Phantom Gold Confusion & Expert Pro Question

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Hi everyone,

I want to share the weirdest experience of my audio / high-end life with you. I've been living with a new set of phantom golds for the past 2 weeks. They are on the tree stands in perfect stereo triangle the way I would set up other systems. As I'm a sound engineer my room is treated to have the perfect dampening/reflection ratios with absorption/dispersion... in the strategically important spots.

For me the phantom gold experience is the single most disappointing experience I've ever had with an audio product. After having tried them also in other rooms, I have to say: how can anyone in this forum deem this a good high-end product? Anyone who ever heard a truly good system would be unable to make such judgements. What I hear is this:

The good:

• They are spectacular for watching movies and playing videos games as the lowest octaves are truly rock solid and the amp power is there.
  
• They are very good for all artificially created sounds (e.g. electronic music). (Oddly the transients are not so slow here).
  
• Bass power. Bass impulse response.
  
• Lack of ported speaker design artifacts.
  

The bad:

• Acoustically recorded music: almost unbearable. All instruments sound as if somebody has poured liquid plastic over them. 
  
• The decay of the instruments is not realistic. 
  
• Transients: terribly rounded and slow. I can only assume that this is due to the mid-range driver and tweeter. The mid-range driver has far too little radiation area and cannot move enough air, especially when having to compete against these woofers. Same for the tweeter. In this designs config, they would have to be horn-loaded to become seriously alive. Both drivers seems to be slow and sluggish, they just have too much mass. This metal material of the mid-range driver seems to be a very poor choice.
  
• Soundstage: mushy. no true "phantom center". no stable and clear left-right or front-back localization. everything is somewhere somehow.
  
• Mids: practically non-existent. A true mid-hole. As said, the radiation area of the mid-range driver is a joke in comparison to the woofer capabilities. The result is an unbalanced energetic dispersion across the frequency band.
  
• Highs: Where is that extra high-end sparkle of the golds? I had the silvers previously, which I sold after 2 weeks as well. I got the golds due to the wish for convenience and all reviews suggested that the problems are fixes. They are not. The highs of the golds are a little better (10%) but are miles away of what a true hifi/high-end driver can do. Especially a ribbon or air-motion-transformer or even an electrostat.
  
• Sound density: the claim of Devialet to bring dense sound is true which leads to instruments not having breathing space around them. Everything is mushed together.
  
• Dynamics: Not there. Everythings seems to have almost the same playback level. Micro-dynamics: forget it. Macro-dynamics: sometimes when there's real volume jumps in the source material. All the musical intricate dynamical details are lost completely. This is most off-putting as in theory, I had assumed, the amp technology would be able to deliver this. But the drivers are not. Maybe it's also the firmware and I guess the devices have waaaaaaay too much jitter. Also, as the electronics are inside the speakers they are probably victim to microphonics. Even with this amp technology. 
  

So I decided to get rid of them asap. And now my question to you all is this, especially to those who feel that the golds are great boom-boxes and not much more: is the expert pro line the same? What I mean is this: Is the expert pro line also overrated in reviews and sounds like this:

• soulless
  
• like plastic
  
• slow transients
  
• lack of micro-dynamics
  
• mushy soundstage
  
• mid-hole
  
• ...
  

I still wish for a simple and convenient solution and not a chain of 6 components. I have a PS Audio Directstream. In contrast to the Phantoms, it is the single best audio component, I have ever heard or invested money in. I was close to selling it to get an expert pro but the Phantom experience discouraged me greatly. I live in a place where it's difficult to get a listen at a dealer for a live comparison. So what can you tell me? Is the expert pro line also just hype-train or does it actually sound like music.

For the speaker question my advice coming from 18 years of high-end experience:

• Buy speakers that make as few mistakes as possible so they don't need to be DSP corrected.
  
• Buy speakers with as few crossovers as possible.
  
• Buy speakers with the largest radiation area possible (highs & mids also, not only bass).
  
• Buy speakers with the lightest drivers possible (little mass).
  
• Buy speakers that either don't have a box (open baffle) or a box that is absolutely vibration free if you don't fancy dipoles.
  
• Buy speakers that are either Coaxes or Line Sources.
  

This actually simplifies high-end life as it narrows down choices extremely to:

• Magnetostatic transducers: ribbons, air motion transformers. ("Piega Master One" was the best, I've ever heard).
  
• Electrostats (full range having no crossovers at all).
  

To give a practial, not too expensive example: Connecting a "Hedd Type 30" (around 6K) active monitor directly to my DAC, completely obliterates the Phantoms. The Hedds are light years better even though the AMT in this config only serves as the tweeter and the mid-driver is a piston driver...