer so I have no idea how well the Xilica and whatever the device that transform the last A2D work.
I feel that the KEF setup is safer and longer lasting because analogue speakers are not going to disappear. With all the tech built-in, who knows if and when something new comes out the tech will get obsolete. Maybe I'm thinking too much.
Would you consider the KEF setup vs this 5.5? Love to hear some thoughts!
Chris
Hi Chris,
I faced a somewhat similar situation. I went from a 2.1 set up to the devialet phantom gold's. The reason back then was to downsize and have a more compact system.
While I liked it for music, for movies it was not optimal. However, I was only using a stereo set of Phantoms, but when driven hard, I noticed some struggle on louder volume to play well in the lower hz region (20-35hz). They can't reach the 108 db in this region. Movies sounded fine, but the oomph was missing.
Recently I send the phantoms back again and went to a 2.2.2 set up. With the kef r300 as mains, r50 and 2x sb13ultra. There it was again, oomph in movies and having tons of headroom. Also having some atmos effects certainly enhance the movie experience, I doubt the phantoms will ever see that.
I think the KEF set up you have in mind will provide more joy in movies than the 5.5 set up of the Phantoms, while they certainly provide good bass, they can't reach the lower hz region without distortion and authority. Also with going for 5 Phantoms, you're fully investing in the Devialet eco system, you will never have 100% guarantee how the future will look like.
Daniel
