[Closed] Devialet Phantom - revolutionary hi-fi loudspeaker thing - my mind is blown!

At first glance it looks like the usual BS marketing hyperbole...however Devialet's systems are quite rightly renowned for groundbreaking tech and performance to match.

Fingers crossed they deliver...who wouldn't want a speaker that looks like the robot from Bjork's [i]All Is Full Of Love[/i]?!

Why?

Soooooo.... I'm guessing the shape of it improves the sound dispersion, in a similar way to the B&W Nautilus?

They have them in Harrods - I passed them on the way to see the Airwheels...

meh

Well, I do like my sound and have a simple yet amazing system in Meridian DSP5200 hooked to a Squeezebox. It sounds amazing.

I was fortunate enough to have this on trial last week, it is mighty impressive, without sounding like an audiophile, it manages clarity and presentation on a scale i have never heard from such a small package.

I was so impressed, I will be selling my B&W MM1's and various other bits to fund this.

have you actually heard it or just basing the rave review on reading a website?

EDIT: in the time I was typing it appears we do have someone who's heard it. the question was to the OP

I spent some time on the site but beyond 'it's amazing and look a computer controls everything' I couldn't find an explanation of how it differs from conventional speakers other than there's flappy bass ear things of some sort.

WTF is "homogenous sound" supposed to mean? 🙄

Don't get too hung up on how it works, its a speaker (a very clever one) that produces sound not heard before at this price level (IMHO!)

It's hi-fi MrWoppit, none of the terms used to describe it have to actually mean anything.

[edit]

mashiehood - I'm unlikely to hear one, or ever spend £1500 on one either but I'm interested in how stuff works.

It's hi-fi MrWoppit

I doubt that very much, old man.

[i]I doubt that very much[/i]

on what basis?

WTF is "homogenous sound" supposed to mean?

as opposed to different portions being emphasized, like the boom and tizz you can get from certain over-emphasized systems, like many Bose systems.

Well it's a pretty website but I think I would need to hear it before pressing the Order Now button. That smacks of Bose style marketing.

I'm a bit dubious (well more than a bit) about the claims made for bass response from such a small unit. Oh and I see they've gone back to 70s marketing by quoting peak power outputs. Impressive eh?

Personally I don't think it will come close to a Nautilus, or an 801, or ATCs. But of course, I haven't heard it.

I dont think they are targeting Nautilus, High end Meridian or ATC. This is very much a product for the setup, forget generation but who also want impressive sound. It does that.

Seriously, those who are intrigued should go and listen.

Define "impressive sound". Furthermore I would like some clarification of:

"Phantom on its own will replace your stereo systems, speakers, docking stations and home-cinema. It exceeds them at least 1000 times in terms of sound quality"

Against what baseline?

"Phantom is unique. It emits sound using a new revolutionary process, according to the absolute rules of acoustic perfection"

Which rules are those then?

"Phantom integrates a unique system producing ultra deep sounds by high pressure beating of its lateral wings".

Er.. you mean the cones go in and out?

have you actually heard it or just basing the rave review on reading a website?

No, I haven't heard it - but I design loudspeakers (I'm currently finishing off an 800W class D PA speaker with DSP) and I know all the limitations that we battle against. All their ideas stack up, it's really bloody clever!

I can completely pull apart why Bose stuff tends to sound awful - there are so many bad things going on technically. This is like what I'd do if you gave me a very very big R&D budget (and I'd thought of the combined Class A & Class D power amp design - that is genius!) To pull all this together and make it affordable and user friendly is a huge leap ahead of everything else in the market sector.

Hmm, ok.

"Phantom on its own will replace your stereo systems, speakers, docking stations and home-cinema. It exceeds them at least 1000 times in terms of sound quality"

Blah. Blah blah blah.

It is an interesting design for sure, but the dumb marketing really puts me off.
And I hate the "order now" button.. 🙄

as an aside, before the signal gets anywhere near this device and is so "purely and accurately reproduced" it is manipulated in innumerable ways by all manner and sorts of recording technology. why this may not be much of an issue for electronicly generated sounds it is worth considering the implications for more traditional musical sources.

if it sounds nice thats fine, but all the hype about "quality" really is just that..
I have heard hi end equipment that is quite soulless and less enjoyable to listen to than many an old radiogram, I do not really know what that means, its just my experience of listening to music 🙂

I can't check the site out at work, can anyone briefly tell me what it is? I'm assuming a speaker that doesn't work on the old coil and cone type system?

Define "impressive sound". Furthermore I would like some clarification of:

"Phantom on its own will replace your stereo systems, speakers, docking stations and home-cinema. It exceeds them at least 1000 times in terms of sound quality"

Against what baseline?

"Phantom is unique. It emits sound using a new revolutionary process, according to the absolute rules of acoustic perfection"

Which rules are those then?

"Phantom integrates a unique system producing ultra deep sounds by high pressure beating of its lateral wings".

Er.. you mean the cones go in and out?

There's an awful lot of marketing spiel on their site! But the volume displacement of those bass drivers is huge - 13mm Xmax and dual ~6" cones. That's bass output comparable to what you'd expect from a pair of 3-way floorstanders with 10" bass drivers - from one Phantom! Because the speakers and processing are so tightly tied together the system can compensate for the huge pressure changes inside the enclosure which would otherwise cause very high distortion. And because they move in opposite directions you don't get any cabinet vibrations which would cause more distortion.

The peak power is what matters with this design - RMS long-term power is irrelevant because the voice coils couldn't handle it. If you look at current cutting edge amplifier design amps are no longer designed to produce continuous power which is close to their peak output because music is incredibly dynamic. What they need is sufficient burst length for their moments of full power - any more than that and you've got a bigger power supply and more cooling that you need. To make a heavy cone in a small box move 13mm you need a LOT of peak power.

Anyway, must go, have loudspeakers to design!

[s]Phantom [/s]A hummingbird integrates a unique system producing ultra deep sounds by high pressure beating of its lateral wings.

DrP

hook, line and sinker!

"ultra-dense sound" sounds much better than this terrible normal density sound I usually hear.

most recorded music has a pitiful dynamic range and is normally highly compressed for a variety of reasons.

transient response is more important than peak power.

Always Ultra Thin Long Super Pads absorb 60% faster* and feature Flexi-Wings that flex as you move, helping them to stay put and protect against leaks.
Always Ultra also integrates a unique system producing ultra deep sounds by high pressure beating of its flexi wings.

Buy now...

DrP

rb, as usual in the land of hifi, it's some overpriced tosh.

I base this opinion purely on the guff website, the guff white paper, and massive price and marketing bs.

combined Class A & Class D power amp design - that is genius

disagree, you've been had

~6" cones. That's bass output comparable to what you'd expect from a pair of 3-way floorstanders with 10" bass drivers

do you work for these guys? small cones can't do bass, you just get harmonics. Something to do with physics I hear.

I can't check the site out at work, can anyone briefly tell me what it is? I'm assuming a speaker that doesn't work on the old coil and cone type system?

Still coil and cone (dome in this case). 3-way with coaxial mid/tweeter, impulse compensated side-firing bass drivers, spherical enclosure, fully active with DSP, class A/D hybrid power amp, connects via wifi etc, 24/192, 16-25000Hz +/- 2dB, can be used as one (mono) but if you add more units they go stereo etc etc. No wires in the unit bar the tinsel leads and voice coils!

pass the kleenex!

I like new ways to solve problems.

Is this some kind of tech that will find its way into the everyday market, or is the cost intrinsic to all the processing and tech inside?

ah yes, the normal STW 'lets bash it, its different and we dont like change, mehhhh!

If the world evolved in line with the opinions set out in this forum, we would still be dragging our knuckles in a muddy field with a horse and cart!

if it doesn't have a cats eye I'm out 😆

[i]If the world evolved in line with the opinions set out in this forum, we would still be dragging our knuckles in a muddy field with a horse and cart! [/i]

I quite like the Henry Ford quote;

"If I just asked people what they wanted we'd have ended up with a faster horse."

so now we sit in traffic jams and cities are poisonous filthy places

yea for mindless progress and innovation

[i]so now we sit in traffic jams and cities are poisonous filthy places [/i]

they were as bad before motor vehicles arrived;

Sorry for the long bit of text but it's interesting :)}

[i]By the late 1800s, large cities all around the world were “drowning in horse manure". In order for these cities to function, they were dependent on thousands of horses for the transport of both people and goods.

In 1900, there were over 11,000 hansom cabs on the streets of London alone. There were also several thousand horse-drawn buses, each needing 12 horses per day, making a staggering total of over 50,000 horses transporting people around the city each day.

To add to this, there were yet more horse-drawn carts and drays delivering goods around what was then the largest city in the world.

This huge number of horses created major problems. The main concern was the large amount of manure left behind on the streets. On average a horse will produce between 15 and 35 pounds of manure per day, so you can imagine the sheer scale of the problem. The manure on London’s streets also attracted huge numbers of ?ies which then spread typhoid fever and other diseases.

Each horse also produced around 2 pints of urine per day and to make things worse, the average life expectancy for a working horse was only around 3 years. Horse carcasses therefore also had to be removed from the streets. The bodies were often left to putrefy so the corpses could be more easily sawn into pieces for removal.

The streets of London were beginning to poison its people.

But this wasn’t just a British crisis: New York had a population of 100,000 horses producing around 2.5m pounds of manure a day.

This problem came to a head when in 1894, The Times newspaper predicted... “In 50 years, every street in London will be buried under nine feet of manure.”

This became known as the ‘Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894’.

The terrible situation was debated in 1898 at the world’s first international urban planning conference in New York, but no solution could be found. It seemed urban civilisation was doomed.

However, necessity is the mother of invention, and the invention in this case was that of motor transport. Henry Ford came up with a process of building motor cars at affordable prices. Electric trams and motor buses appeared on the streets, replacing the horse-drawn buses.

By 1912, this seemingly insurmountable problem had been resolved; in cities all around the globe, horses had been replaced and now motorised vehicles were the main source of transport and carriage.

Even today, in the face of a problem with no apparent solution, people often quote 'The Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894', urging people not to despair, something will turn up![/i]

the normal STW 'lets bash it, its different and we dont like change, mehhhh!

ah, the normal STW 'its shiny and new and must be better and anyone who says different is an ape, duhhhh'

what have i done! Mods, please close this before it ends in WW3!

From a business perspective it's quite nice to be able to go, "that's it, we're definitely going to leave the hi-fi sector alone - pro-sound and musical instrument amplification only!"

good choice chiefgrooveguru - unless MrWoppit buys a bass you should be safe 😉

So it's not even stereo then?

By 1912, this seemingly insurmountable problem had been resolved; in cities all around the globe, horses had been replaced and now motorised vehicles are the main [b]source of the problem[/b].

precisely! 🙂

it's progress, but sideways 🙂

do you work for these guys? small cones can't do bass, you just get harmonics. Something to do with physics I hear.

You're 100% wrong. Small cones can absolutely do bass (if they couldn't then headphones wouldn't work). However to do bass in a larger space at a reasonable SPL then you need to move air! A 5" driver with 12mm Xmax (linear excursion) will do as much bass as a 10" driver with 3mm Xmax (that's on the good side for hi-fi).

Have a read of this - this is for a single driver subwoofer but it relates directly because it too uses an high excursion and relatively small driver squeezed into an undersized box and then using EQ (in this case a Linkwitz Transform) to get the desired frequency response:

http://www.linkwitzlab.com/thor-estim.htm

So it's not even stereo then?

It is if you buy two!

Merry Xmax!

ah yes, the normal STW 'lets bash it, its different and we dont like change, mehhhh!

If I manage to hear it (and I'm not popping down to Harrods to do so) maybe I'll be totally impressed and buy a dozen.

I find my radiogram sounds best when I have the woodburner going, the humidity and fine particles it generates help to realign errors in the phase coherency of the source recording and makes it very punchy and involving, especially the delicate odd harmonic nuances and ethereal resonances in binaural recordings from some Caen stone cathedrals.

I am going to vinyl wrap it in glossy white as it will surely be even better.

super powerful microprocessor hybridizing digital and analog technologies, which purifies and magnifies the audio signa

so it eq's, compresses and limits it to buggery to make it sound great, perhaps? Is there a frequency response curve for it? I bet it does lots of clever removal of unpleasant frequencies and emphasies the ones that make things sound great and so on. And is it really mono?

HmmmmmMMmmMmmMmm

Unless they're truly active designs and use extremely steep digital crossovers then I imagine they sound just ok. An awful lot of "presence" and "clarity" can be gained by doing away with the speaker baffle and trying to replicate a point source. However, as above - if it's based on a passive design then like most domestic hifi it's just a case of trying to refine to the nth degree what is fundamentally a flawed design.

In my opinion . Blah

16-25000Hz +/- 2dB I simply do not believe that. I do not believe you. I do not believe this website. Their white paper isn't a white paper it's an extension of their barketing bs. Have you read an industry white paper before? Even companies like Harmon put out some excellent white papers. What you were saying about peak power especially as someone who supposedly works in sound-reenforcement is utter rubbish.

If you look at current cutting edge amplifier design amps are no longer designed to produce continuous power which is close to their peak output because music is incredibly dynamic.

Have a read of this - this is for a single driver subwoofer but it relates directly

You're 100% wrong

The magic shiny box has massive linear excursion?

If not, I call harmonics.

Is it better than one of these?

[img] [/img]

😉

I have one real question - do the wings open out as it powers up and move making the noise? If they do I am in.

andyl, that one is red and red ones are always better

also, it contains the distilled essence of dr dre.

The magic shiny box has massive linear excursion?

If not, I call harmonics.

13mm Xmax on the bass drivers.

Do you actually live in the real world? I can assure you that when your amplifier is being used in a club or festival with compressed dance music and a DJ who's sneakily turned the output on his DJ mixer (as they all do) so their output is hitting your compressor hard there will be NO dynamic range maybe 1 dB if you're lucky. Those amps have to work haaard for hours with no break every night so their RMS value is the most important figure. We could not care less about their peak power same with anyone in live sound because they just need rock solid amps working hard all day. To spec an amp based on only knowing its peak power would be moronic and impossible.

Average longterm power with severe program material and heavy clipping is about 1/3 peak power. If you manage to squish any harder than that and it remain sounding like music I'll be impressed!

I live in the real world of designing, manufacturing and selling very high output loudspeakers. The amplifier we recently started working on will have very high RMS vs peak power because the length of the power burst required is so much greater for bass instruments - the norm in modern amplification is for RMS power ratings to be based on 20ms bursts when we require 200ms bursts to prevent current delivery sagging.

In the world of hi-fi you don't have to worry about musicians compressing things to death - yes, in the mastering process much compression is applied but it's nothing like the effect of sticking a bass guitar through a fuzz pedal and then boosting the lows.

No it doesn't relate directly. Long throw sub woofers work because they only cover a very small range of frequencies. Oh and the small cone ones are only any good at home theatre thumping sound effects - not music. What range are those drivers in the Deviant (or whatever it's called)supposed to cover?

Again, you don't know what you're talking about. We produce a musical instrument loudspeaker with a six octave bandwidth which has 10mm excursion - it isn't easy to do and requires a clever motor design but it is possible.

Another example: this active loudspeaker, designed by an engineer I've worked with, has an 8" woofer with 18mm Xmax (more than many home cinema or car subs) which runs up to 1.6kHz with sufficiently low distortion to be used in a very highly regarded 2-way studio monitor:

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/aug09/articles/eventopal.htm

I can assure you that when your amplifier is being used in a club or festival

Er, you do realise that this is home hifi we are talking about? Even I can see that's a completely different application!

chiefgrooveguru has already laid his credentials on the line, being a professional speaker designer. If you're going to argue with him you should do the same. What Hifi reader and avid clubber don't count 🙂

Hang on, I thought you said 3mm Xmax was good for hi-fi. I hear the sound of goalposts being moved.

Anyway I don't like coaxial drive units either so there.

I'm backing chiefgrooveguru on this, based on username.

[i]I don't like coaxial drive units either so there[/i]

shame, my old Tannoys are great 🙂

Hang on, I thought you said 3mm Xmax was good for hi-fi. I hear the sound of goalposts being moved.

I meant 3mm Xmax being decent as opposed to poor! As long as inductance and moving mass is kept down I see no disadvantage to increasing Xmax much further.

Anyway I don't like coaxial drive units either so there.

The problem with most coxial drive units is that they're firing out of a cone, so the cone acts as a non-ideally shaped horn/waveguide and the surround then causes further diffraction. This tweeter is firing from the top of a dome midrange which is a nice shape to mount a tweeter on to minimise distortion - brilliant!

I'm backing chiefgrooveguru on this, based on username.

🙂

So to sum up, what have these guys done that is new?

So to sum up, what have these guys done that is new?

found a way to get a hitherto impossible amount of technical sounding marketing words into one sentence

CGG, I have become, over the years, convinced by your knowledge of this subject.

However, I do wonder about this xmax business. If 13mm is so impressive, why do my old AE 109's manage it* with a 5" driver [and not hitting the magnets before you ask].

Pics are at 24Hz. Is the xmax only valid at above the rolloff frequency? These cut in around 40Hz, and are way down until about 50.

[IMG] [/IMG]
[IMG] [/IMG]

*well, it might be 11 or 12, but the ruler was closer to the cam, and I don't want to bugger them up by going louder since I went to all the bother of replacing the surrounds.

However, I do wonder about this xmax business. If 13mm is so impressive, why do my old AE 109's manage it* with a 5" driver [and not hitting the magnets before you ask].

Pics are at 24Hz. Is the xmax only valid at above the rolloff frequency? These cut in around 40Hz, and are way down until about 50.

There are a few definitions for Xmax - the simple one is (voice coil length minus gap height) divided by two but that fails to take into account the field outside the gap. A better one is (voice coil length minus gap height)/2 plus (gap height)/4. The fancy method is Klippel testing which measures the excursion available before total harmonic distortion exceeds 10% (which usually comes out very close to the overhang plus gap/4 method).

The key thing is that when a driver is operating within Xmax its response is fairly linear and undistorted. A well designed driver can move a long way beyond Xmax before it is damaged (voice coil buckled back against magnet, popped out of gap forwards or suspension stretched/broken or cone creased). An obvious difference between a lot of home audio and pro audio drivers is that the soft rubber surrounds on home audio drivers don't control over-excursion whilst in a PA driver the fabric surround protects the voice coil from leaping the gap or hitting th magnet.

What you're seeing is the driver operating in that region between Xmax and Xlim - that doesn't mean you're getting no extra output there but it'll have much higher distortion and much worse transient response.

I'm intrigued to know more as I like knowing how things work

So far I get that we have a computer to control the base speaker diaphragm through its movement to compensate for the pressure change in the box

Its a good driver

I wonder how the boxes know where they are. Apparently Sonus isn't accurate enough and patents exist for better systems such as triangulation from your home wifi

I'm interested to know why they spec to 25,000 Hz. I've known anyone to hear 20,000 Hz let alone 25,000 hZ

Also how does it keep learning. You'd thought feed back on its environment would be quite quick and easy

gofasterstripes - Member
CGG, I have become, over the years, convinced by your knowledge of this subject.

However, I do wonder about this xmax business. If 13mm is so impressive, why do my old AE 109's manage it* with a 5" driver [and not hitting the magnets before you ask].

Pics are at 24Hz. Is the xmax only valid at above the rolloff frequency? These cut in around 40Hz, and are way down until about 50.

mrmonkfinger - Member
So to sum up, what have these guys done that is new?

How about [url= http://en.devialet.com/technology/devialet-sam-en ]SAM[/url]...who else is doing this?

In an industry that's largely mired in the 70's and 80's, with manufactures and punters still following the received wisdom; front end first, pure signal paths, separate boxes, yada-yada...they're a breath of fresh air. No, they're not alone and the industry is slowly coming around, but their investment and commitment to their vision is impressive.

I'm as sceptical as the next person with regard to glowing magazine reviews and industry awards, but [url= http://en.devialet.com/awards/ ]this is a decent bag[/url], across the globe, so it does pique one's interest.

Regarding the Phantom wi-fi speaker in the OP, I remain to be convinced. Two of the top spec' versions would cost £4k which is (give to take) what I paid for my used ATCs about 8 years ago. The thing is, my ATCs are still worth what I paid for them, which means the cost of ownership over the 8 years has been zilch. Even if the Phantoms are the sonic equal (or better) I suspect they'll be regarded as 'tech' and in another 8 years their value will have plummeted as technology marches on. With that in mind and sonic performance aside, I imagine that overall they'll be very different ownership proposition.

Anyhow, I sincerely hope the Phantoms ****ING ROCK! Whether they do or not, the quality of their front end systems is beyond reproach.

I would expect the measured distortion to be significant for those speakers at those excursions.

Very likely, now that you mention it 🙂

But that's not what I was asking. I'm asking what the difference is between the quoted figure for the Devialet driver and for those 20 year old AEs. Point being, I don't understand how their figures translate to exciting our Guru as I would imagine you could measure these and arrive at a similar result.

Anyway, this is all just pissing in the wind. None of us three has heard them.

I wonder where I can....? [Up North]

EDIT: Here's something to excite CGG:

midlifecrashes - Member
So it's not even stereo then?

gofasterstripes - Member
I'm asking what the difference is between the quoted figure for the Devialet driver and for those 20 year old AEs. Point being, I don't understand how their figures translate to exciting our Guru as I would imagine you could measure these and arrive at a similar result.

I do know that Devialet's [i]quoted[/i] figures for distortion are [b]vanishingly[/b] small and the quoted bandwidth for the Phantom (16Hz to 25kHz at +/- 2dB) is insane; full range studio monitors the size of a fridge freezer would kill for that!

So what gives? I dunno, is the honest answer! I'd be inclined to say "faaack orrrf"...if it was't for the fact that Devialet's existing front-end hardware hadn't delivered so convincingly. The ball is in their court. As I've said previously, I'm sceptical...but I hope they prove me wrong 😛

Anyway, this is all just pissing in the wind. None of us three has heard them.

EDIT: Here's something to excite CGG:

"Branch elevates Phantom to the ideal listening angle for all your movements and states of trance."

About the stand you can buy for extra money.
Wow.

I don't know what the figures are for your AE's

Not the distortion, the excursion!

So in short that little speaker has wider frequency response than a large pair of Active PMC studio monitors with 12 inch, fin cooled drivers, transmission line loading and 400 Bryston RMS watts up em?

It might be true but I'm not going for it.

[img] [/img]

I N R A T S but I note 2 things:

1. The only hifi mag on Diavelet's page is Stereophile. The rest are newspapers, PC magazines or whatever (clueless).

2.

[img] [/img]

So in short that little speaker has wider frequency response than a large pair of Active PMC studio monitors with 12 inch, fin cooled drivers, transmission line loading and 400 Bryston RMS watts up em?

Why wouldn't it? They're not claiming it's as loud - if they were then that would be preposterous. At the SPL they claim I see no reason they wouldn't better that PMC - for starters the phase response and transient response of a transmission line is poor compared to a sealed box.

No, jools, [i] they say[/i] they have a wider frequency response.

The proof of the pudding, is in the beating of the wings (in this case).

Last week I tried to find a review, I about that I don't read French, but I was unable to find any. Least of all with a nice measured frequency response plot.

I'd be interested to hear what John Watkinson makes of them!

[IMG] [/IMG]

This is how I do bass 🙂

(Yes I need to vaccum the rabbit nuggets and fluff out, I know...)