Excluding the bass, the measurements look good, but not great, at least for the price. The only exceptional thing is the bass extension, which is incredible, for sure. The on axis and LW are fairly smooth/flat but not near SOTA. The directivity control is also pretty bad, as it hardly controls directivity at all below 1000Hz, though maybe that's somewhat desirable for a single speaker in some use cases).
I don't see any reason why the Devialet's with a sub and RC would beat your 8260s w/GLM. The Genelecs control directivity to a much lower frequency, and their on/off axis response is much better.
Using
these measurements as a reference.
Not sure if you were aware that those measurements of mine are of the smaller phantom reactior.
The other thing to note about my measurements is that I'm like 80% sure that the messiness in the mids has to do with my measurement setup. It is my experience that speakers that are highly vertically curved tend to be very sensitive to placement on their stand. I suspect that 'squiggly' region is really quite a bit smoother. Alas, I could only do so much at the time.
Personally, I think these are close to SOTA, in FR and directivity. They are designed to be heard off axis, and 15-degrees off axis is pretty much ruler flat other than the bass.
On directivity, I always think unique, smooth directivity is something worth chasing. It'll always at least sound 'different' while still potentially being in the realm of 'good.' The Phantoms have a directivity profile that's quite unusual and exceptionally wide for more of the frequency range. In the right room are going to create a soundstage that is far more expansive than most waveguidey type speakers, and that's going to be appealing to a lot of listeners.
Imo chasing directivity control down low is not always that important. As you know I do tend to like wide directivity, but I've also mentioned that I like speakers that approach constant horizontal directivity. That can be either a speaker like the D&D 8C, or a speaker with extra wide directivity. Dr Toole mentions in his book that at one point that one point an almost-omnidirectional speaker was one of the highest blind test performers.
I listened to a pair of Phantoms in a pop up demo room at a shopping mall on the way to dinner. This was maybe 6 yrs ago. I got to sit in the MLP and play familiar selections. I chose Taylor Swift.
What immediately struck me, and others have mentioned this, was just how distorted the bass was. I don't care how good the unit measures from a FR standpoint, the bass made the whole thing unlistenable. My second impression I had was what a nice overpriced gimmick. It sounded "okay" but nothing amazing at all. It's nothing in the territory of the Genelec, Revel, or B&W compact monitors I'm familiar with except for perhaps bass extension, ignoring distortion.
The fact that the Phantoms apparently "measure well" was surprising to me, and continues to support the fact that the people's ability to eyeball various FR charts in order to predict listening impressions is not as good as they think it is. The science isn't close to being perfect, and humans can't analyze at a computational level necessary to get close. I'm surprised nobody is gushing at the controlled off axis response and predicting Salon2-like SQ, but then again I haven't read through all 6 pages.
Yeah, as mentioned, Devialet's listening rooms are really quite ridiculous, especially without room correction. All glass cube here in NYC too.
Now offer a counterpoint and get to say I listened to both the standard phantom and the smaller reactors in my own home for several weeks and thought they both sounded excellent and better than many 'proper' hifi speakers. I don't recall ever noticing distorted bass. In fact, I
do recall struggling to get dual subs as good as the phantom reactors sounded on their own. (Obviously the subs are better when optimized ideally, it was just a bit of a hassle).
And these impressions were formed before I'd made or seen any measurements of the speaker. I had no expectations of how they would perform in that regard. I'm fairly confident that most people who found the bass distorted on these were actually just hearing excessive bass and/or room issues. It's a common thing in blind studies.
I do consider the reactors at least to be in the upper echelon of small speakers. I liked the larger phantoms a lot as well, but I'd like to see another set of measurements to have a stronger idea of their performance. Soundstage network has a strong reputation of accurate measurements but I do have a small concern that something may be a bit amiss with their FR measurements of the larger phantoms based on my experience measuring the smaller ones.
To be clear, none of this is to say people should go out and buy these speakers. They are very hard to recommend unless you are mainly in it for the full range, wide sound, or want an all-in-one bassy speaker. I don't know if the problems have been addressed since, but the Devialet Phantom and Phantom reactors were two of the most frustrating experiences I've had testing speaker. Lag, buggy software, disconnects, frustrating controls, lack of connectivity options, annoying software, and some overall inexplicable design choices really made them hard to love. But I
did absolutely love their sound.
