DALI Oberon 5 Floor standing speakers
All floor loudspeakers with a height of no more than 75 - 80 centimeters, in my opinion, deserve to be allocated in a separate category. Today there are few such systems on the market - especially if we talk about quite serious models on high-quality drivers of decent caliber. But if you dig deeper into the golden times of stereo, you can find a lot of examples of compact floor-standing loudspeakers, produced mainly by British companies. They were in steady demand, and some models (like Royd Minstrel) as if magnetized visitors to Hi-Fi shops. By what? Well, of course, not by its miniature, and even not by more modest price than of the "full-size". The best representatives hit often by the sound! They had the resolution of studio mini-monitors, but were far more expressive and not limited in dynamics than most of the shelf speakers.
The most valuable feature of compact floor loudspeakers was the increased emotionality and comfort of the sound - a consequence of a slightly deeper bass and increased dynamics. They did not need racks, you did not struggle with low-frequency disturbances in the room for a long time, painfully looking for optimal points for installation and moving furniture for this. One could not even ask the eternal question: would the amplifier, the source and the cables fit in the nature? Compact outdoor loudspeakers determined the sound handwriting of the entire audio system to a large extent by themselves. You just brought it, set it in front, turned it on and that was it - you were out-and-out covered with a clean and deep stereo effect!
It seems that DALI decided to recall this. Oberon 5 exactly fits our description. By their reproduction, they instantly switch attention from the critical perception of sound (tint, distortion, overtones, etc.) to the music as a whole - rhythm and drive, the skill of the performers, the feeling of a hall or studio. Despite the compromise linearity, these loudspeakers provide something much more important - the phenomenal focus of the images and the integrity of the space.
The explanation for this can be found in specific engineering approaches that have been applied in DALI in the design of the entire series. For example, cases are not too massive, but with internal vibration damping. The scheme is the simplest, two-way. But the drivers, on the contrary, are advanced - of course, of their own design, and even Made in Denmark. Mid-woofers have four-layer lightweight coils made of copper-clad aluminum wire and inserts made of SMC brand magnetic compound, which reduce the negative influence of eddy currents in the magnetic system and, as a result, distortion is suppressed. The tweeters are with the lightest textile dome increased to 29 mm and the widest radiation pattern. It was developed long and hard, because the Oberon series was not designed for ideal conditions, but for modern house - ascetic and often too "live" in terms of acoustic reflections. In the description, for example, it is emphasized that the system do not need to be focused on the listening point. Just put them in parallel.
This recommendation works great. At first, when DALI Oberon 5 in our test was focused on a chair, it seemed to me that they noticeably boost the upper part of the middle and give a bit more ringing than necessary. But no sooner we followed the advice of the manufacturer than the musical balance improved significantly. But when selecting the width of the stereo base, you should still follow the canonical rule of stereo - you and the loudspeakers should be at the corners of an equilateral triangle relatively to each other. In this way you get the most realistic and clearly divided according to the plans scene from Oberon 5.
The critical area of all compact outdoor speakers is bass. In DALI Oberon 5, it is detailed enough, textured, but tucked in from the bottom - it almost covers the range of kicks and lower frets of bass guitars, but you should not count on a special energy in the transfer of these instruments, since Oberon 5 gives them its own interpretation. Albeit, there are no buzzing low frequencies in the sound as well as side-tones of the body, and the whole bass foundation is perfectly balanced relative to the middle band.
