Pure Sound

What does it take to create the world’s most powerful ultracompact speaker? Devialet invited T3 to its Paris HQ to reveal all…

- Claire Davies

What music do you want to listen to? Scratch that. Here’s a more pertinent question: how do you want to feel when you listen to that music? Isn’t it interesting how, along the way in our fervour to try better speakers or fancier headphones, we often forget why we buy this stuff: to listen to our favourite music. To feel something, perhaps.

Music has always been a conduit for emotion, but the quality of the devices we listen on can either intensify that emotion or strangle it. There are tons of speaker companies in the world, and many produce great sound. Arguably, though, few focus on it quite as intently as award-winning French audio specialist Devialet. And when we say intently, we mean this: pure sound, accessible to all (one day), is the reason this company exists.

When Devialet contacted us to say they were launching a new speaker and would T3 like to be among the first to hear it, we knew it was a no-brainer. We loved the original Devialet Phantom (now renamed the Classic Phantom), released in 2015, and hoped for something of a similar quality from Devialet’s new speaker. We weren’t going to be disappointed…

MINI SIZE, MAX POWER

We’re sitting in a spacious meeting room at Devialet’s modern-looking HQ in central Paris. Early morning sun is beating in through the floor-to-ceiling windows, fresh pastries and juice are being passed around, and Devialet’s new speaker is currently hidden beneath a black box perched at the end of our eight-seater table.