My Phantom voyage

[ragwo]

After not killing one of the Phantoms, I decided to take it a step further; paint. After some research I found that the local high school could do the job as a student exercise, I would only pay for the paint and power used by the furnace. A week went by and the Phantom killer goose necks came back powder coated white. The installation was straight forward and it looked just bad, not really bad as I feared.
The stands are hollow by the way, so all cables are hidden, eventually. 
   

With DOS2 installed, the optical direct mode is just a couple of touches away. Very convenient and a huge step forward from the awkward procedure in DOS1. I would like to keep the opportunity to use RAAT for music, so optical mode for the L/R speakers was out of the question. Unfortunately the preamplifier couldn't make up for the delay between the speakers when the rest was in optical mode. Echo is a nice effect, when used with care. No care in my den I'm afraid. The solution was not user friendly at all, but the goal justifies the means etc. The speakers are divided into three different zones; front, center and surround. The signal is passed from the ADCs to the speakers via toslink. A fixed volume is set in the Devialet app and the volume is adjusted in the preamplifier. The scariest thing; it actually works! With latency set to 60 ms in the Devialet app there are no drop outs, echoing or similar. All speakers are wired. In DOS1 this would be impossible even with wired speakers. Thank you Devialet for DOS2! 

So, it's time for the show off picture. Still the cabling needs tidying up and the preamplifier and ADCs tossed into the rosewoodorama, but the project 98% is done. The rest will hopefully be done in a few days/months/years, depending on the patience of my better half. 
   


Next, sound impressions!