Look who is being a naughy boy this Christmas:
(Yes, I need new furniture if I decide to keep the Phantoms…).
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Why two camera’s on the same spot, Rene? I feel sorry for your muted Meridians… 
How do you like the Phantoms?
Looks more like Easter 
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Too soon to tell… (They landed on my doorstep 4 hours ago).
So far, I like them WAY better than I expected: very mature, effortless sound, unbelievable (but textured and never boomy or artificial sounding) bass, nuanced and detailed mids/highs. While they were probably not designed for this, my usual ECMish fare is doing quite nicely. 
Did a few quick A/B’s with my current setup (Meridian DSP5200 with MiniDSP/Dirac room correction). The are differences of course, but so far most them in favor of the golden eggs. More listening required though.
If I needed to make the call right now (I have a 30 day return window), they’d be staying – so I guess they probably will.
Glad to hear your initial impressions are positive, Rene. I really like my Phantoms, too. They make up our audio center piece and sit atop our living room kitchen cabinets, flooding the 36 square meter room with sound 
I’m still considering the Gecko mounts to attach them to the walls further apart from each other and angled down more. They are currently connected via HifiBerry Digi+ Pro and an optical splitter in „direct optical“ mode.
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Thanks Rene.
Would love to hear what you think after a month.
I have them on my watchlist.
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Now that’s what I call a music room. Beautiful, simple, clean and focused.
I’m also curious how they will compare for you. I have Phantoms since March 2015 (Silvers) and took the opportunity to ‘Gold my Phantoms’ end 2016. l made some custom supports and am very happy with the SQ, even more after using Roon and HAF filters from Thierry. The filters eliminated slight effects from room modes but keep the already great SQ and signature same as without DSP. My old B&W 802 (original version from 1980) only collect dust now. They could not compete, of course there has been some progress in loudspeaker development over the last 40 years
. So, I’m always curious to hear from others that have newer equipment how for them the Phantoms compare. If possible try to place them with the same positioning when you compare them as this is crucial I most probably don’t have to tell here.
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Love the schematic.
Interested in your thoughts - the phantoms only go up to 105 dB spl - not bad for the size and price but rather limited for main speaker applications. They look ideal for a computer desktop.
If I wanted something small and powerful for desktop then something like this would be on my shortlist (currently I use small Genelecs for desktop)
https://barefootsound.com/micromain27/
Here are the Genelecs in white
Yeah – I’ll worry about positioning later. Most likely I’ll get a much wider and lower TV cabinet and place them on the corners – with or without treepod.
@Rhythmatist: I have looked at the Genelec the Ones (8331/41/51). I liked what I heard, but they look even worse in person than they do in pictures. That – an they’re a bit too fussy using multiple sources.
The Phantom Gold offer 4500W/108dB SPL (whatever that is worth). In my ~80m2 living room, I cannot play them over 50% volume or accidents will happen. They are much louder than the DSP5200’s at their sides.
Great wall mounts. Are they costum made and do the Phantoms stay put when you play loud?
Due to the symmetric design the Phantoms do not vibrate, not at 85dB, 95dB or 108dB. The last is really live rock concert volume. Was great to listen to ‘Rock am Ring’ live streaming as well as classical performances of full orchestras. The Phantoms have a rubber base that makes them stick on the surface. But mainly due the cancellation of all the bass driver motions in the spherical design they stay rock solid on the stand. Yes I custom made the stands usind wall mounts for small TVs and book shelf frames adding an oaktree square base. All in all around 30-40 Euros per side compared to 200 Euros for a Gecko from Devialet. Also the wall distance to side and back like this is much better and well controlled.
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Cool setup! 
A nice listening room/gym.
Fantastic looking speakers.
Since @streamy68 has had these speakers since 2016, I think it is safe to assume he KNOWS what the speakers sound like and what they “are capable of”…
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Does any sane person listen to rock concert levels at home? My setup sure can and neighbours would not be any problem. But why would I put myself through this? We are talking 110-120db and it’s simply not sustainable and your ears are not built for “rock concert levels” of sound.
And talking about rock concerts: most rock concerts sounds quite awful when you start talking about sound reproduction. It’s no where linear. It’s more about loud and “felt” than correct. Some venues has sweet spots where it sounds quite good, but more often than not the major space is far from sweet. Others solve this with speakers all over the place and dsp, but I have yet to experience that in a good way.
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I’d be curious to hear if you’ve ever heard a pair of them play with proper source material. You’re disqualifying yourself by calling them desktop speakers, because they are capable of way more.
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The last concerts I visited were open air concerts, one of them had as main act Muse, absolutely great and of good SQ. Of course you can ‘some times’ choose to be close or more far away from the speaker arrays and therefore suffer temporary tinnitus. This is not my aim when listening loud at home. But at concerts you can also go to places with less SPL. E.g. try close to the mixing desk.
The Phantoms are active and control the drivers not to produce excursions beyond specs which would result in high distortions. So at high volumes they change their low frequency capacity to what makes physically sense. Don’t expect 14Hz at 95+ dB. You can calculate yourself what is possible with the diameters of the bass drivers and the excursion they are able to do. When I compared the bass drivers of my B&W 802 I was surprised that the Phantoms have in fact larger driver diameters and have the same number of drivers and can do more excursion. So, then it makes physically sense that they go deeper and louder than the 802s.
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