Are Phantoms boring... now that they work perfect?

[Gremlin]

Just a joke really but with the Phantoms working pretty much perfectly we don't have anything to complain about anymore haha. You see less and less posted on the forum - the questions have been answered and the set-up is solid. Maybe different colors and surround sound HT aren't coming - maybe Spark is as good as it will get ...... all that's left to do is... buy more Phantoms   it's kind of satisfying to just turn them on  and they work. Is this how regular people live stuff just works? haha

It's interesting that you should say that Jon. My experience with the phantoms has been largely predictable (in a good way) and excellent. At the time I bought them, I had spent 9 months researching mid-level audiophile systems. I found speakers I liked, components I liked but all from different dealers, and it was near impossible to assemble a system and do a test. Did I even trust my ears to get the test right? Could I even replicate the sound files properly as some dealers had trouble with ingesting my flac files. Then I had all the second level things like streaming functionality, what cables to buy, interconnects etc. 

Then I wondered whether the speakers I wanted would fit in my listening room - which is just the family room. Started thinking about a dedicated room, room treatments etc to justify and make the large investment in equipment worthwhile. TOO HARD!!! 

Then I stumbled on the money back trial for the silvers and realised if they worked well enough then all that rubbish goes away, given that whatever system I had would be in a compromised environment anyway. Loved the silvers, listened to the golds and loved them more then swapped. 

Yes the Spark app is a bit rubbish but the connectivity options are awesome for digital music. I can play through spark, tidal, spotify from my phone, apple music, google assistant can play through spotify to them, my TV, my laptop, my macbook, my main PC, even my Apple watch. Yes I can be sitting on the couch and press a button on my watch and have it come through the devialets, even control volume. Different levels of quality for each option, but different levels of convenience and family friendliness too. 

NO TWEAKING NECESSARY. The only thing I have done is give them an ethernet cable each - which I believe improved imaging and sound quality in general and is likely to be more reliable. Forget the power conditioning, gold plated cables. it just works - fits in with the family, but still sounds great and often spectacular. Couldn't be happier. They are even easily moved - see attached photo when we watched the Big Blue projected onto a wall outside - they sound frigging fantastic outside as they aren't influenced by the room and the Big Blue remix movie has great sound quality. Next movie that way is Apocalypse now - redux 4K version.


Couldn't be happier as I reckon they meet the brief. Great sound, amazing bass, louder than I need, no distortion, multiple ways of using them so they get embedded in your day to day life, quality listening options and easy to use. My wife calls them my bitches as she reckons I love them more than her :-) 

Just update spark to work a bit better, extend the range of their sexy remote, maybe make them a roon endpoint, tidal MQA, surround options, room correction - all nice to have but not critical as they have solved the hard problems already. I just hope they keep working as I worry about the engineering complexity.

Oh, and just for the record - although possibly contentious - don't buy expensive ethernet cables - makes no sense as given the protocols involved it will not change the bits that are delivered at all, so cannot affect sound quality in an objectively measureable fashion - I realise I'm baiting more intelligent people than me with that opinion. Or is it a fact? too hard to tell in the audiophile game.

Well done Devialet! I don't say that often about any gadget or vendor.

I bet your neighbours love you!