I make no secret of the fact that during the latter stages of last year my business went belly up and that during the period of being out of work I had to sell my precious hi-fi to survive. That meant that my Croft pre/power was sold and my Dali floorstanders were sold to finance a very unsure period of time.
Now that I am a Senior Laboratory Technician and Systems Analyst within the aerosol industry I am in a much better position to start getting things back together again and to this end, I recently bought a pair of Dali Ikon 1 loudspeakers to kick start the whole ethos of buying a decent hi-fi.
The Dali’s were bought because I was quite simply so impressed by the floorstanders I used to own. Sevenoaks in Brighton had a few pairs for disposal at £299 but I thought as usual I would push my luck and wait. Two days later the same speakers were £249 so I pushed the button that said ‘OK’ and sure enough, they were mine. The loudspeakers arrived in record time with very little communication from the seller and were sat upon my Atacama stands and wired up to the NVA LS5 cables.
Immediate impression…? Very spacey sound with a fabulous treble sparkle. OK so they have a ribbon supertweeter. This obviously helps no end were the crystal clear, sparkly treble is concerned but that is not all there is to these speakers. The midrange is also crystal clear and highly neutral with no artificial warmth and the bass is highly detailed although not very extended. The stereo imaging is just gorgeous as I guess one would expect from a very narrow stand mount speaker. The positioning of the central characters is extremely precise and when listening to ‘Q’ sound recordings the imaging is scary.
I highly recommend these loudspeakers to anyone who is contemplating a pair of small stand mounts. Of course they are now onto the Mk 2 version at around £650 but if you are in the market, they do deserve a listen. Tie them up with some fine cables and stands and they sound absolutely awesome.
