Tiny lifestyle-ish system?

Had a Devialet Phantom setup and unfortunately one of them went bang during some moderate but not strenuous bass activity. Devialet support replaced it within warranty but a rather worrying admission came out during my chat with them, which is that Devialet do not repair Phantom speakers - they just replace them.

Given that the warranty is just two years I find the lack of repair options on a £2k+ speaker unconscionable. I'm looking to flog the replacement unit and get something else. Sonos is an option, their Play 5 looks good on paper and turns out the UK prices are rocketing 25% tomorrow...

Otherwise there's a kinda out there option which is a KEF LS50 setup with Schiit Saga/Vidar hooked up to it...unfortunately Schiit kit in the UK is at £:$ parity so the value of Schiit Audio's stuff is less than it would seem over here.

I'm seriously space constrained thanks to two sticky fingered little kids who've recently arrived in the house otherwise I did used to have a stack of Bryston kit hooked up to some flagship KEF Reference speakers...still, bygones.

Any recommendations on whether Sonos would fit the bill or would the aforementioned LS50/Schiit stack be a better bet? Any other suggestions?

 

Sonos is not even vaguely competitive with the Devialet Phantoms.

If you want to keep it as simple as the Devialet setup, the KEF LS50 WIRELESS are about as good as you're going to get and are as conceptually close to the Phantom's as you'll find. They're not going to have anywhere NEAR the low-frequency performance though.

 

My pick would be the KEF LS50 plus some subs. The Sonos gear is nice and convenient, but not quite in the same league. Check out some of the UK brands who should have better pricing over there locally. Something like the Rega Elex-R or Elicit-R could be nice options to go with the LS50 speakers.

 

Never heard any of these systems. There is a short thread on the Play 5. The Riva stuff seems to get quite a bit of love in several forums. Not sure about availability in UK.

 

I'm holding out for the Riva Festival. I won't have to worry about sticky fingers 'pressing buttons' on the speaker cones and everything can connect to them.

http://rivaaudio.com/riva-festival/

Donald North Inside™

 

Not to judge too quickly, but maybe for company logistics and customer satisfaction it's just easier to send a replacement rather than have you wait on repairs?

 

Thanks for the feedback. The Riva Festival speaker looks pretty compelling.

(Ack, how do you insert quotes in this forum software... :-\ )

Armaegis thankfully Devialet have shipped a brand new replacement. They can't repair Phantom speakers apparently. According to their engineers the speaker is sealed with more than a tonne of pressure and they can't separate the cabinet without damaging it. I'm sure that must be violating some US or EU law on repairability but either way it seems pretty insane.

 

Google Chromecast Audio->MiniDSP 2x4HD (Room correction+Sub integration)->SVS-SB1000/2000+Actives which can go to 50-80Hz.

 

Picked up the KEF LS50 Wireless today. Damn...

I had the KEF Reference 1 speakers before down sizing and these are not too shabby by comparison.

Very, very good indeed. They're very close to a pair of Phantoms but without the insane levels of bass. That said the amount of bass they deliver is quite a bit higher than the LS50 Passive versions (IIRC).

 

Nice! How are highs if you crank it up? The passives were a bit too shrill for me.

 

Completely agree. The LS50's would crumble at very high volumes - bass and treble became a smear of shrill sound - very disappointing to my ears at least. The active version handles everything the LS50 does but with more depth and bass in every respect.

The specs are somewhat telling:

http://us.kef.com/ls50
Freq Resp: 79Hz - 28kHz (±3dB)


vs

http://us.kef.com/ls50-wireless
Freq Resp: 45Hz – 28kHz

I know, I know, frequency response figures like that are very hand wavy but assuming KEF measured both speakers identically for those spec sheets you can tell that the active versions have a lot more bottom end. I'd say these give the KEF Reference 1 a good run for its money. @Torq is bang on the money when he states:

There isn't much on the market which compares. Devialet Phantom White for circa £3k are very comparable if memory serves me correctly.

One caveat, the LS50 Wireless iOS app is really flaky. It's got some very cool settings which let you change the speaker's EQ - things like distance from wall, room size, lower frequency threshold, etc. but it worked only once for me. Devialet's software is far more reliable (no messing with the speaker's DSP with Devialet though!).

 

They're still using the same tiny 5.25" bass driver, aren't they? They can't magically get less bass distortion by making it active, let alone less bass distortion while improving the extension.
I haven't heard the wireless version. I could see how some EQ and phase correction filters could help improve the speakers, but I'm worried that the DAC and amp in there are uninvolving and have no resolution, as seems to be the case with most of the actives I've heard. On paper the coax has great potential. What would be interesting is if we crossed over from LS50 to a good woofer at, say, 300Hz, to keep the distortion low. But when you go that far it begs the question why not use a more capable driver than the LS50 in the first place?

Anyway, that would certainly defeat the purpose of a tiny, lifestyle-ish system, so the LS50 wireless seems like a good option to me and I gotta say I'm really digging the white/orange look. I really wasn't impressed when I heard the Devialet Phantom at High End.

 

All I did was save 2 spots so I could put the past in there on the weekend. I see posters do that all the time so they put content there in the future.
I just went to post an hours worth of work, it's gone now, in the wind. When someone creates something like that, try to think that the person is setting something up to post. I am not happy.

 

Gotcha Boss. Well said

 

I like things like the Yamaha Pianocraft series. Little miniature receivers that have CD players built in, or a matching CD deck. These are made by Yamaha, Denon, Onkyo and Teac and sold as "bookshelf", "mini", "executive" and so forth. They're usually sold with crummy speakers which I would ditch and replace with nice small speakers like the Energy RC-10.

These systems are nice looking and small, and give good sound if you hook up good speakers. They're low powered, 10-40 watts per channel, so they won't rock the house. I don't know that any "lifestyle system" is going to satisfy you if you want really high volume. Probably best to buy active studio monitors in that case.

They usually have sub outputs which are just mono preouts. I have one rare unit, the Denon ADV-M51, that actually has proper subwoofer crossover filters.

Here are some examples:
https://www.amazon.com/Yamaha-CRX-332BL-Micro-Component-Receiver/dp/B005YXXS4I/
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008PQAB3C

 

Mini-systems used to be one of those audiophile banes! Back in the day when one could get myrical bargains on magical kit from London's (later, national) Richer Sounds, one of their advertising headlines was that they did not even sell mini-systems. But hey, first they went on to sell TVs, and then even fridges and stuff and... frankly, they are a damned good idea. What's more, I lusted after some of the Denon stuff!

 

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi-way/304267-kef-ls50-frequency-response-passive-vs-active.html