DALI OPTICON 6 Floor-Standing Loudspeakers Review

I recommend that anybody who is in the market for new speakers should audition the DALI OPTICON 6’s. They have a great musical quality that passes the warmth, drive, and energy of a live performance free of undue distortion or coloration. They might wind up being your final choice because of all their endearing qualities.

I have wanted to review a pair of DALI speakers for a long time and this is the first chance I’ve had to do just that. I’ve heard DALI speakers at numerous trade shows and admired the way they perform. They also impress with their substantial build quality and great looks.

The DALI OPTICON 6’ under evaluation here includes much of DALI’s incredible technologies. The most prominent of these is the hybrid tweeter assembly that features a soft dome tweeter working in tandem with a ribbon super tweeter. The claimed treble extension of this tweeter is up to 32 kHz!

DALI also included a pair of their famous woofers with the wood pulp cones and magnet structures that feature Soft Magnetic Compound in the pole piece. The dual woofers measure 6-1/2” each and are in a rear-ported cabinet. The claimed bass extension is 49 Hz. These compact towers run as a 2-1/2 and 1/2-way acoustic alignment. They are gorgeous and feature a clean, articulate sound quality.

I think the most prominent design feature of the DALI OPTICON 6’s has got to be their unique tweeter assembly. The hybrid tweeter assembly is a long-standing DALI tradition and it involves a rather large soft dome mounted immediately below a ribbon super-tweeter. In the OPTICON 6’s, the two drivers are mounted about as closely as possible in a rigid aluminum baffle. This arrangement would be expected to promote a point-source behavior.

The ferrofluid-cooled dome tweeter kicks in at 2,200 Hz and does not have a low pass filter meaning it provides response all the way to the top of its inherent frequency range. Meanwhile, the ribbon super-tweeter crosses in at 10 kHz by way of a low-order filter and provides its full contribution starting at 14 kHz then goes up from there, in tandem with the soft dome tweeter.

According to DALI, the Hybrid Tweeter Module features an extremely smooth and wide horizontal dispersion – one of their sound design hallmarks. Even the detailing of the tweeter’s faceplate is designed for optimal horizontal dispersion. This assembly is also claimed to have high power handling.

So all that tweeter talk is really cool but guess what? DALI also designs their own unique mid-woofer drivers for the OPTICON’s. The cones are made from a mix of paper and wood fiber pulp that provides low surface resonance and gives the cones their distinctive color. (In other words, the cones are rigid and look cool!)

The woofers feature rubber surrounds and cast aluminum baskets. They have dual-layer voice coils and ferrite magnets.

DALI has also pioneered the use of Soft Magnetic Compound (SMC) material that is used to form the drivers’ pole pieces. SMC is a coated magnetic granule that can be shaped into virtually any form. SMC has other desirable qualities which make it a nearly ideal material for a pole piece. Most notably it reduces both eddy currents and hysteresis effects.

The two mid/woofers in the OPTICON 6’s are 6-1/2”.

DALI claims all these drivers are wide bandwidth and as a result, a simple crossover network is employed to take advantage of their extended frequency response. This speaker is basically a 2-1/2 way design (800 Hz and 2,200 Hz crossovers). But since the tweeters have overlapping responses as well, one could view this as a 2-1/2 and 1/2-way design. That’s a new one on me. I don’t think I would personally design a speaker like this myself. But, you know what, DALI really pulled it off and I was quite smitten by their performance. More on that later.

All off this cutting-edge technology is housed in an equally accomplished cabinet. The cabinet is constructed of medium-density fiberboard (MDF). The baffle is actually 1” (25 mm) thick which is thicker than most competing designs. The way the driver baskets, baffle cutouts, and mounting hardware are employed, allows maximum airflow behind the mid/woofers.

At 41.7 pounds each, these speakers have a nice heft to them without being ridiculously hard to unbox and move around. The weight provides a nice balance for a domestic product – not too heavy and not too light.

At first, I thought the boxes were well thought out in that they opened from one side and not on end. This made it easy to open the box and extract the speaker. The problem was that the cushioning was a pair of styrofoam end caps that were too brittle and broke apart while I was boxing up the speakers for their return trip. If the cushioning isn’t set up to go in the box first and then on top of the speaker (in this case, shoring the sides, not the ends) then the foam needs to be an open-cell foam that has some tensile strength. I hope DALI rethinks its packaging.

Like most tower speakers today, these come with small, metal outriggers for the feet. They were easy to attach but they didn’t lock in quite as well as I’d hoped. So I tightened them down as best I could. Also typical for higher-end speakers, the speakers came with short floor spikes as well as a set of vibration-absorbing feet for hard surfaces.

I put the empty boxes in the garage by the door. I mention this because when things change in your environment they can be a little unsettling at first. What I mean by this is that the DALI boxes caught the corner of my eye each time I would go into the garage: just the corner of my eye. My subconscious brain didn’t see what was actually printed on the box, “DALI OPTICON 6”. Nope, not that. What I saw when I opened the door and walked past was instead “DECEPTICON”. This misunderstanding was actually a perfect allegory for what I was experiencing.

What I mean is that the OPTICON’s have such an obvious tweeter assembly and it was kind of large, that you might expect they would be bright or forward-sounding. They were not, especially after they were broken-in. These speakers were very well balanced with natural ease to their presentation. They were deceptive in the way of the DECEPTICON’s!

Vocal reproduction was also spot-on and I particularly enjoyed Rosie Ledet on “You’re No Good for Me”. Her vocals were transparent and true to life over the OPTICON 6’s. Meanwhile, the bass was full and extended and in near-perfect balance with all the other registers.

Since my speakers are set wide, there can be a slight hole in the middle with my set up. I wanted to toe in the speakers but I did not. This issue cleared up when you sat closer to the sweet spot and, once there, the soundstage simultaneously filled in and opened up. It really popped on Track 5 from Nathan & The Zydeco Cha Chas, “I’m in Love” with a wide, deep, and tall wall of sound.

This album features hypnotic pieces, soundscapes, and instrumentation that turned out to be the perfect match for the Opticon 6’s. It’s almost as if the wood pulp driver cones accentuated the woody quality of these bowed and stringed instruments. It was a perfect synergy.

The whole ensemble allowed me to kick back, get lost in the music, and become very contemplative. These speakers gave me the opportunity to hear and fully understand what Mr. Zazou was shooting for. I felt like I was sitting in the studio listening to a live performance!

For example, “End of the Day” was a finely woven tapestry sonic goodness. The OPTICON’s got everything right from the standpoint of dynamics, on both a large and a small scale. Another strong suit I heard was the silence between the notes.

Beck’s music is anything but bass-shy and I enjoyed the full, round bass at first. Later on in the album, this music found the low bass extension limit of the OPTICON 6’s but the bass was still quite satisfying. This would be my most salient critique of the OPTICON 6’s – their bass response was very polite. I wanted more bass in my room which is quite large by the way. So I would definitely be happy owning a pair of OPTICON’s but for my set up, I’d opt for the larger towers, the OPTICON 8’s to get that extra half-octave of bass extension.

DALI also offers OPTICON’s designed for a center channel and on-walls or bookshelf speakers that can be used for surrounds. That’s why I moved the OPTICON 6’s into my home theater space and gave them a go there. In some ways, they shone brighter in a theater setting than in a two-channel system. I think that may be because they yielded their low bass to the dual subs in the theater and played to their strengths from there. I was also very impressed with how well they blended with my large GoldenEar center speaker.

The two plots immediately below are the pink noise tests I ran with the mic 1 meter from the upper midrange driver. What you see is a very smooth response envelope above 300 Hz. This is the region less affected by room nodes. The plots show a near-ideal response, particularly in the off-axis test which emulates the not-toed-in set up recommended by DALI.

Note also the high-frequency extension is indeed well over 20 kHz. This is less than the claimed 32 kHz extension but is much more high treble than a lot of speakers. You would be surprised how many speakers roll-off below 15 kHz despite the manufacturers’ claims.

Bass extension is modest with the roll-off occurring around 50 Hz, corresponding with DALI’s specification.

The next two plots are the basic THD tests I run with the mic tip 1’ (30 cm) from the driver under test. I ran the 1 kHz tests at 90 dB and 100 dB. Even at the higher SPL, the THD would be completely inaudible at 0.39%. This is a very excellent result for a dynamic driver.

Moving up the audio band, I ran 90 dB and 100 dB THD tests at 5 kHz. This was from the dome tweeter. Again, even at 100 dB, the distortion readout was another inaudible result at 0.42%. I am sure a lot of people may not think this is a big deal though I will say that the test tones are so loud when running these 100 dB tests that I need to wear hearing protection. It is much louder, especially in the treble, than you can listen without damaging your hearing.

How about a little 10 kHz test also at 100 dB? Well looky here, the distortion is even lower: 0.17%. Wow!

Moving down the scale, the 100 dB test at 500 Hz yields THD of 0.35%.

The lowest bass test I ran was just above the low bass roll-off. The THD at 100 dB at 50 Hz. Was 0.96%. This means that the DALI OPTICON 6’s are one of the few speakers I’ve tested that have inaudible distortion levels throughout their native response envelope. This is a sign of top engineering and production methods. Very well done.

The quite complex DALI OPTICON 6 Floor-Standing Loudspeakers deliver great sound and great looks by every measure.

If you are in the market for new speakers then you really should give the DALI OPTICON 6’s a thorough evaluation. They hit all the right notes with the way they look, how they are built, and how they sound.

Their excellent audio performance can be heard and it was confirmed through a stellar set of bench test results. The speakers delivered excellent measured performance at extreme volume levels too.

The OPTICON’s come in several high-quality finish options that can blend with any décor. The family sound of the OPTICON’s is available in stand mount, surface mount, dialog channel, and towers which also allows you to target the best fit for your space. Go give them a listen. You will be glad you did!

For more information on the DALI OPTICON 6 floor-standing speaker, go to https://www.dali-speakers.com/loudspeakers/opticon/