From fancy chocolates to jet airplanes to teeth, gold makes things better. Devialet took this to heart when they introduced their 4500 Watt Gold Phantom, a powerful speaker with gold-plated side panels and audio quality that, in the right environment, is out of this world.
Devialet, as you recall is a French speaker company that has 80 patents in the realm of music reproduction. Their Phantom speakers are surprisingly compact yet can blast out sound at 108db – about the level of a motorcycle engine or a rock concert.
But the speakers aren’t designed primarily for loudness. Instead, the company has tuned their software, hardware, and enclosure to offer some amazing sound. I listened to a number of songs on the speaker and, aside from noise in the source material, you would be hard pressed to go back to large loudspeakers after setting this monster up in your environment. Apartment-dwellers beware, however: these things get loud quickly and you’ll find yourself forced to turn them down by the co-op board/police if you get a bit over-zealous. We should also note that the box looks like something out of a Versace fever dream.
The new Gold speakers still have the same configuration – two bass shells, one mid, and one tweeter – and the embedded Heart Bass Implosion technology still gives it the ability to reproduce sounds well below the normal range of hearing. However clarity is improved in this speaker and previous versions will be able to take advantage of some of this thanks to a software upgrade coming this year. I’d recommend sticking two of these together to maximize your audio potential but that could be a pricey proposition.
Devialet has come a long way since they launched their first futuristic speakers and it’s exciting to see a CE company actually pull off the impossible: to stuff amazing sound into a (relatively) inexpensive package. In a world of $10,000 cables full of dreams and snake oil, I’m pleased that Devialet hasn’t gone the rapacious route and is instead building cool speakers for the average person. While the pricing isn’t rock bottom you’re getting a solid, good-looking speaker that has some amazing audio reproduction. The Gold ships on Bastille Day, July 14 and it will cost $2,990.
