It’s been a long time since the Danish manufacturer offered us such an ambitious product at the top of its catalogue. And yet, Dali had already produced some prestigious models a long time ago, such as the Skyline series. With the Dali Kore, things have come full circle. It’s a real tour de force, an engineer’s delirium, likely to leave its mark on both our minds and our auditory systems.
Dali is presenting us with a very top-of-the-range product. This family of equipment, the brainchild of mad engineers, leaves no room for compromise and implements the most extreme technological solutions… whatever the cost.
However, while most brands have a flagship product, a technological showcase for their expertise, Dali, despite regularly producing remarkable products, has not had such an ambassador until now. What’s more, the Kore is an excellent testing ground for finely quantifying the contribution of each new technological innovation so that the brand’s other products can benefit from it. In fact, when designing the Kore, Dali’s engineers wanted to start from scratch and opt for hitherto unexplored solutions for each of its components – from the loudspeakers to the cabinetry and crossovers.
Acoustic loads adapted to each register
The general architecture of the Dali Kore remains fairly conventional. It is based on a four-way structure. However, unlike most loudspeakers, its internal volume is not made up of a single cavity dedicated to the acoustic load of the bass section. Instead, this vast internal volume is subdivided into several cavities to give each driver an optimised acoustic load. For bass reproduction, each woofer has its own acoustic load. With a volume of 72 litres, these loads are decompressed by curved tubular vents opening out at the back of the speaker behind a set of elegant grilles.
A magnetic circuit based on a new material
The woofers, for their part, have also been specifically designed for the Kore. Equipped with a 30 cm diameter membrane, they are the fruit of the most recent research. As is traditional with the brand, they are produced in-house. The massive use of wood fibre is a true Dali signature. Their motor has been completely redesigned. It is based on a new magnetic material, called SCM (Soft Magnetic Compound), of the latest generation, even more efficient than the one used in previous versions of loudspeakers.
What’s more, these new woofers feature a double voice coil with an impressive diameter. This configuration is called Balanced Drive. What’s more, in order to keep them perfectly in line with the magnetic circuit’s air gap, even at the most extreme deflections, in addition to its wide peripheral suspension, this moving element is held in place by a double speeder. These technological choices further reduce distortion in the Kore’s bass section.
Birth of the first Dali midrange
The midrange reproduction is entrusted to a 178 mm diameter driver associated with a closed load. Unlike the woofers, the midrange driver is designed to operate exclusively with very low travel. This choice offers the possibility of combining excellent efficiency with great speed. Here again, its membrane makes extensive use of wood fibre. This is the first time that Dali has designed a loudspeaker specifically for midrange reproduction. It takes over from around 400 Hz, moving into the treble section at around 4 kHz.
Dome tweeter and ribbon super-tweeter
Finally, the high-frequency reproduction monopolises two sections. The first covers the frequency range from around 2 kHz to 12 kHz. It is based on a tweeter with a very large woven silk dome. With a diameter of 35 mm, it offers wide spatial dispersion for reproduction, which greatly reduces the directivity of the Kore and significantly enlarges the optimum listening area of the installation. In addition, this large diameter gives the tweeter excellent midrange response, even in the presence of pronounced dynamics. The transition between this first section of high-frequency reproduction and that dedicated to the midrange is therefore smooth and imperceptible to the listener.
Perfect control of ribbon tweeters
To extend the Dali Kore’s frequency response beyond the 12 kHz provided by the first treble reproduction section, a ribbon tweeter takes over. It extends the Kore’s response in the extreme treble to 34 kHz. Although the behaviour of ribbon tweeters is a delicate matter to master, Dali has undeniable expertise in this field. For many years now, the brand has successfully equipped a large number of its top-of-the-range loudspeakers with this type of tweeter. Once again, this is a model specifically designed and manufactured to meet Kore’s most stringent requirements. Its magnetostatic ribbon has a surface area of 10 x 55 mm.
By extending the Kore’s frequency response far beyond the audible spectrum in the high frequencies, it offers a high degree of transparency and clarity.
Finally, even the electronic components used to create the filters associated with each section of the Dali Kore come from high-quality sources. They are selected one by one to ensure their excellence. So many points that make the Kore the technological showcase of the Danish brand.
In use
We’ve had the opportunity to listen to these great columns on three occasions in three different systems. We therefore have a fairly precise idea of how they work, and also of the type of environment that suits them best. Let’s start with the room, which we’ll choose to be spacious, because Kores need air to breathe and because their bass descends very low in a particularly controlled way, the resulting long wavelength means that the listener’s position has to be set back significantly. Consider a minimum of 50 m².
At the time of their official release, the Kore were powered by four NAD M23 blocks. Unfortunately, this was a bit short-sighted. Not that the M23s weren’t good enough (they’re excellent amps), but the Kore are much more demanding than the NADs are capable of providing. Our last listening session took place in Paris at Elecson in the company of MBL electronics.
We’d like to extend our warmest thanks to Alain and Fred for their kindness and availability. With the MBL N15 monophonic blocks and their 560 W at 4 ohms, the Kore are much more at ease and gave us a marvellous performance. However, it’s clear that they can go even further. For our personal taste, we’d go for two 9008s, if we wanted to stay with MBL.
But we could go for a few other magnificent references like the Accuphase A300, among others. Finally, a word of advice: don’t hesitate to bicable. If the designer has taken the trouble to offer this feature, it’s so that the user can benefit from it. If you don’t, it’s as if you haven’t taken the concept to its logical conclusion. The best straps on the market will never replace true bi-wiring.
The sound of the Dali Kore
Make yourself comfortable, switch off your phone and get ready for a moment of musical emotion on a grand scale. Because with Kore, life is big. It’s easy to get started. These speakers make listening to recorded music extremely easy. You sit back, relax, and you’re immediately immersed in the sound bubble. There’s no need for any prior knowledge: the pleasure is instantaneous.
Kore immediately deploys a magnificent arsenal of seduction. The bandwidth is not only very wide (which is the least we can do given the claims of this loudspeaker) but also reproduced with phenomenal homogeneity. The treble register is very smooth, never bright or artificial, even when pushed to its limits. The bass is very deep and clean. The image is immense. At this stage, what more could you ask for? This is definitely a great show.
Most of the discs come through easily and naturally. It’s when you concentrate more that you go beyond the pure sensation of pleasure to scrutinise the slightest features of this product. And that’s when you realise the impressive amount of work that Dali R&D has had to put in to achieve such a result. Because such a wide bandwidth is not achieved by lining up speakers, but by carefully determining and then developing the transducers best suited to the task.
And if this bandwidth is so masterfully fluid, so capable of making us think we’re almost listening to a full range, it’s because the crossover has been the subject of a particularly accomplished study. Of course, the dynamic behaviour is remarkable, but then again, you wouldn’t expect anything less from a product of this class. No, what is truly astonishing is the excellent resolving power of the Kore, and above all the way in which it is expressed. This speaker makes it considerably easier to understand recorded music. That’s why everything seems fluid and obvious.
It is the prerogative of the best systems to make the most complex melodies easier to understand. How to make complicated music crystal clear and hyper intelligible. By deconstructing, we make it easier for the listener to enjoy the music.
Let’s sum up: an interstellar bandwidth with a powerful and incredibly percussive physical bass, a veritable three-dimensional image that can be intimate or grandiose depending on the musical message, exemplary dynamic behaviour that is all the more impressive because it never tries to bluff you, and finally, a resolving power that, while not the best in creation, has a unique ability to make any message easy to understand and of unrivalled clarity.
The immense potential of these speakers lies not in their individual qualities, but above all in the overall homogeneity they are capable of demonstrating. They are fantastic because they are exceptionally balanced.
Our conclusion
We could go on for pages and pages, but in all sincerity, we simply advise you to listen to these speakers in the right conditions, to understand just how remarkable they are. In terms of performance stricto sensu, the Kore have nothing to fear from most of their competitors, including some much more expensive models. The biggest problem that Kore will have to face is overcoming the preconceptions of potential buyers, who tend to gravitate towards the most popular exclusive brands, when in fact, if you listen to them blindly, they can overtake them.
Dali will have to impose its name, like all the brands that make the great leap from developing mainstream products to high-end ones, such as Focal. Some audiophiles will always turn to esoteric manufacturers because they want to invest in a safe haven. And in the case of the Dali Kore, that would be a real shame. So forget your preconceived ideas and give them a chance. Because in the context of quality listening within a perfectly implemented system, they can make all the difference.
Author: Laurent Thorin
Technical sheet: DALI Kore
- Origin: Denmark
- Price : €80,000
- Dimensions : 1,950 x 800 x 1,200 mm
- Weight : 148 kg
- Load : Dual 72-litre bass-reflex tuned to 22 Hz
- Speakers :
- 1 x 10 x 25 mm ribbon tweeter,
- 1 x 35 mm fabric dome tweeter,
- 1 x 178 mm Balance Drive SMC midrange,
- 2 x 292 mm woofer Balance Drive SMC
- Maximum sound pressure level : 118 dB SPL
- Maximum power handling : 1,000 W
- Sensitivity: 88 dB
- Frequency response: 26 Hz to 34 kHz
- Crossover frequencies: 390 Hz, 2,100 Hz and 12,000 Hz
- Nominal impedance: 4 ohms
- Minimum impedance: 3.2 ohms at 72 Hz