Received a surprise birthday gift from the wife of 2 x Devialet Phantom II 98 db speakers and stands for my home office, she apparently liked the design and the main driver for her was being able to shout from other areas of the apartment to attract my attention rather than having to walk to my office and tap me on the shoulder as I previously exclusively used headphones whilst working.
Setting up the speakers and pairing the two was a breeze. As I have a mesh satellite router in my office I connected them via Ethernet (always found that if it has Ethernet and placement makes it possible stuff a cable in it, same for my KEF speakers or my Chord 2Go’s much more reliable). Audirvana recognised the device straight away as capable of UPnP however it was plagued with numerous playback stops, drop outs and skipping to the next track. Whilst the supplied manuals consisted of a quick start guide with almost no information in it, a bit of internet research dug up the information required.
For those interested in, or have just purchased the Phantom II’s my findings with UPnP to Audirvana were as follows;
- Audirvana identifies the DAC as 24/192 capable however the only documentation I could find on the Devialet website states the Phantom II’s as 24/96 capable so went to DAC settings and set the max PCM rate to 24/96.
- Also in DAC settings turned on the option for optimizing devices with unwanted playback stops.
- Adjusted the latency in the Devialet app from 0.35 to 0.5 seconds.
Et voila. The 3 steps above, despite no “Plays with Audirvana” certification, magically resulted in perfect playback for the last week tested with both Ethernet and, as a trial, wireless. Amazing power from the speakers for such small packages particularly the bass response. Great for a smallish room such as my office (5 m x 4m).
Have to hand it to the French, as an Englishman we are somewhat reticent to applaud the French, but based on my experiences with Audirvana, Focal and now Devialet they really do design and build excellent audio products. My Focal Utopia 2022 headphones are still the hardware product that gives me the most spine tingling delight when dragging the most subtle instrumental or vocal nuances from my music files……Vive La France!
All of the marketing specifications show 24/96kHz… Is it decimating higher sample-rates to 24/96kHz maybe?