Lads, lads, lads! Help me out!

Our tale begins, with a long-standing customer’s request that we look after a friend who needed a new hi-fi, let’s call her A-P. She had a particular difficulty in her room in that her piano, cello and extensive vinyl collection are at one end of her nine metre long music salon and the only place to sit speakers is at the other, in front of the sofa, which lies roughly equidistant between the boundaries. Oh, and we can’t run any speaker cables.

Hmmmm….

A couple of smartphone snaps later and we could see that apart from the ‘no wires’ rule, this will be a winning space for the right system, but it’s a jolly big space.

We’re going to have to go active.

Going active

Remembering the lovely Alex from DALI brought down their entry-level active Oberon 1C speakers last year, and thinking how rather good they were, I gave him a call. He recommended the Rubicon 8C for a room this size and reminded us that our colleagues in Audio T Cheltenham had sold a pair of 8C recently and thought very highly of them. A quick call to the boys in Cheltenham confirmed that to be the case.

Despite, at the time, it being very close to the Bristol Hi-Fi Show, Alex brought the monolithic Rubicons down himself and gave us a quick lesson in the DALI Equi ecosystem of active loudspeakers and preamplifiers.

that dali hub preamplifier looking all sleek and black.

The technical bit

At its heart is the DALI Hub, which is capable of streaming high resolution audio wirelessly to compatible active loudspeakers. Fitted with three digital and two analogue inputs you can also fit an optional HDMI module, which enables the user to connect seven speakers and a subwoofer to create a very capable home cinema system.

hub’s rear panel. you can’t really miss the link button used to set the mesh up, just as well..

The upgrade module we’re interested in here though, (music salon remember), is Bluesound's flexible BluOS high-resolution multi-room platform. The NPM-2i module enables high-resolution (up to 24/96) audio to be streamed to any DALI Equi speaker and will integrate with other BluOS-enabled devices to create a multi-room setup around the home. It’s also MQA certified, as are DALI Equi speakers, which is handy if you’re a Tidal customer – their 24-bit service uses MQA.

Eagle-eyed readers will recall that Bluesound products are one of our favourite “reasonably-priced” music streamers. Capable of excellent sound, easy to use and with a reliable platform and control app. We were more than happy when DALI announced they were partnering with Bluesound. Many Hi-Fi companies’ in-house apps are underwhelming in day-to-day use, and it makes sense to buy into a proven control app that benefits from regular maintenance to keep it running smoothly. In turn, this frees expensive digital engineers up from fixing app bugs, to creating even better Hi-Fi. Let’s face it, no-one likes bug-fixing…

rear of hub again - note the bluesound (Bluos) streaming module

Demo time…

A couple of days later, our excited customer was sitting on her own sofa in front of a pair of DALI Rubicon 8C in the stunning Piano Black finish.

Set-up is pleasantly straightforward - Connect the power cables, switch on the Hub, switch on the speakers, keep clicking the little grey button on the rear of one speaker until it displays an icon of where it is in the room, do the same with the other speaker, press the corresponding button on the hub, wait for the ethereal Scandi tones to issue from the cabinets... And Robert’s your mother’s brother.

Open the BluOS app, select players, select DALI Hub, select music source and… Browse.

It took me a touch under three minutes.

Miles Davis’ ‘A Kind of Blue’ is a firm favourite at Chez A-P and so we settled in to listen to the Rubicons warm up with (it has to be said A-P) a spectacularly lovely cup of tea. In between sips, I set up a Rega Planar 3 turntable with matching phono stage and connected it to the Hub’s RCA sockets. A-P is a cellist and a succession of cello tracks issued from the DALI as A-P quickly got to grips with Tidal.

“This cello sounds really good Ade – and that piano is bang-on. The timbre is great, very convincing, but the scale of it! It sounds full-sized. That’s... Impressive. I wasn’t expecting that at all. Wow.”

The Ted Talk…

Three 16.5mm woofers connected to a 250 watt amplifier in an 110 litre cabinet will give you scale in the way you would expect, but it’s nothing if the high end isn’t up to snuff. DALI have fitted a two stage ‘hybrid’ tweeter – a silk dome coupled with a ribbon. This is silky sweet, has a wide dispersion pattern and retains its composure even at distressingly high volume. According to DALI, the combination reaches down to 2.5kHz which manifests itself in a seamless presentation.

the hybrid dome/ribbon tweeter in all its glory. 6 1/2 inch woofers included for scale

A lower frequency crossover point between the midrange and high frequency drivers is desirable, because the larger cone typically found in a midrange driver will distort when it reaches into the high frequency range. Ribbon tweeters have much better dispertion than domes at very high frequencies and exhibit much better control in that register. A hybrid design should give us the best of both worlds - a silk dome to reach down towards the midrange and take the pressure of the midrange unit and a ribbon to soar into the troposphere.

All of that is moot of course, if the end-user doesn’t like the result. Fortunately A-P is very much on board, especially when I span up the Rega Planar 3 and she dug into the vinyl…

Meanwhile, back in the salon…

“The differences in recordings are quite stark. These old Phillips pressings are a bit... Thin compared to the newer Deutsche Grammophon ones, but they’re all enjoyable, so... Thank you.”

“You’re most welcome. Are we happy?”

“Yes, but do they come in a wooden finish? These black ones may match my piano, but they stand out too much against that yellow wall.”

“Walnut then ma’am?”

“Walnut it is.”

Coda

At the time of going to press, the Rubicon 8Cs are on dem in our ground floor salon, here in sunny Abertawe(Swansea) If the experience appeals, why not pop on down the High Street and give them a whirl….