For the last four years, French high-end audio brand Devialet has been working to make the kind of impressive sound delivery found in its extraordinary Phantom speakers portable. The fruit of that labor is now available as the room-adapting 360-degree Mania.
"Devialet is relentless in its mission to provide extraordinary sound experiences no matter where you are listening," said company CEO, Franck Lebouchard. "Devialet Mania marks a major step towards that goal, bringing our proprietary technologies to a portable speaker for the very first time. Great sound has now been unleashed."
The new portable speaker features adaptive 360-degree sound courtesy of the company's own Active Stereo Calibration acoustic mapping technology, which uses four calibrating microphones under the unit to work out how to throw out the audio to best suit the room it's in, based on an algorithm-based learning model developed inhouse.
The Mania will launch full 360-degree mode when the speaker is placed in the middle of a living space, for example, or have the two rear full-range speakers reinforce the front speakers when the unit is placed near the wall to widen dispersion.
The unit measures 176 x 193 x 139 mm (6.9 x 7.6 x 5.5 in), tips the scales at 2.3 kg (5 lb), is IPX4-rated for splash resistance, and comes with an integrated handle for carry and placement ease.
Its four full-range speakers are each driven by a 25-W Class D amplifier but the system also includes two sub-woofers, each with its own 38-W Class D amp and powered by Speaker Active Matching technology that "allows the product to recognize and adapt the sound signal to its drivers' specificities" for low-distortion playback and enhanced bass response. All in, the Mania delivers powerful 95-dB sound over a reported frequency response of 30 Hz to 20 kHz.
The 3,200-mAh battery should be good for up to 10 hours of continuous playback per charge (at moderate volume), with an optional wireless charging dock also available. Listeners can choose between Bluetooth 5.0 and 802.11ac Wi-Fi streaming, and there's support for multi-room via AirPlay 2 plus Spotify Connect.
It sports manual playback controls on the device itself, but the Mania can pair with a smartphone running the same app as the Phantom speakers and the Dione soundbar, where users can choose listening modes and tweak features. And Alexa voice interaction is also possible.
The Mania speaker has been designed to offer an "incomparable size-to-performance ratio" and has the price to match. It's available now in gray or black for US$790, but if you really want to splash out there's an Opéra de Paris edition that rocks 24-karat-gold accenting for an extra two hundred bucks.
Product page: Devialet Mania