DALI, the Danish speaker manufacturer, has sprung a surprise by launching at the Munich High End, which ends tomorrow, its contender for the high-end market — the DALI KORE floorstanders which are priced at 80,000 euros per pair.
Regional sales manager of DALI Regional Office, Raj TB, said he will be bringing in a pair for the Malaysian market. But it will not be so soon as it will only be available in autumn.
The DALI KORE is the culmination of DALI’s years of work and research into new materials and methods to reproduce the best and most natural sound possible. DALI says in its White Paper on KORE that the design philosophy evolved from its speakers such as the DaCapo of 1988, the DALI MegaLine of the mid 1990s, SKYLINE of 1992 which explored line-source, wide-range ribbon driver and open baffle technologies, and even the more conventional designs like the DALI 40 SE of 1987 and the EUPHONIA series of 2002.
“The DALI KORE represents for DALI a design, electro-acoustic, engineering, manufacturing and musical rebirth,” said Lars Worre, DALI Chief Executive Officer.
Among the exciting new technologies used in the making of KORE is Balanced Drive SMC. “For the DALI KORE bass and midrange drivers, not only have we developed SMC (Soft Magnetic Compound) to new levels of effectiveness, now called Gen-2, we’ve also implemented a DALI patented technology that reduces motor system non-linearity and signal loss even further — we call this technology Balanced Drive SMC.
“The Balanced Drive concept of twin voice-coils dates back to the 1970s. But, due to patent protection and the significant engineering difficulties in its manufacture, it has rarely been implemented… until now. The original patent protection has long since lapsed and with the aid of modern computer-aided engineering and manufacturing, we decided to adopt the twin voice-coil architecture for the DALI KORE. The benefit of the Balanced Drive architecture is that it acts to reduce harmonic distortion and compression at the heart of the electro-acoustic
transducer. As a voice-coil moves within its magnetic field, it typically encounters directional non-linearities caused by mechanical geometry and more subtle electro-dynamic effects. While both can be reduced through careful design, they can never be eliminated. In a Balanced Drive dual voice-coil system, however, as one voice-coil moves inwards through the magnet field, the other voice-coil moves outwards, cancelling out the directional non-linearities. The result is a very significant reduction in distortion, particularly of the subjectively fatiguing and unmusical odd-order harmonics (3rd, 5th, 7th, etc),” said DALI’s White Paper on KORE.
“The DALI KORE Balanced Drive SMC midrange driver incorporates a lightweight, paper-pulp diaphragm, rigid vented titanium voice-coil former, and a suspension system specifically engineered to minimise non-linear damping that causes loss of response speed and subjective detail.
“The DALI KORE midrange driver also features a newly developed paper and wood fibre diaphragm with a complex embossed geometric structure. The new diaphragm naturally displays all the benefits of the wood fibre technology well known from previous DALI designs: Wood fibres add stiffness and help promote non-resonant break-up characteristics. Wood fibre technology has proven to be significant in the reproduction of the finest musical details and dynamics.”
As for the tweeter, DALI has been using a hybrid soft dome/ribbon tweeter since the DALI 700 in 1990. Typically, the ribbon acts like a super-tweeter and handles the frequency range from around 15 kHz to about 30 kHz.
“For the DALI KORE, we chose to extend this principle by developing a significantly larger dome driver that would offer reduced distortion and, in particular, reduced power consumption in the lower portion of its frequency band. The latter achieved without the need for the dissipation of ferro-fluid in the motor system.
“As well as offering approximately twice the radiating area of a 25 mm dome, a 35 mm dome has a significantly lower fundamental resonance. This is beneficial in terms of crossover design, as the resonance is located significantly further away from the high-pass filter frequency. To further lower the resonant frequency of the tweeter dome, while absorbing and dissipating its rear radiation, the tweeter also features a large, bullet-shaped rear casing with fins that help to dissipate heat energy and minimise power compression.”
Judging from the photos posted on FB following the launch, the DALI KORE looks grand and impressive. Initial reports from the launch in Munich state that the sound quality was “open, free and natural”, “generous amounts of dynamics and bass” and “the sound is damn good”. Well, we will have to wait a few more months before we can hear the DALI KORE in Malaysia. — Posted by Lam Seng Fatt
