Design

Phantom Opéra de Paris | Devialet signature

Phantoms are designed, manufactured & assembled at Devialet Laboratories in Paris, France where ultra-high-performance materials, extreme precision engineering & beautiful aesthetics come together. Designed to be the centerpiece in a room, Phantoms are statuesque — almost like works of art.

The Phantom I 108 dB is the second model available in the special edition Opéra de Paris model. The master gilders at Ateliers Gohard finish the Phantom’s gold leaf side plates following time-honored methods. Each gold leaf is applied by hand to create a unique patina.

What’s more, these heritage techniques demand absolute perfection — once the leaf has been applied, it cannot be removed. Bearing the Phantom Opéra de Paris | Devialet signature, the side plates are gilded with Moon Gold — a precious and stainless palladium-yellow gold alloy.

Pairing Phantoms with Devialet’s custom Treepod speaker stands (made especially for Phantoms) will not only provide them with the acoustic support Phantoms deserve, they are also a really beautiful way to show them off in your home.

Performance

Wins Our Seal of Approval to "Crank It Up."

Every Phantom I comes with its own dedicated rechargeable remote with a smooth rotary dial that will let you precisely control the volume & playback.

The Phantom I 108 dB Opéra de Paris Signature stands exactly 10 inches tall, less than 13.5 inches across, and spans 9 inches wide with a whopping 1100 watts of power! While the performance is the same as the regular 108dB model, this one is all about the ultra-high-end aesthetics that will make the boldest statement in any room.

You get the largest dual 7.5-inch aluminum woofers for 2 dB down at 16 Hz on the bass. The larger size also makes more room for a dedicated aluminum mid-range driver plus a titanium tweeter. We typically see titanium selected by the most premium speaker manufacturers for its higher breakup point, strength-to-density ratio & light-weightiness. These are properties that will allow a diaphragm to move back & forth extremely fast like a piston for more accurate transients & improvements in the top-end extension.

The Phantom I 108 dB Opéra de Paris Signature has an extended frequency response that will reproduce the full spectrum of hi-res music from 14Hz to 27KHz with a +/- 2dB on the bass — think music with deeper bottom-end weight, and even clearer dynamics, especially on the rhythm sections & percussion in the top-end that will make you want to get up and move your feet.

As the naming convention implies, you get up to 108 dB of loudness — with up to 111 dB when you go for the stereo pair. If you like any kind of bass-heavy music such as EDM, Trap, Hip hop, R&B, or even the full range of symphonic music with lots of harmonic content and natural low-end energy, a stereo pairing will make even more sense for a large living room space.

Specs at a glance:

SOUND IMPACT: 108 dB SPL

AVERAGE POWER: 1100W RMS

FREQUENCY RESPONSE: 14Hz - 27kHz +/- 2dB

Inputs: Bluetooth connectivity, AirPlay, Spotify Connect, Roon Ready, UPnP, Optical.

Dimensions: stands 10 inches tall, slightly under 13.5 inches long & 9 inches wide.

Weight 25.13 LBS

Features & Technology

Very Easy-to-Use

Phantoms can be controlled by the Devialet app and they all have plenty of ways to connect over Bluetooth and wi-fi, Spotify Connect, AirPlay 2, UPnP plus Roon Ready to boot!

Everything can be set up & controlled right from the Devialet app on a smartphone. Control the volume, set up a stereo pair, create a custom multi-room setup for whole-house coverage with as many Phantoms as you wish, adjust the latency for A/V, soften the bass with Night Mode & keep your Phantom up to date.

In addition to the app, every model in the Phantom I series comes with a dedicated rechargeable remote control with a very smooth rotary dial that will let you precisely control a Phantom’s volume and the playback. When you have multiple Phantoms in different rooms, covering your whole house with music, the rotary dial makes it very easy to quickly raise or lower the volume of individual Phantoms on the fly in a multi-room setup. We also like how all Phantoms have a proximity sensor on top of the enclosure that senses the remote control — this makes the setup process quick & easy.

Another cool feature is the inputs. They are all tucked away on the back of the unit behind a cable-management compartment that is sealed off and completely covered by Devialet’s really cool custom-designed power plug that acts as a trapdoor.

Phantom's Open Architecture

Whether you are used to Bluetooth pairing, Wi-Fi, optical or analog, Phantom's have an open architecture that lets you get straight to the music. They all support high-res multi-room streaming for sample rates up to 24-bit 48kHz over WIFI, Bluetooth, AirPlay 2, Spotify Connect & UPnP with external hard drives — plus all Phantoms are Roon Ready to boot!

The streaming protocol with Spotify Connect allows for lossless streaming, which is super important for non-Apple users that can't use Airplay — especially when Spotify releases their hi-res lossless streaming tier. So, if you are an Android user, Bluetooth is not your only streaming option.

All Phantoms have an optical Toslink input for connecting with TVs or a CD player (or anything with a digital output) plus an ethernet port for connecting a router. If you need an analog input to connect a laptop, turntable, CD player, or any audio source with a 3.5mm stereo-miniplug then you will want to consider the Phantom II.

If you are used to hardwiring with an optical cable and just want to bypass the wireless functionality for a specific custom installation, Phantom's open architecture will let you access even more of its high-performance potential with Devialet’s Optical Direct Mode. In this mode, all Phantoms support playback of digital music with sample rates up to 24-bit 96Khz!

ADH® — Pure Analog Engine with Smart Digital Power

At the heart of all Phantoms is the technology that made Devialet the most-awarded company in high-performance audio — ADH® Intelligence, which trickles down from Devialet’s Expert Pro range of high-end amplifiers.

ADH® (Analog Digital Hybrid) is Devialet’s special hybrid amplification architecture on a chip and works by connecting a genuine class A analog amp directly to the speaker. Devialet’s custom silicon gets you into a level of performance that is close to a Class A amp without the weight, size, or heat generation.

Thanks to the class A analog amplifier, think of music with a “warmer,” “musical” sound profile and bass that has a more tuneful sense-of-timing and a rhythm-and-pacing that will make you want to tap your feet especially when you crank up the volume.

SAM® Acoustic Signal Processing

SAM® (Speaker Active Matching) is another state-of-the-art innovation from Devialet that trickled down from their Expert line of amplifiers to maintain acoustic accuracy within specific speaker drivers.

Where ADH® is the high-performance engine powering the output stage within a Phantom speaker, SAM® is the special processing that allows the engine to adapt (in real-time) to the audio signal going through it. It works by learning a speaker’s unique electroacoustic behaviors and then controls each driver to reproduce the exact acoustic pressure that was captured by the recording studio’s microphone.

For every sample in the recording that is analyzed, SAM® will know the exact voltage required by the power amp to drive each Phantom driver, so that the acoustic pressure is a one-to-one image of the audio signal.

ACE® — Omnidirectional Soundstage

ACE® (Active Cospherical Engine) Loudspeaker technology is the Phantom’s acoustic directivity pattern for its transducers to spread the sound waves out evenly in all directions with optimal dispersion management.

Whenever sound waves coming out of a speaker bounce back to hit the surface of the speaker’s cabinet, the cabinet can sometimes bend the waves and we call this type of breakage “surface diffraction.” Essentially, a curved cabinet will have less sound bouncing off of it compared to a square one.

Since Phantoms are curved like a sphere, their curved surfaces do not bend or diffract the sound waves. The result is an amazing bass reproduction with a more spatial sound that minimizes the effects of surface diffraction to near-zero.

Overall Recommendation

Overall, we were deeply impressed with the big presentation of sound coming from just one Phantom II 108dB — however, if using one of these at home, adding the second Phantom for a stereo pair is what really made the most tangible difference to the immersion we felt in every listening situation we tested.

Phantoms offer a premium upgrade path into multiroom connectivity that will grow with you as your needs expand, and they are the coolest Bluetooth speakers we have ever seen. There are even really cool Phantom I & Phantom II series Cocoon cases available so you can tote your Phantom around.

Whether it’s their high-tech design, their high-end materials, or the awesome omnidirectional sound coming out, they will make great conversation pieces! They will not be for everyone, but if you are someone who wants to have something no one else has, then you really cannot go wrong with one of these. Since they can be paired together with a TV, or in several rooms throughout the home, you could start out with just one and then add a second Phantom later.

Our tips & tricks setup guide available for all Audio Advice purchasers will show you how to set up a single Phantom with the app, then configure a stereo pair for music listening. Finally, we will also show you how to use the optical connection for better sound with your TV!