I’d known of DALI Loudspeakers for a while. The Danish company (DALI stands for Danish Audiophile Loudspeaker Industries) has been exhibiting at AXPONA right by the Renaissance Schaumburg hotel’s check-in area, a prime location near the restaurant, bar and lounge that draws visitors to their exhibit with music. However, considering the frenetic pace of the show and the sometimes considerable ambient noise level, I’d never really gotten the speakers’ true measure. That’s why I was eager to attend a recent event DALI held at Manhattan audio dealer Park Avenue Audio for the North American debut of the In addition to DALI, the store has an impressive array of brands like McIntosh, Burmester, B&W, Magico, Air Tight, Cardas, Innuos, HIFIMAN, Sonos, and many more.
DALI EPIKORE 11 loudspeaker.
The event featured the North American debut of the DALI EPIKORE Series loudspeakers, which feature technologies that are derived from their flagship KORE and high-end models. The speakers are absolutely gorgeous, with impeccable fit and finish in black, walnut or maroon, and the distinctive dark brown midrange and woofer cones complement the cabinetry. Four models are available including the EPIKORE 11 4-1/2-way floorstanding tower ($60,000/pair), EPIKORE 9 4-way ($40,000/pair), EPIKORE 7 3-1/2-way ($25,000/pair) and EPIKORE 3 3-way stand-mount speaker ($15,000/pair, $3,000/pair for available stand).
I’ll talk about the tech later (and this way you can skip over it if you’re not interested) but of course what I was most interested in was how they sounded…and I wasn’t disappointed. Powered by Accuphase electronics, there was a clarity and spaciousness to the overall sound. The bass was articulate and powerful, and I was surprised at how the smallest EPIKORE 3 delivered loud and deep bass that easily filled the not-small listening room. The sound was as clear and detailed as any music lover would ever want, I think, without giving a sense of being overly “etched,” to use that tired old audiophile cliché. As is often the case when I hear a pleasurable set of speakers in a good system, I found myself wanting them in my own home, bank account be darned.
The EPIKORE 3 speakers (on stands) at Park Avenue Audio.
Thomas Holm and Thomas Knudsen from DALI (“because every guy from Denmark is named Thomas,” they joked) and Jason Zidle of distributor Lenbrook were on hand to talk about the speakers and give a demo that was more fun and informative than some of the presentations us journos have had to endure. At one point they disconnected the woofer from the midrange and tweeter to demonstrate how high in frequency the woofer went, because they considered it important to enable a more seamless blend with the other drivers. DALI’s Thomas Holm elaborated:
“It is correct that the purpose of this demonstration was to highlight the importance of a seamless transition between the drivers. A seamless transition both in terms of energy, timing, and dispersion will create true clarity of a speaker system – at any frequency. You can only obtain true clarity if the drivers work together to create a complete system – not just ‘ be themselves,’ so to speak.
We design our drivers to have a very large bandwidth. For example, the EPIKORE 9 bass drivers will have no problem going to 1kHz – but we only use them up to around 400 Hz. But having a large bandwidth makes us able to use very soft-sloped filters, so the drivers will overlap and share their working area way into each others’ normal working areas.
What we wanted to demonstrate with disconnecting the bass driver was to showcase how much of a simple vocal recording (for example) actually gets reproduced by the bass drivers, not the midrange only.
You would think that a vocal recording would mainly be handled by the midrange, but in fact the bass drivers are responsible for A LOT of the vocal reproduction. Same goes with a piano, for example – the middle A tone on a pian, sits just where the midrange and bass drivers overlap (440 Hz). Everything below that (basically the lower middle part of the piano) gets reproduced by the bass drivers – but the overtones of the bass notes get reproduced by the midrange and tweeter. The same goes for upright bass, drums, cellos, you name it. So, if the bass drivers, the midrange, and the tweeter are not completely aligned in energy and time, you will get a distorted and non-truthful reproduction of any note, no matter where in frequency it is.
This is a VERY important design principle of DALI. We have a holistic approach to doing speakers – EVERYTHING must work together to create a complete coherence. And by designing, developing, and building our drivers ourselves we can optimize our drivers for this coherence right from the start, rather than to have to fix the inaccuracies with a crossover to get them to ‘sing along.’ So all in all, designing our drivers for coherence, gives us more simple crossovers, shorter signal paths, and makes the complete speaker act as one unit with clarity, low distortion and natural and wide dispersion in any part of the frequency spectrum.”
DALI's Thomas Holm demonstrates the lightness of an EPIKORE driver cone. I dropped it and it practically floated towards the ground.
For me, the most informative part of their demo – aside from the fact that I was enjoying the sound greatly! – was when they talked about designing the speakers to interact with the room they’re in, and that a big part of this was the extended high-frequency response of the planar magnetic supertweeter used in the EPIKORE range. They pointed out that even if some of us with hearing loss in that area might not think we can hear those frequencies, they play a vital part in how we feel and perceive the sound and the music, because of the way these frequencies energize the room. To demonstrate this, both Thomases told us they were going to play music on the EPIKORE 9 speakers and then put their hands over the supertweeters to see if we could hear a difference. (One Thomas said, “I flew all the way out from Denmark just to do this!”) Since I have significant hearing loss in this area (I can hear up to 16 kHz but it’s drastically attenuated), and based on the half-joking comments among us older folks in attendance, I don’t think I was the only one who was more than a bit apprehensive.
EPIKORE supertweeter and tweeter, exploded diagram.
Well, the difference was obvious. Once the guys covered the planar tweeters the sound got less spacious and “airy” and lively, and we could all hear it immediately. To the great collective relief of everyone in the room. As the guys explained after, even if you think you can’t hear such high-frequency sound, you can sense if it’s missing by the way the room’s response changes – so it’s important that the speakers can reproduce this range.
The DALI EPIKORE speakers have a lot of other interesting tech. What DALI calls their EVO-K hybrid tweeter module comprises a 1-3/8-inch soft-dome tweeter and that lovely high-frequency planar magnetic unit, which in addition to other benefits provides wider off-axis dispersion. The woofer and midrange drivers employ DALI’s Clarity Cone paper and wood fiber cones which are coated and shaped to dampen unwanted resonances. The rear-firing bass ports have a continuous flare design for optimum and efficient low-frequency response. All the drivers are manufactured in-house. Even the speaker terminals are custom-made, as DALI engineers discovered that the material they’re made from has a critical effect on the sound. And I again have to note the absolutely gorgeously flawless build quality.
I walked out of the event thinking that we’re living in a time where there are a wealth of great loudspeaker designs in this world. You can count DALI speakers among them.
Another view of the EPIKORE 3 speaker, in walnut finish.
Header image: DALI EPIKORE 9 loudspeakers.
