Devialet’s phantom ultimate: The French sound machine that wants to be art

When Devialet first launched its Phantom speaker ten years ago, it looked like something that had escaped from an art museum or a lunar base. All smooth curves and improbable power, it became the darling of design obsessives and sound purists alike - a cult object for people who think seriously about how things sound as well as how they look.

Now the French audio house is back with the Phantom Ultimate, a reworking of its most famous creation. It’s smaller in its ambitions perhaps - no revolutionary claims this time - but deeper, subtler, more assured. Devialet calls it the “evolution of the revolution,” and that feels about right.

The new Phantom comes in two versions - the 108 dB model, gold-trimmed Opéra de Paris edition and the smaller 98 dB model are both made in France. Each looks like a prop from a Kubrick film, and both aim to fill your home with the kind of hi-fi purity once reserved for recording studios.

Under the gloss, though, there’s genuine innovation. Devialet’s engineers have spent a decade refining their hybrid ADH® (Analog Digital Hybrid) amplifier, a system that combines the precision of digital circuitry with the warmth of analogue sound. Other proprietary technologies - SAM® (Speaker Active Matching) and HBI® (Heart Bass Implosion) - do exactly what their names suggest: make everything clearer, louder, deeper.

It’s not just marketing fluff. Listen to one of these things and you start to understand why audiophiles get a little religious about Devialet. Music doesn’t just play through the Phantom Ultimate; it occupies the space.

What Devialet sells is less a gadget than a philosophy of sound. Its CEO, Jacques Demont, talks about “engineering emotion” and “depth and clarity like never before” - phrases that might sound grandiose until you hear what the speaker can actually do.

Still, for all its sonic wizardry, the Phantom Ultimate is also a design statement. The updated silhouette is cleaner, sleeker, and offered in new finishes - Deep Forest, a dark green-black tone that catches light like moss on stone, and Light Pearl, a soft matte white that feels more ceramic than plastic. The Opéra de Paris version, gilded in 22-carat gold by the artisans of Ateliers Gohard, is frankly a bit decadent, though in the quietly unapologetic way the French do best.

This attention to form isn’t an afterthought. Devialet’s engineers and designers work out of the same Paris headquarters, treating acoustics as a discipline of both physics and poetics. In a world of throwaway tech, that’s almost radical.

The company’s new software architecture, DOS3, brings all its products - from earbuds to amplifiers - under one digital roof. It’s compatible with just about every streaming service going (Spotify, Tidal, AirPlay, Roon, Google Cast), and the redesigned Devialet app lets you fine-tune sound with unnerving precision.

You can toggle between Music, Podcast, and Cinema modes, or dive into a six-band equaliser if you’re the kind of person who knows what “bass compensation” actually means. There’s even Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.3 - because no amount of Gallic flair can make lag acceptable.

In a market crowded with smart speakers that chirp and blink and listen back, Devialet’s restraint feels almost rebellious. The Phantom Ultimate doesn’t talk to you; it doesn’t pretend to be your friend. It simply fills the room with sound - big, tactile, impossibly clean sound - and then lets the silence hang, unbothered.

This is, after all, the company that still describes itself as a maison, not a manufacturer. It works with the Opéra de Paris and Villa Medici, partners with aerospace firms like Safran, and still hand-assembles its products in France. You get the sense Devialet would rather shut down than compromise on the shape of a screw.

So yes, it’s a speaker. But in its insistence that sound can be both scientific and sensual, the Phantom Ultimate manages to transcend its own category. It’s a reminder that progress doesn’t always mean more features or louder outputs - it can mean doing the same thing, but better, cleaner, and with a little more grace.

In an industry obsessed with constant updates, Devialet seems content to evolve at its own rhythm. The result is a product that, like the best of French design, whispers where others shout - and still manages to be heard everywhere.