VIDEO: DEVIALET GIVES PHANTOM WIRELESS SPEAKERS MORE POWER
The Devialet Phantom looks like no other wireless speaker. When it launched a couple of years ago, it carried a price tag that made you wonder if a decimal point had been misplaced. The speaker rocked out 750W of zero saturation, distortion-free sound from its unusual driver configuration and attracted more than its fair share of audio expert appreciation.
Since then, the French audio house has launched a 3,000W silver model and a 4,500W Gold version – which can be seen, unboxed in the video below – which really made the original speaker look like a poor relation. That's now been remedied with the release of an updated 1,200W "entry level" Phantom".
The new and improved Phantom is, of course, the 60 percent peak output increase, but the SPL has also gone up from 99dB to 101dB, total harmonic distortion/noise is reported to be 0.0005 percent, which is pretty much inconsequential, and Devialet is promising zero saturation and absolutely no background noise. Meaning power, precision and clarity are the buzzwords here.
The speaker features a fibre-filled polycarbonate inner skin surrounded by ABS housing with an aluminium central core. The Phantom has an aluminium tweeter plus a mid-range and side-firing bass drivers, which is an updated version of Devialet's ADH technology (that significantly boosts the performance by "blending all the sophistication of Class A analogue with all the power and compactness of Class D digital technology"), a 24-bit/192 kHz DAC and ARM Cortex A9 brains with support from 512 MB of DDR3 RAM.
The Phantom is described by Devialet as putting out a high-end ultra-dense sound, and previous incarnations have certainly pleased industry pundit and audio lovers alike. The speaker can be controlled via the Spark companion app for Windows, OSX, iOS or Android, where users can play music, set up playlists and access streaming services like Deezer and Tidal, as well as tune into internet radio.
The eye-catching Phantom is priced at US$1,690 on its own or, for a limited time, $1,790 with a beech wood tripod stand. You can have a look at the video below to get an idea of the sound quality that Devialet's speaker produces.