Devialet announced its first all-in-one TV sound bar Tuesday — a unique design that ensures optimal sound quality no matter where it’s installed.
The Devialet Dione promises to free users from having to set up satellite speakers around a room or attempt to hide a dedicated woofer through the use of eight subwoofer neodymium drivers and nine full-range speakers squeezed into the sound bar’s relatively thin three-inch tall profile. It’s designed to be installed underneath a TV and project sound from the front of a room to the back.
Devialet might not be a household name, but it has managed to win the approval of diehard audio enthusiasts over the past 15 years with pricey speakers and headphones that boast fantastic, high fidelity sound.
Like Devialet’s wireless speakers and headphones, the new Dione doesn’t come cheap. Those looking to pre-order one today (or buy one from a Devialet dealer in person in April) can expect to spend just over $US2,600 ($3,609) (£1,990). That’s almost $US1,000 ($1,388) more expensive than the excellent Sony HT-A7000 7.1.2 channel Dolby Atmos soundbar, which itself was an expensive option back in November. But given how impressed we’ve been with the company’s past offerings, it just might be worth the splurge.
The Dione offers several other features promise an immersive sound experience. A feature called SPACE “actively upscales any content into Devialet Dione 5.1.2 audio channels creating an enveloping spatialization effect” while Advanced Dimensional Experience, or ADE, is promised to be a “new digital signal processing technology, that uses beamforming to reinforce 3D immersion,” the company said in a press release.
Anyone who’s tested a true surround sound speaker setup versus an all-in-one sound bar knows that, while these alternatives do an impressive job at tricking the brain into hearing sounds all around it, the experience isn’t equal. For many users it can be good enough, though,especially since installing the Devialet Dione is easy. It doesn’t require cables hidden throughout a room, or routed through walls. The Dione can either be placed on an entertainment centre below a wall-mounted TV, or directly mounted to the same wall. The distinct sphere in its centre rotates to direct sound in different directions, while a built-in gyroscope allows the soundbar to detect its position and automatically optimise its output using the aforementioned ADE beamforming technology.
Using a mobile app, the Devialet Dione can be calibrated for any room size, and it offers four different listening modes depending on the content being consumed. Movie and Spatial modes offer the stereo-to-surround sound conversions, Voice boosts the intelligibility of voices when watching news broadcasts or listening to podcasts, and Music mode disables all the spatialization effects for a true stereo listening experience. Connectivity includes HDMI 2.1 eARC with CEC (Consumer Electronics Control), optical link, Apple AirPlay 2, Spotify Connect, wi-fi UPnP, and Bluetooth 5.0.