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Let’s deal with the name first: Devialet (pronounced: duv’-e-a-lei). Now say it in a casual, slightly vulgar tone that makes every French word sound like kinky sex.
Unless you’re a European historian, there’s no reason why Devialet might sound familiar to you. This is a tribute to Monsieur de Viale, a little-known French writer who wrote some profound thoughts for the Encyclopedia, the famous 28-volume Enlightenment work.
Of course, Devialet is also a Parisian company producing expensive reference amps. Why not name an $18,000 French amplifier after an 18th-century French intellectual?
The reflex reaction is to see it as some pretentious, ambitious brand that flaunts style rather than substance. But think about it: in less than five years, Devialet has won 41 audio and design awards, far more than any competitor. Its flagship product, the D200, is a serious Hi-Fi hub that combines an amplifier, preamp, phono stage, DAC, and Wi-Fi card in a slim, chrome-plated package that’s as minimalist as a Donald Judd sculpture. how thin? In the audio showcase chain, the D200 is known as the “pizza box”.
For the hardcore audiophile accustomed to a tubular build with cinder block sized buttons, this is too aggressive. However, industry oracles like The Absolute Sound are on board. D200 was on the cover of the February issue of the magazine. “The future is here,” read the incredible cover. After all, this is a world-class integrated amplifier, as chic as it is functional, the iMac of the audiophile world.
Comparing Devialet to Apple is no exaggeration. Both companies develop innovative technologies, package them in beautiful packaging and sell them in stores, making customers feel like they are in a gallery. The original Devialet showroom, located on the ground floor of the Eiffel Tower on rue Saint-Honore, was the best erotic place in Paris. There is also a branch in Shanghai. The outpost in New York will open at the end of the summer. Hong Kong, Singapore, London and Berlin will follow in September.
The audiophile startup may not have the $147 billion in funding of its Cupertino counterpart, but it is incredibly well funded for such a niche company. All four of the original investors were billionaires, including fashion mogul Bernard Arnault and his champagne-focused luxury goods giant LVMH. Encouraged by the breakneck success of Devialet, these venture capital hounds have just funded a $25 million marketing budget. Arno envisioned Devialet as the default sound system for luminaries from DUMBO to Dubai.
This is the same country that invented the Cartesian coordinate system, champagne, antibiotics and bikinis. Fire the French at your own risk.
When Devialet announced “a new class of audio products” late last year, the industry was on edge. These French have created a new integrated amplifier to take die-hard audiophiles into the 21st century. What will they come up with next?
Developed under a cloak of secrecy, the aptly named Phantom was the answer. Unveiled at CES in January, the all-in-one music system, with its diminutive size and sci-fi aesthetic, is the company’s breakthrough product: the Devialet Lite. The Phantom uses the same patented technology as the famous D200 but costs $1950. It might seem like overkill for a small Wi-Fi player, but compared to the rest of the Devialet line, it’s an inflation fighter.
If the company is only half right, the Phantom may even be stolen. According to Devialet, the Phantom plays the same SQ as a $50,000 full-size stereo.
What kind of audio geek does this gadget offer? There is no phono stage for beginners. So forget about inserting a player. The Phantom does not record vinyl records, however it does wirelessly transmit 24bit/192kHz lossless high definition digital files. And it doesn’t have tower speakers, preamps, power controls, or any of the other electronic exotica that audiophiles obsess over with such irrational and insane indulgence.
This is a Devialet and expectations are high for the Phantom. According to preliminary data, this is not just PR nonsense. Sting and hip-hop producer Rick Rubin, two hard-to-impress industry heavyweights, offered ads at CES pro bono. Kanye, Karl Lagerfeld and Will.i.am are also on trend. Beats Music CEO David Hyman sounds downright vulgar. “This nifty little thing will make an amazing sound throughout your home,” he told TechCrunch in awe. “I heard about it. Nothing compares. It can break down your walls.”
Keep in mind that these early impressions had to be toned down, as they were based on a demonstration in a Las Vegas hotel room where the acoustics were poor, the air conditioner hummed, and the ambient noise was loud enough to fill a cocktail soundtrack.
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Is Phantom a breakthrough product? Is this, as Devialet modestly put it, “the best sound in the world – 1000 times better than current systems”? (Yes, that’s exactly what it said.) Before you shoot your copy, remember: this is the same country that invented the Cartesian coordinate system, champagne, antibiotics, and the bikini. Fire the French at your own risk.
As if “1,000 times better” isn’t cool enough, Devialet claims to have improved the Phantom’s performance. Since its European release earlier this year, the company has tweaked the DSP and software to improve the SQ and provide a “more intuitive and user-friendly experience.” “The first two new and improved models heading for US shores hit the WIRED offices. To see if the Phantom 2.0 lives up to all the hype, keep scrolling.
The Phantom box is adorned with four artistic photographs: a topless male mannequin with yakuza tattoos (because Devialet is cool), a topless female mannequin with big boobs (because Devilalet is sexy), four two Corinthian columns (as old buildings are elegant, so is Deviale), and sinister gray skies against stormy seas, in clear reference to Albert Camus’ famous quote: “There is no end to the sky and the water. How they accompany sadness! , who will be?)
Remove the sliding lid, open the hinged box, and inside, protected by a plastic shell and plenty of tight, form-fitting Styrofoam, is the object of our desire: the Phantom. When Ridley Scott moved his alien eggs from Pinewood Studios to Bollywood for the filming of Prometheus X: The Musical, that’s exactly what he was supposed to do.
One of the Phantom’s goals is what enthusiasts call the WAF: the wife acceptance factor. DAF (Designer Acceptance Factor) is also good. If Tom Ford had sketched a Wi-Fi music installation for his Richard Neutra home in Los Angeles, he would have had this idea. The Phantom is so small and unobtrusive – at 10 x 10 x 13 inches it’s unobtrusive – it will blend in with any wallpaper-approved decorative backdrop. However, move it front and center and this sexy ovoid will turn even the most jaded souls.
Does the Mirage fit into more traditional interior design schemes? It depends. Upper East Side chintz, pimping with a Biedermeier? No. Shaker: Bold but doable. Magnificent, Louis XVI? Absolutely. Think of the final scene in 2001, which actually looks a lot like Kubrick. The 2001 EVA capsule can pass through the Phantom prototype.
Despite the similarities, project leader Romain Saltzman insists that the installation’s distinctive silhouette is a classic example of form following function: “Phantom’s design is entirely based on the laws of acoustics – coaxial speakers, sound source point, architecture – just like in design. The power of a Formula 1 car is determined by the laws of aerodynamics,” repeated Devialet spokesman Jonathan Hirshon. “The physics we did required a sphere. It was just a fluke that the phantom ended up looking pretty.”
As a minimalist practice, Phantom is like the zen of industrial design. Emphasis is placed on the small covers of the coaxial speakers. The laser-cut waves, reminiscent of Moroccan patterns, are actually a tribute to Ernst Chladni, an 18th-century German scientist known as the “father of acoustics.” His famous experiments with salt and vibratory impulses led to designs of surprisingly complex geometries. The pattern used by Devialet is a pattern generated by 5907 Hz pulses. Visualize sound by simulating resonance modes Chladni is a smart design.
As for the controls, there is only one: the reset button. It is small. Of course, it is white, so it is difficult to find it on a monochrome case. To find this elusive place, slowly run your fingertips along the sides of the Phantom as if you were reading an erotic Braille novel. Press firmly as you feel the physical sensations pass through your body. That’s all. All other features are controlled from your iOS or Android device.
There are also no distracting line-level inputs to ruin the organic form. They are hidden behind a power cord cover that snaps into place without wobble like most plastic parts that attach to Big Box audio equipment. Hidden inside are connectivity cabinets: a Gbps Ethernet port (for lossless streaming), USB 2.0 (rumored to be compatible with Google Chromecast), and a Toslink port (for Blu-ray, game consoles, Airport Express, Apple TV, CD player, and more). .). Very trendy.
There is one nasty design flaw: the power cord. Dieter Rams and Jony Ive asked why white was not listed. Instead, sprouting from the Phantom’s sleek wind tunnel is an ugly greenish-yellow—well, greenish-yellow—cable that looks like something found in Home Depot’s fourth aisle, connecting it to the Weed Wacker. Horror!
For those who are put off by the plastic case, don’t. Glossy polycarbonate is as durable as an NFL helmet. At 23 pounds, the Phantom weighs about the same as a small anvil. This density hints at the many components inside, which should reassure enthusiasts who equate heavy components with high quality.
At this price point, the fit and finish is as it should be. The seams of the case are tight, the chrome-plated metal edging is strong, and the shock-absorbing base is made of durable synthetic material that can dampen even earthquakes on the Richter scale.
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The quality of the internal assembly will meet military requirements. The central core is cast aluminum. The custom drivers are also made from aluminium. To increase power and ensure linearity, all four drivers are equipped with neodymium magnet motors strung on extended copper coils.
The body itself is lined with soundproof woven Kevlar panels that keep the board cool and make the Phantom truly bulletproof. An integrated heatsink that blends into the sides of the device like icing on a cake is no less intimidating. These heavy cast fins can smash coconuts.
And one more thing: many people who have seen the Phantom operate in superstitious exploded image mode have been surprised by the lack of internal wiring. There aren’t really any wires inside the Phantom other than the voice coil leads built into the driver. That’s right, no jumping elements, no cables, no wires, nothing. Each connection is controlled by printed circuit boards and other electronic components. Here is a bold electrical engineering that epitomizes the mad genius that Devialet is famous for.
According to a company press release, the Phantom took 10 years, 40 engineers and 88 patents to develop. Total cost: $30 million. Not the easiest fact check. However, this figure seems somewhat overestimated. Much of this investment will likely go towards paying the burdensome rent for the second zone and developing the D200, the machine from which the Phantom has so generously borrowed its technology. This does not mean that the Phantom was made cheaply. Miniaturizing all those boards, squeezing them into a space a little bigger than a bowling ball, and then devising a way to pump out enough juice to make it sound like a full size system without causing spontaneous combustion is no small feat.
How the hell did the Devialet engineers pull off this sonic cabin trick? All this can be explained by four patented abbreviations: ADH, SAM, HBI and ACE. This engineering acronym, along with things like circuit diagrams and diffraction loss diagrams, is found in the bloated and slightly riveting technical papers circulating at CES. Here are Cliff’s notes:
ADH (Analog Digital Hybrid): As the name suggests, the idea is to combine the best features of two opposing technologies: the linearity and musicality of an analog amplifier (Class A, for audiophiles) and the power, efficiency and compactness of a digital amplifier. amplifier (category D).
Without this binary design, the Phantom would not have been able to pump that ungodly surge: 750W peak power. This results in an impressive reading of 99 dBSPL (decibel sound pressure) at 1 meter. Imagine that you are stepping on the gas pedal on a Ducati superbike in your living room. Yes, it’s so loud. Another advantage is the purity of the signal path, beloved by music lovers. There are only two resistors and two capacitors in the analog signal path. These Devialet engineers have crazy circuit topology skills.
SAM (Speaker Active Matching): This is brilliant. Devialet engineers analyze loudspeakers. They then adjust the amplifier’s signal to match that speaker. To quote the company’s literature: “Using dedicated drivers built into the Devialet processor, SAM outputs in real time the exact signal that needs to be delivered to the speaker in order to accurately reproduce the exact sound pressure recorded by the microphone.” Not really. This technology works so well that many expensive speaker brands—Wilson, Sonus Faber, B&W, and Kef, to name a few—combine their spectacular enclosures with Devialet amplifiers at audio shows. same Sam
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the technology sends tunable signals to the Phantom’s four drivers: two woofers (one on each side), a mid-range driver, and a tweeter (all housed in auxiliary coaxial “mid-tweeters”). With SAM enabled, every loudspeaker can reach its maximum potential.
HBI (Heart Bass Implosion): Audiophile speakers need to be big. Yes, bookshelf speakers sound great. But to truly capture the full dynamic range of music, especially the very low frequencies, you need speakers with an internal bath volume of 100 to 200 liters. The volume of the Phantom is really minuscule compared to it: only 6 liters. However, Devialet claims to be capable of reproducing infrasound down to 16Hz. You cannot actually hear these sound waves; the threshold of human hearing at low frequencies is 20 Hz. But you will feel the change in atmospheric pressure. A scientific study has shown that infrasound can have a range of disturbing effects on people, including anxiety, depression, and chills. These same subjects reported awe, fear, and the possibility of paranormal activity.
Why don’t you want that apocalyptic/ecstasy vibe at your next party? To conjure up this low-frequency magic, the engineers had to increase the air pressure inside the Phantom by 20 times that of a conventional high-end speaker. “This pressure is equivalent to 174 dB SPL, which is the sound pressure level associated with a rocket launch…” the white paper says. For all the curious, we are talking about the Saturn V rocket.
More hype? Not as many as you might think. That’s why the speaker dome inside the Super Vacuum Phantom is made of aluminum and not any of the common new driver materials (hemp, silk, beryllium). Early prototypes, powered by the most powerful production engines, exploded on takeoff, shattering diaphragms into hundreds of small fragments. So Devialet decided to make all of their speakers out of 5754 aluminum (just 0.3mm thick), an alloy used to make welded nuclear tanks.
ACE (Active Space Spherical Drive): Refers to the phantom’s spherical shape. Why sphere? Because the Devialet team loves Dr. Harry Ferdinand Olsen. The legendary acoustic engineer filed over 100 patents while working at RCA Laboratories in Princeton, New Jersey. In one of his classic experiments from the 1930s, Olsen installed a full-range driver in a different shaped wooden box of the same size and played a tune.
When all the data is there, a spherical cabinet works best (and not by a small margin). Ironically, one of the worst enclosures is the rectangular prism: the same shape that has been used in almost every high-end loudspeaker design over the past half century. For those unfamiliar with the science of loudspeaker diffraction loss, these diagrams will help visualize the advantages of spheres over acoustically complex shapes such as cylinders and squares.
Devialet might have said the Phantom’s elegant design was a “lucky accident”, but their engineers knew they needed spherical drivers. In geek terms, spheres create the perfect acoustic architecture for rich sound with smooth sound regardless of listening angle, and there’s no diffraction sound from the speaker surfaces. In practice, this means that there is no such thing as off-axis when listening to the Phantom. Whether you’re sitting on the couch directly in front of the unit, or you’re standing. Mix another drink in the corner and everything sounds great to the music.
After a week of listening to the track Tidal on Phantom, one thing is clear: in this cruel world of oblivion, this thing is worth every dollar you convert into euros. Yes, it sounds good. How good is “it” really? Is the Phantom really “1,000 times better than today’s systems” as the crazy website Devialet claims? Can not. The only way to experience this otherworldly sound is to sit in Seat 107, Row C, Carnegie Hall exactly 45 minutes after you dropped the piece of acid.
Two questions: Does the Phantom sound as good as a $50,000 Editors’ Choice stereo system with a bunch of components, anaerobic cables, and a monolithic speaker? No, but the abyss is not an abyss, but an abyss. It’s more like a small gap. It’s safe to say that the Phantom is a technical masterpiece. There is no other system on the market with such a sound for such money. It can be moved from room to room like a rotating art exhibition, a little miracle.
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For better or worse (“worse” to be the complete destruction of the audiophile industrial complex as we know it), this new Devialet music system points the way to the future and will force discerning and diehard audio critics to reconsider. Play music over Wi-Fi on a device no larger than a breadbasket.