'The next Dolby'
Sanié founded Devialet with engineer Pierre-Emmanuel Calmel and designer Emmanuel Nardin in 2007.
The company's first commercial product was a $14,000 amplifier launched in 2010. The goal was to gain recognition, rather than generate a lot of sales.
The Phantom followed in 2015. It took three years to develop and contains technology protected by 88 patents. It's shaped like a sphere because, "acoustics engineering dictates that's actually the best shape for a loudspeaker," says Sanié.
Devialet operates out of a building designed by Gustave Eiffel in central Paris, with a team of about 40 engineers. All products are made in France, its second biggest market after the United States. The United Kingdom is No.3.
Its ultimate goal is "to be the next Dolby," and to get its technology into other products such as TVs and cars.
"About 3 billion amplified products are sold every year, but only 100 million are audio products: we want to expand beyond this tiny portion of the global audio market," says Sanié.
Unlike Dolby, Devialet will continue to make consumer products: "We want to keep doing that, because there's nothing more exciting for engineers than to make new inventions.