The low frequency drivers look heavy in the Devialet Phantom. Are they simply using brute force to move them or am I missing something?
I'm pretty sure they are. No way those big plastic woofers don't weigh a ton
They design better amps then speakers. Phantoms are impressive feat of engineering but have host of issues that make them not much more than a gimmick. The SAM technology begs to be licensed out to the mass market instead of being relegated to a module on their highest end amplifiers.
Compression in the bass regions at higher SPL. Very disingenuous of Devialet to market it as being full range down to 14hz when you really wouldn't want to be playing it that low at loud volumes. It kind of irks me but I guess the marketing department behind the phantom range of speakers is completely separate entity from their engineering department.
I have a lot of issues with the Phantoms and their marketing too, but on acoustics, you have to elaborate. Almost every speaker with DSP either begins to compress bass at higher SPLs or is purposefully limited in overall. That's kind of the point - taking advantage of DSP in order to usefully extend the bass at typical listening levels.
But that aside, I think devialet's claims are justified. How high SPL are you expecting? I have not measured the larger speaker, but I remember playing 20Hz test tones on the base model of the larger Phantom and them churning them out with ample volume being no problem. The smaller Reactor 900 I did measure is nothing to scoff at. T=Here is their quasi-anechoic spin:
And here is compression per SPL with two speakers playing at a distance of 10 feet in a large room. Speakers are 1-2 feet from the front wall - a very normal listening setup. The purple line is 100 percent volume.
They claim 18Hz -6dB and that is what they achieve at realistic listening levels in a large room. Bass compression only begins around 95dB. 95 dB in a home is LOUD. Very few people regularly listen above 75 dB. That still gives me 20dB of headroom for dynamic peaks, which almost no music will actually use, and very few movies. Their biggest problem is that they have
too much bass(and now way to EQ it in app). And if you really do need more power than this, that's what the biggest speakers are for.
Perhaps more importantly, I'm pretty sure there is nothing that is comparable in bass performance at its size at any price. You could argue for bookshelves plus subs, and in some scenarios that's advantageous. You could say their software sucks, which I largely agree with. But the acoustics are very much worth the praise for their price and arguably beyond.
(I feel like I've become an unwitting devialet champion of late, which is funny because outside of audio I've complained about other issues).