Certified Refurbished Silver Phantom

[kmjy]

They have the same offer at the local Devialet pusher. I've asked if it's ADH or ADH2, they didn't know for sure but thought it was ADH. That's unfortunate, cause the noise floor of ADH is unbearable IMO.

Okay that’s very informative!

Maybe it is just ADH, because there’s no mention of the new ‘premier’ status. Knowing Devialet though it’ll be a mixture of everything and they work even know for sure what is what.

I agree with you though. I managed to get my unit upgraded from ADH to ADH2 and it’s noticeable. Honestly I think it composes itself better overall.

For what it's worth, the new Phantom Reactor has ADH3 instead of ADH2. Is the technology hardware or software-based? If it is software, owners of the "Premier" line might receive an update in the future!

Last year I asked Devialet about this and they confirmed that ADH is physical hardware. They explained that the serial numbers indicate the level of ADH. There are Phantom out there today with original ADH which they said cannot be upgraded but all Phantom as of early this year have ADH2 standard. They tried to tell me though that there are ZERO differences between ADH and ADH2 units. 
I think ADH3 is just an even more efficient chip, even more miniaturised. We may see it in new hardware revisions of the Premier line but I don't believe it's changed from a hardware based component to a software one. Although almost everything with Devialet is quite confusing.

In saying that, the current hardware has so much potential, the ADH2 is not lacking and can be optimised much better, they just either can't be bothered or take 10 years to do so. Each chip revision basically skips the fine tuning stage for the existing chip, and goes straight ahead onto having a better piece of hardware which then somehow someway exceeds the previous chip, so then they can never optimise the old one to the point of the new one. Whereas they could just focus on what they've got.

With ADH3 though I'm certain it's the same as ADH2 but considerably more efficient and quite a bit smaller. Paired with the other redesigned processing and signal management components it should be technically capable of outputting the same raw sound quality as the Premier line, although now it's limited by the physical speaker hardware. Overall there should be also less heat generated too.