The Cutting Edge

equipment
report
DALI IKON 6 Loudspeaker
Affordable excellence from one of Denmark’s finest speaker companies
Robert E. Greene
small speakers,” a
famous audiophile-recording
producer once
said to me, and who
“Ihate
could fail to understand
his point For decades, the high end
seemed to think that the way to make an
entry-level speaker was to offer the top
two-thirds of a speaker that would have
been good if its bottom third were added
back in. Not the DALI IKON 6. Its
$1600 price may be modest, but it is a
substantial floorstander that never
sounds small in any negative way.
The first thing I listened to was
Barenboim’s Tristan und Isolde [Teldec].
Its brooding Wagnerian darkness and
occasionally overpowering intensity all
came through on the IKON 6. At last, an
affordable speaker with heft and guts!
The bass and dynamics allow orchestral
music to have real power, and they let
rock music rock out, too.
While it is the bass and dynamics
that separate the IKON 6 most obviously
from the mini-monitors of similar
price, the treble is where the IKON 6
most obviously exhibits innovation.
Because here you’ll find the unique DALI
dome/ribbon hybrid tweeter that was
originally developed for the company’s
far more expensive Euphonia line.
And very successful it is. Guitars, for
example, have the combination of precision
and treble snap they have in real life,
without any nastiness. And high percussion
is unusually convincing. The top
notes of the piano also have their natural
plangency. And though the treble actually
rises somewhat on the “hottest” axis, it’s
only a problem if you aim the speakers directly
at your listening position. Toeing the speakers
slightly out will largely if not quite entirely
bring it down to smooth and flat. (In my
experience, DALI speakers are designed for
listening without toe-in). The IKON 6 puts
quite a bit of high-frequency energy into the
room—wide dispersion is one of DALI’s
mottos—so you will probably want to have
your room quite “soft” acoustically. But
within that context, the intrinsic sound of
the treble is excellent.
The IKON 6 really delivers the goods
dynamically. DALI gives a figure of 111dB as
a maximum SPL. While I did not push to
levels nearly that high, the IKON 6 is effortless
sounding; I was getting realistic orchestral
dynamics with no sign of incipient stress.
Try that with a mini-monitor! And the
IKON 6 is high sensitivity—91dB/1W/1m.
I was using one of my usual high-powered
amplifiers, but it was never working hard. A
few watts will already get you rocking, and
one can even use this speaker with an SET. It
is a benign amplifier load, too, according to
the manufacturer. If you have yet to make
your fortune, here is a speaker that will run
fine off an inexpensive receiver. And the
IKON 6 is ideal for those who want to experiment
with the sound of tube classics like the
Quad II (old or resuscitated) or Marantz 8B.
No speaker, and certainly no inexpensive
speaker, is really completely neutral,
and the IKON 6 is not without sonic character,
having, as it does, a forwardness in the
midrange as well as in the treble as I noted
above. Although the speaker’s overall balance
is quite smooth, the midrange is projected
a bit in the mix. This may be a deliberate
choice. While using a multi-thousand
dollar EQ like the Z Systems with a budget
speaker might seem odd, I could not resist
pulling down the mid (and the middle-tohigh-treble)
a bit. And I did prefer the
result, even when the EQ was with an inexpensive
analog device from DOD. For many
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