Design & Build Quality

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.

Everyone who entered the room was wowed and had something really positive to say about the unique look. Many were genuinely surprised to learn they are actually high-performance loudspeakers.

A setup like this in a living room connected as a stereo pair to a TV — or even a single Phantom sitting on a counter in the kitchen will get people’s attention and their feet moving. Phantoms are simply ultra-high-end speaker systems that will make people know just how serious you are about hi-fi sound & brilliant design.

Extreme Woofer Excursion

The Phantom I 95dB stands exactly 6.5 inches tall, almost 8.5 inches across, and spans a little over 6 inches wide, and yet it packs in 350 watts of power! To reproduce the full impact of music with great bottom-end weight from an ultra-compact design, Devialet had to invent a new technology — Heart Bass Implosion (HBI®).

HBI® is Devialet’s high-performance implosive bass tech, giving Phantoms the ability to reproduce deep low-end from a single unit. The design consists of two Devialet-exclusive high-excursion aluminum woofers that move in perfect symmetry to push air around with the physical impact and density never before achieved from such compact enclosures.

Each woofer is capable of moving a mass of more than 66lbs which creates their implosive sound. The tech behind this stems from a decade of research & development at the Devialet Laboratories in Paris.

Extreme Engineering

Devialet took all of its tech from the Heart Bass Implosion (HBI®) symmetric woofers and designed the diaphragms to be flush with the Phantom’s surface in order to form a nearly perfect spherical enclosure.

To withstand the level of pressure, the spherical acoustic architectures of Phantoms are sealed using aeronautical-grade standards with composite mono-hull under 440 lbs of pressure. Further, the gasket, sealing off the woofer is over 2.5mm in diameter and compressed by a force of 1.2 tons to ensure tight sealing.

The surface of all Phantoms is a smooth, premium aeronautical-grade sealed enclosure made of an extremely rigid ballistics-grade plastic polymer called "ZeMac” — known for its excellent sealant properties.

It looks and feels high-end — although should it take a fall, it could scratch easily — so, pairing Phantoms with Devialet’s custom Tri-Pod 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."

The dual 4.7-inch aluminum woofers will produce deep lows down to 18Hz with a variance of +/-2dB, and an aluminum full-range tweeter will give you a pretty good mid-range & top-end extension up to 21 kHz.

The “95dB” in the name refers to the maximum loudness you will get from a single Phantom unit. Since sound pressure level (SPL) is measured in decibels (dB), think of the loudness of an acoustic band performing live in a cafe. With their instruments all plugged into a very small PA system, a live band will usually be in the range of 80 to 100 dB. Max SPL is how loud a speaker can play before it starts to sound really bad.

The Phantom II 95dB’s 350 watts, RMS of power means it will have the power to be as loud as an intimate live performance & still sound great with the volume cranked to the max!

At this price point, the spatial coverage you get from just one of these compact little speaker systems will be enough to cover a small-to-medium-sized room with good punchy bass. However, setting up two as a stereo pair is where things will really start to open up and sound even more “alive.”

Specs at a glance:

SOUND IMPACT: 95 dB SPL

AVERAGE POWER: 350W RMS

FREQUENCY RESPONSE: 18Hz - 21kHz +/- 2dB

Inputs: Bluetooth, AirPlay, Spotify Connect, Roon Ready, UPnP, Optical, Stereo miniplug

Dimensions: 6.5 inches tall, slightly under 8.5 inches long & 6 inches wide.

Weight 9.5 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 II series has a touch interface on top of the unit that will let you raise or lower the volume just by swiping your finger up or down on the Phantom's surface. When you have multiple Phantoms in different rooms, covering your whole house with music, the touch interface makes it very easy to quickly raise or lower the volume of individual Phantoms on the fly in a multi-room setup. 

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 95dB — 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!