christiancs

paulduv said:

I'm not saying this company is a charlatan. Perhaps $2000 is the true cost of this thing. If that's the case, it's an engineering failure. 

There is a path to beautiful, and unceasingly astonish sound. Audio equipment such as the Devialet Phantoms is not that path! 

Appleinsider, you are obviously paying attention to good sound. This is my urging, which would be lost on some: get thee to a true audio shop with a good listening room!

Hearing good speakers in the $4000 price range (for a pair) will be not just a somewhat better sound. It will not be subtle. The Devialet speakers will quite suddenly resolve themselves into a postcard of the Grand Canyon, and the ho-hum boxes with front-facing drivers will sound like the actual subject of that bit of cardboard. Surely I exaggerate? My man, I do not!

Engineering failure? Differences that are not subtle?

Can I ask if you've ever even heard the Phantoms? Because you give no indication that you have. And if you haven't, well you seem pretty confident for someone who has no factual basis for what he's saying.

I have a pair of Silver Phantoms. I also have a pair of B&W 802 Diamonds and owned for many years a pair of Nautilus 801s. So I have direct experience comparing the very speakers you reference (actually, better ones than you reference).

Are the B&W's better sounding than the Phantoms? Well, ultimately, yes they are. But let's keep this in mind:

The B&W's go for about $22,000 a pair. Oh, and they're not amplified like the Phantoms, so you'll need an amplifier with that. And you don't want any old amp, you want something befitting the 802D. I'm using a Rogers EHF200 right now, a 200 W/Ch tube amp that can operation in either triode or ultralinear. That's about $15,000. So yes, for nearly $40,000, this combination outperforms the Phantoms sonically, particularly as to dynamic range, the lowest bass octave and soundstage.

But the phantoms -- in the Silver edition -- cost about $6K all in (for a stereo pair; a single Phantom is mono). So the question is, how do they compare to the B&Ws at about one sixth of the price?

The answer is that they are damn good. No, you will not mistake them for B&W reference monitors of the type used in Abbey Road studios. Yes, they rely on large excursion, small-bore bass drivers and passive radiation, which gives the bass a notably tubby sound. But for their price -- including amp AND speakers -- they are very competitive with what you can get in the hi fi world at that price, and for even twice that price. And at the kinds of volumes most people use in their homes, many of the sonic differences just don't matter.

But here's the catch. The Phantoms take up almost no space. And they operate over a wifi network (NOT just bluetooth, though they can do that too). So you can put them almost anywhere and setup is a breeze. So in the real world, with real houses and real apartments, these compact speakers that punch well above their weight will appeal to many folks who won't even consider the type of shrine you need to dedicate to traditional high-fi equipment.

Ultimately, it's for the customers to decide whether Devialet is offering a decent value proposition. I do find a lot of their hype over the top, but the product? Its much better than you are giving it credit for.