The Devialet Phantom Ultimate is a more refined expression of its beloved icon
“It’s important to start from a blank page,” says Jean-Loup Afresne, chief product and technical officer of Devialet. “As long as you have constraints, you may not be able to make iconic products.”
If you’re well-versed in the art of design, you may be raising an eyebrow. Constraints, after all, can offer direction, often being a prelude or even a prerequisite for creativity. Of course, when you’re designing for an innovative and boundary-pushing audio house—one boasting a fully integrated engineering team and its own factory no less—things are bound to be a little different.
“The only limits our team has are the ones we put on ourselves,” says Afresne. “A blank page is terrible—you can stay in front of the page for many hours, weeks, or months. But it forces you to have the right concept and idea.”
It is this ‘terrible’ meditation that gave rise to Devialet’s iconic Phantom, a spherical speaker that caught the eyes of consumers in 2015 with its powerful sound wrapped in a radically stylish and impressively compact exterior. Now, a decade later, the French audio house has unveiled the latest evolution of its iconic speaker, the Devialet Phantom Ultimate.
At a glance, the new speaker, available in 98dB and 108dB versions, looks almost identical to its predecessor. It can hardly be said that Jean-Loup Afresne and his team had gone back to a blank page this time. But when you’ve laboured for years to land on a successful design, who can blame you for not wanting to start over?
“The main challenge is to not change the things which must not be changed,” says Afresne. “We took care to change only the things that help to create a better product while keeping what was key to its success. The selection of what needed to change was really difficult.”
While the shape and product architecture of the Phantom were clearly not up for debate, almost everything inside the new Phantom Ultimate has been upgraded for better performance. Chiefly, greater efficiency was pursued: the internal power supply was rebuilt to run cooler and cleaner, delivering the same monumental power with less energy and heat. Beyond that, the hybrid amplification system now stretches its bandwidth to 35kHz, adding air and dimension to the sound, while the digital signal processing has been fine-tuned for greater clarity and control.
Add in a faster processor, a fully re-engineered tweeter, updated operating system, and improved connectivity (now with Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.3, and support for AirPlay 2, Spotify Connect, Tidal Connect, Roon Ready, and UPnP), and you now have a more refined and assured execution of the Phantom.
“The complexity to make this engineering work is very high,” explains Afresne. “People don’t understand it, because the goal is not for them to understand the complexity. But because of the compactness, the internal complexity and the technical challenge behind the product is really high.”
And while Jean-Loup Afresne doesn’t expect consumers to dwell on the intricacies beneath the surface, he appears assured that the new Phantom Ultimate—offered in pearl, deep green, and Opéra de Paris finishes—will, like its predecessor, impress.
“The challenge (of the Phantom) was to create a specific sound experience from within this small device,” explains Afresne. “The engineering challenge was huge, but everyone believed that if we managed to do it, it would be a success.”
