High-minded and high-priced, but is the Devialet Dione hi-fi?
With its first ever Dolby Atmos soundbar, premium French audio brand Devialet is striking out, elevating the form with a lavish design and high-minded concept that endeavours to convince customers that just because they want a simple, single TV speaker doesn’t mean they can’t do so in style.
A one-box Dolby Atmos soundbar with no options to add an external subwoofer or rear speakers, the Dione instead relies on eight long-throw mid-woofers to deliver an impressively extended bass performance that reaches down to a claimed 24Hz, as well as two side-firing 41mm drivers for surround effects.
The Dione also has a distinct build quite unlike any soundbar we have ever seen before, primarily due to the presence of a separate, external 41mm aluminium drive unit in an orb that sits in a vortex-like trough in the centre of the speaker and can manually rotate. And why would you want to turn your new premium soundbar’s orb? Because the Dione is designed to operate in two orientations, horizontally on a flat surface or flipped around with its top panel facing outwards and hung on a wall.
At just 77mm tall, the Dione is slim and smart with removable grey fabric grilles, capacitive playback controls, and a tactile anodised aluminium finish with the texture of a foot pumice. This surface is easy to scuff, so we advise some restraint and care in handling.
Flexible positioning
An onboard room calibration function uses the Dione’s four internal mics to measure the response of your room. It’s pretty rudimentary, and in our listening room did not yield a significant change.
Disappointingly there is no option to change the EQ or volumes of specific channels. So if you wish to tweak the sound further, the only alternative is modes for Movie, Music and Dialogue, as well as a Spatial option that uses Devialet’s SPACE processing to up-mix non-Atmos content and make use of all available channels. While we typically avoid upmixing, surprisingly the Spatial setting yields a solid presentation that doesn’t significantly deviate or add much colour and clutter to the original audio.
Hardwired connections comprise a single eARC/ARC HDMI and an optical input in a recess at the rear alongside an ethernet port. And for streaming, there’s Bluetooth 5 and wi-fi for AirPlay 2, Spotify Connect and UPnP up to 24bit/96kHz.
In its tabletop position, the Dione’s 134mm, high-excursion woofers sit four a-piece on its long edges, while four 41mm aluminium drivers face upwards to bounce
