audioXpress had the opportunity to attend one of the last full demos of the DALI KORE at the Munich show. In front of an audience that combined existing and potential channel-partners, retailers and buyers, the company didn't hesitate to share all the details, from the product and brand's heritage, to the details of each of its custom drivers, which were available for everyone to touch and inspect closely (including voice coil windings!).
The DALI KORE speakers are almost as tall as an average person, and are heavy (353 pounds!). And that's because its huge ratio between moving mass and cabinet mass contributes to effortless sound reproduction. After all, the KORE is a statement in sound for the brand - at a higher price point of 40 000 Euro/USD MSRP. And that is where even the brand had to struggle, as everyone says that DALI could charge much more for the KORE given that it simply outperformed speakers selling for three times as much.
"The DALI KORE is a pinnacle of all the know-how we have built up over decades of manufacturing high performance loudspeakers," the Danish company states, realizing also that this is the product that will project the brand outside its native Scandinavian and North European origins. DALI is distributed by Lenbrook Americas' in Canada and the United States, and that in itself says a lot about the company's positioning. Coincidently, the KORE speakers are normally demonstrated with the remarkable NAD M23 Masters Series featuring Purifi Eigentakt technology, with two M23s operating in bridged mode, each delivering 700W of continuous power into 8 ohms.
More importantly, the DALI KORE is also a strategic product to pave the way for future high-end products from the company. "It is simply the most remarkable audiophile loudspeaker we have ever created! The DALI KORE represents for DALI a design, electroacoustic, engineering, manufacturing and musical rebirth,” says Lars Worre, CEO DALI.
DALI, (Danish Audiophile Loudspeaker Industries), started in 1983 as an extension of Scandinavia's leading audio retail chain. The company was founded in 1983 by Peter Lyngdorf, also the owner of Lyngdorf Audio, Steinway Lyngdorf and co-founder of Purifi Audio, among other ventures.
The DALI KORE introduces the brand-new DALI patented Balanced Drive SMC technology, a new driver topology for woofers and midrange drivers that combines dual voice-coil differential drive technology with SMC technology. The Balanced Drive SMC technology creates a perfectly linear and symmetrical loudspeaker motor system, free from the inherent magnetic losses and thereby drastically lowering harmonic distortion and compression, and significantly enhancing the dynamic capabilities.
This large, high sensitivity, 7-inch driver features a range of technological innovations and brings natural warmth and musical coherence to the all-important midrange frequencies. The midrange includes a new powerful Balanced Drive SMC motor with a neodymium magnet. This is a redesigned version of DALI’s signature wood fibre cone, for a more controlled breakup behavior, as well as a narrow, low-mass surround design to minimize the unwanted in-band contribution from the surround. The result is a speaker configuration that offers ultra-broad frequency response, ultra-low distortion, high sensitivity, high-power handling, and wide dispersion.
Creating the crossover for the DALI KORE, with its five drivers and individually filtered woofers, required imagination, intuition, and experience. The DALI KORE has been equipped with the finest crossover components available. It incorporates the World Premiere of the new SMC-KORE inductors, which applies the SMC technology for the core material in the cross-over inductors. The SMC-KORE inductors lower the current distortion by up to 12 dB, compared to the commonly used iron powder core inductors. They also offer lower DC resistance, shorter signal path and less vulnerability to crosstalk, compared to air-core inductors.
Positioned as an ultra-high-end loudspeaker, the DALI KORE is also a masterpiece of visual design and technology. Although the DALI KORE started as a ‘clean slate’ design, it stays true to the DALI sound principles and draws on a rich bloodline of DALI high-end loudspeakers that have been pushing the boundaries of loudspeaker design and technology since 1983, including the MegaLine, DaCapo, SKYLINE, 40 SE and EUPHONIA.
Each material used in the DALI KORE enclosure has been chosen with form and function in mind. The curved wood laminate, gloss-lacquered Ammara Ebony veneer, and contrasting textured finish, has been taken directly from the world of luxury furniture design. The tweeter and midrange die cast aluminum baffle features gold plated trim rings , while the bass driver baffle uses mineral loaded (glass fibre) composite resin. The die-cast aluminum and structural composite materials offer more design freedom and a highly rigid platform for the drivers. The 34kg cement-based resin composite plinth provides a solid foundation for the speaker’s substantial 160kg (353 pounds) overall weight.
Unlike many high-end statement loudspeakers, the DALI KORE was designed to reproduce music that is as close to the original recording as possible, with virtually the lowest distortion or coloration possible. It recreates every musical nuance with true fidelity and seemingly endless dynamic response, at any volume. And audioXpress could hear it with both purist acoustic recordings, full symphony orchestra and electronic dance music of the German kind (the nastiest type of square-waved EDM).
The DALI KORE is manufactured exclusively at DALI’s production facilities in Nørager, Denmark, and is supported by local specialist manufacturers in central Denmark. An unashamedly ambitious high-end Hi-Fi speaker, and the ultimate expression of Danish design, engineering, and manufacturing, among the best that the world has to offer.
As Lars Worre sums up: "We made the DALI KORE because we wanted to show what DALI can do, and because for so many years we have been encouraged to do it by our music-loving customers." The heavy towers are now being tested and carefully packaged to be shipped all over the world. Although many customers will have to add considerable transportation and logistic costs (not to mention taxes) to its retail price, DALI reports having enough orders to keep production busy for the next four years, and that's even before the press release arrived to audioXpress.
www.dali-speakers.com
