TREE – Devialet Phantom Ultimate 98 DB

The Phantom 98 dB Already Sounds Extraordinary. The Tree Stand Makes It Sound Like Itself.

Here’s something I wish someone had told me earlier in my Phantom ownership journey.

The speaker is only half the equation.

I know that sounds like the kind of thing an over-enthusiastic audio salesperson says when they’re trying to upsell you on accessories. But stay with me for a moment, because there’s a real physics argument here, not a vague audiophile superstition one.

The Phantom Ultimate 98 dB is a spherical speaker. That shape was chosen deliberately. A sphere disperses sound outward in every direction equally no flat baffle faces creating diffraction, no sharp edges causing reflections, just clean sound radiating from the centre outward. It’s one of the most acoustically intelligent enclosure shapes possible.

But that design only works the way it’s supposed to if the speaker has space around it. Put it on a bookshelf between two walls and a stack of novels, and you’re partially undoing everything Devialet engineered. The sound hits nearby surfaces before it reaches your ears. The bass loads unevenly. The stereo image if you’re running a pair narrows.

Devialet’s own recommendation is to position the Phantom between 45 and 90 cm off the ground to maximise impact, and to leave at least 30 cm between the speaker and the wall, allowing bass frequencies to reflect naturally. 

The Devialet Tree stand for Phantom Ultimate 98 dB puts the speaker exactly in that zone. Every time. Without you having to think about it.

That’s the starting point. And honestly, it’s a compelling enough reason on its own. But there’s more to the Tree stand than just getting the height right.

What It Actually Looks Like – Because This Matters

I want to spend a moment on this before we get into acoustics and specs, because the Tree stand is not a generic piece of hardware. It has a name for a reason.

Inspired by the lightness and strength of the Kapok tree, the Tree stand raises the Devialet Phantom Ultimate 98 dB to pitch-perfect heights, unlocking its full acoustic potential. 

The Kapok tree, if you’re not familiar, is a tropical tree known for growing tall and straight with extraordinary structural efficiency. Very little material, very large presence. The Tree stand borrows that aesthetic logic. It’s a single slender column rising from a stable base to a cradle that holds the Phantom. No bulk, no unnecessary geometry, no visual weight that competes with the speaker it’s carrying.

In person, it reads as confident and minimal, the kind of design where you look at it and think “obviously, yes, that’s exactly what it should look like.” There’s nothing to add and nothing to remove. It just makes sense.

Available in three finishes, the Tree stand guarantees total stability without ever compromising on style.The three finishes are Iconic White, Light Pearl, and Deep Forest each corresponding to a Phantom Ultimate 98 dB colour option so the stand and speaker read as one coherent object rather than two things placed near each other.

The Cable Situation – This Is the Detail Everyone Loves

Here’s something that consistently surprises people when they first set up the Tree stand: the cables essentially disappear.

The Tree runs on the same power cable as Phantom II. You can clip Phantom’s cable to Tree with the provided cable ties, for a seamless blend. 

This is worth unpacking. The Tree stand comes with cable ties that route the Phantom’s power cable along the column of the stand from the speaker at the top, down the column, to the base where it exits toward the wall socket. From a few feet away, you don’t see a cable running from a speaker. You see the stand, the speaker, and clean space around both.

It’s a small thing. But it’s the small things that separate a setup that looks finished from one that looks assembled. When you’ve spent ₹1,46,999 to ₹1,99,999 on a Phantom 98 dB, having a cable trailing visibly across a shelf or running down the side of a stand is a minor visual irritant that persists every single day. The Tree’s cable management solves it permanently.

Does the Height Actually Change How It Sounds?

Yes. And not in a subtle way.

I moved a Phantom 98 dB from a sideboard where it had been sitting about 75cm from a wall, at roughly 90cm height, flanked by furniture to a Tree stand positioned freely in the room at the correct height with 40cm of clear wall behind it. Same Phantom. Same room. Same playlist.

The bass was the first thing I noticed. Cleaner. More defined. Less of the room-muddiness that comes from a speaker working against nearby surfaces. The mid-range opened up voices had more air around them, more space to exist in. And the overall presentation felt more three-dimensional. Less like sound coming from an object and more like sound coming from a space.

This is what Devialet means when they say the Tree stand “unlocks the Phantom’s full acoustic potential.” It’s not a marketing language. The speaker was always capable of this. The stand just removes the constraints that were preventing it.

The Tree stand is a natural fit for Hi-Fi stereo set-ups, delivering sound sure to satisfy the most exacting of audiophiles.

In a stereo pair, this effect is even more pronounced. Two Phantom 98 dBs on two Tree stands, positioned symmetrically with the correct spacing and wall clearance, produce a soundstage that is genuinely, not hyperbolically one of the most impressive things available in Indian home audio at this price range.

When in stereo, the Devialet Phantom Ultimate 98 dB is the closest you’ll come to the soul of a live performance or original recording. Instruments find their place, vocals gain depth, and every note unfolds with breathtaking realism.

Two stands make that possible at the acoustic level. Without them, you’re leaving part of that experience behind.

The Anti-Slip Detail – Small, But Worth Knowing

The tree has anti-slip and anti-tracking pads. 

This is a minor detail that matters more in practice than it sounds. The anti-slip pads on the base mean the Tree stand doesn’t slide on hard floors important when the speaker is playing at volume and the vibration from the Phantom’s lateral woofers creates movement in everything nearby. The anti-tracking pads protect your floor surface from marks or scratches. If you have hardwood floors, polished concrete, or any flooring you care about, these are not afterthoughts; they’re why you don’t need to put the stand on a mat or a piece of felt.

The stand is guaranteed for 2 years, the same as the Phantom itself which is exactly what you’d expect from a product designed as an integrated system component rather than a generic accessory.

Tree Stand vs Gecko – Which One Is Right for You?

The Tree stand and the Gecko wall mount are the two official placement solutions for the Phantom Ultimate 98 dB at AVStore India. People ask about the difference regularly, and the honest answer depends entirely on your room and your priorities.

The Tree stand (₹29,999) keeps the Phantom on the floor. It’s the more natural, furniture-like presence of a speaker on a stand in a room, which is how most people intuitively imagine their audio setup. It works in any room without any installation, moves easily if you rearrange your space, and requires no drilling. For renters, for people who like flexibility, for anyone who might want to move the speaker between rooms, the Tree stand is the more practical choice.

The Gecko wall mount (pricing varies) takes the speaker off the floor entirely. The Phantom floats on the wall at whatever height you choose. It frees up floor space completely, looks more architectural than furniture-like, and for smaller rooms, apartments, bedrooms, compact living spaces creates a cleaner, less cluttered environment. The trade-off is that installation requires drilling and the position is fixed once done.

Neither is better in absolute terms. They’re different solutions for different spaces and different preferences. If you’re not sure, the Tree stand is the lower-commitment option you can always move to the Gecko later. Going the other way is more work.

The Stereo Setup: Two Stands, One Extraordinary Room

Let me paint a picture.

Two Phantom Ultimate 98 dBs. Two Trees stand in Deep Forest. Positioned in a medium-sized living room three metres apart, 40cm from the wall, at the acoustically correct height. Paired as a stereo system in the Devialet app. A lossless Tidal stream of something well-recorded. Something with real instruments, real space, real dynamics.

What happens in that room is not what most people expect from two speakers that are each roughly the size of a large grapefruit.

The bass fills the room physically at 18 Hz, controlled and clean, reaching the frequencies you feel in your chest before you consciously register them as sound. The stereo image stretches between the two speakers and, at a certain point, seems to extend slightly beyond them the way a good recording does when a speaker system is working correctly. Vocals sit in the centre with a specificity that makes you want to turn and check if someone’s actually there. The room becomes the listening space, not just the room where the speakers happen to be.

Two Tree stands are what make that setup work acoustically. Same height, same distance from the wall, same geometry. The stands are how you get the pair right.

Who This Is For

The Tree stands for Phantom Ultimate 98 dB is for anyone who bought or is buying a Phantom 98 dB and wants to use it properly.

That sounds obvious, and it kind of is. If you’ve already decided the Phantom 98 dB is worth ₹1,46,999 to ₹1,99,999, spending ₹29,999 on a stand that puts it at the right height and keeps the cables tidy is a straightforward decision. It’s 15-20% of the speaker’s cost for an accessory that makes the speaker perform as it was designed to.

The people who skip the stand and put the Phantom on a shelf aren’t making a terrible mistake. The Phantom sounds good anywhere. But they are accepting a compromise that the Tree stand exists specifically to eliminate.

If you care enough about sound to buy a Phantom, you probably care enough about sound to put it in the right position. The Tree stand is how you do that.

Final Thought

The Tree stand doesn’t make the Phantom louder. It doesn’t add bass or change the frequency response. What it does is remove the obstacles between the speaker and its full potential: the wrong height, the nearby surfaces, the cable trailing across the furniture and replace them with nothing. Just the speaker, at the right height, with space around it to do what it was designed to do.

Your music feels elevated, in every sense. 

That’s the most compact description of what the Tree stand gives you. It’s also, I think, completely accurate.

The Devialet Tree Stand for Phantom Ultimate 98 dB is available in India through The Den in Iconic White, Light Pearl, and Deep Forest finishes, with nationwide shipping and official 2-year manufacturer’s warranty.

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