Dali Vega Review

Design

• Premium materials give great tactility
• Tiny OLED display

Yes, the Dali Vega measures 143 x 683 x 243mm (HWD) when it’s sitting on a shelf or some other (necessarily large) horizontal surface – it has three settings in its menus to let the speaker know the relative proximity of a rear surface. But unlike pretty much all of its nominal rivals, the system has a good degree of flexibility where positioning is concerned.

Thanks to some painstaking engineering and the appearance of Dali’s Adaptive Orientation Adjustment technology, the Vega can be put on a wall – and it can happily work there either in portrait or landscape positions.

The Vega detects its mounted position and automatically adjusts its stereo channel mapping  and EQ settings in order to offer consistent imaging despite the fact that its driver array (which is front/rear when the Dali is sitting on a horizontal surface) is either left/right (when in portrait mode) or top/bottom (in ‘landscape’ mode). Dali provides the necessary wall-bracket in the packaging.

No matter where and how you position it, though, the Vega looks and even feels like a premium item – just as well, given the asking price. The standard of construction (the cabinet is mostly of High Impact Polystyrene moulding) is beyond reproach, and the use of tactile, quite indulgent materials means the Dali competes when judged as a piece of industrial design as happily as when judged as a speaker.  

The slice of wood veneer (available in the natural oak of my review sample or a dark oak alternative) almost demands to be touched – but not as much as the weighty, smooth-scrolling anodised aluminium control dial. It takes care of volume and also lets you navigate the menus, and is just as pleasant to use for the 1000th time as it was the first. Even the acoustic fabric is pleasantly tactile.

As well as the large and gratifying control dial, there are a few control buttons too – five preset buttons, input selection, power on/off, a button the label of which suggests it’s mute but is, in fact, play/pause, and a back button for use when you’re in the menus.

The menus are displayed on a small OLED screen – they help you with set-up, let you know what the score is regarding volume levels and so on. It’s too small to be legible from any kind of distance, and in the context of the product as a whole it’s a little disappointing – and that’s also true of the remote control handset that’s supplied. Both are useful but both tend to undermine the luxuriousness of The Dali Vega Experience.

Features

• 400 watts of Class D power
• Wired and wireless connectivity
• Frequency extension down to 32Hz

It’s just as well the Vega is part of the BluOS ecosystem – which means that as well as being quickly and easily able to form part of a wider multi-room system with other BluOS-enabled products, the Dali can be controlled using one of the most stable, logical and comprehensive control apps around.

When it’s standing on a shelf or some other horizontal surface, the Vega’s driver array consists of two tweeters and two mid/bass drivers facing forwards, the same again facing backwards, and a passive radiator at either end of the cabinet – they look a lot like part of the structure of the cabinet, but you are emphatically advised not to pick the Dali up by these radiators.

The tweeters are 25mm soft dome designs with low-viscosity ferro-fluid for optimised power-handling and minimal thermal compression. They have relatively large, damped rear chambers with a carefully designed air-path beneath the dome – this reduces dome resonance which in turn allows for a lower cross-over point with the mid/bass drivers than is usually the case.

The mid/bass drivers themselves are 114mm paper-and-wood-fibre cones – this material has been a favourite of Dali’s for quite some time now, and it’s a technology that shows up in quite a few of the company’s loudspeaker ranges that cost LOTS more than this.

The auxiliary bass radiators have been specified in favour of the more usual bass reflex port alternative for one particular reason: their tuning frequency is unaffected by the physical dimensions of the cabinet, so they should – in theory, at least – deliver greater low-end substance than a reflex port would be able to contribute.

It’s a more complex solution, of course – each radiator diaphragm has twin spider suspensions, and is mass-loaded for stability when in motion. Dali reckons the Vega reaches all the way down to 32Hz thanks to this arrangement, which would seem to support its argument that ABRs are the way to go in this instance.

This driver line-up is powered by eight 50-watt Class D bridge-tied load amplifier designs. This layout means each mid/bass driver and its accompanying tweeter is connected to two amp blocks that are effectively operating in unison – minimising distortion while maximising amplifier efficiency and heat dissipation is the thinking behind this arrangement.

It almost goes without saying there’s some very thorough DSP ahead of the amplification, intended to help the Dali offer as expansive and carefully focused stereo sound as possible. 

Connectivity

Getting audio information on board so that it can feel the benefit of all that power and all those drivers can be done in a few different ways.

Dual-band Wi-Fi (with an Ethernet socket available too) means the Connect versions of Qobuz, Spotify and Tidal are all available, as well as Apple AirPlay 2 – and the BluOS app gives access to internet radio as well as plenty of alternative music streaming services.

Bluetooth wireless connectivity is on board too, with codec compatibility all the way to aptX HD. And nicely recessed into the Vega’s foot on the bottom of the cabinet there is an analogue line-level input on RCAs, a digital optical socket, and HDMI ARC connection and a USB-A slot for use with flash drives and what-have-you. There’s also a pre-out for use with an external subwoofer.

Sound Quality

• Substantial, informative and dexterous sound
• A suggestion of stereo separation and a big soundstage
• A little more dynamism wouldn’t go amiss

No matter if you’re using one of the Vega’s numerous digital inputs or its solitary analogue alternative, there’s a very pleasant consistency to the way the DALI goes about reproducing music. In every circumstance, it’s a solidly punchy, attentively detailed and gratifyingly spacious listen.

Those digital inputs may only be served by a 24-bit/48kHz DAC but it can accept and downscale content of up to 24-bit/192kHz resolution – and when a 24-bit/88.2kHz FLAC file of Exodus by Bob Marley & The Wailers is incoming, the Vega does straightforwardly impressive work in pretty much every respect.

It’s an expansive and well-defined listen, with more than a suggestion of authentic left/right stereo presentation – the coherently laid-out and properly controlled soundstage only adds to the impression of space and scale. Despite the open areas of the soundstage between participants, there’s a nice sense of unity and singularity to the way the Dali serves music.

Tonality isn’t, strictly speaking, neutral – there’s a hint of warmth to the sound, especially through the midrange. But this is a trait rather than a shortcoming, and it allows an already expressive vocal line to sound even more direct and characterful.

Frequency response is quite carefully even – so despite the fact the Vega has four drivers contributing to bass response and two radiators doing nothing but, the bottom end is not overstated. It has depth and substance, though, and a whole lot of detail regarding texture and harmonic variation too – and Dali’s claims for extension all the way down to 32Hz seem, remarkably, fair enough. 

Switch to a vinyl copy of New Order’s True Faithand the low-frequency control allows the rhythm and tempo to snap along in the most naturalistic manner. Detail levels are high across the board – there are textures and pads buried deep in the mix here, but the Vega can not only identify them but it can give them appropriate weighting in the overall presentation too.

The rather approximate vocal is full of attitude, and there’s a respectable amount of bite and attack at the top of the frequency range – but happily (and slightly surprisingly, given the Dali has four tweeters on the go) the system stops well short of top-end hardness or glassiness. And this is true even if you decide to explore the upper limits of the prodigious volume levels the Vega is capable of generating.

As far as the low-key dynamic of tonal and harmonic variation are concerned, everything I’ve mentioned about the Dali’s facility with detail retrieval holds true here – and the system is adept at contextualising these little up- or down-shifts.

But when it comes to the broader dynamics of quiet/loud/LOUDEST there’s not quite the available headroom you may have been anticipating. There’s a difference between least intense and most intense that the Vega is more than capable of alluding to – but it’s not as obvious nor as expansive as is ideal.

The Dali’s overall character is one of good taste and maturity – this is all well and good, of course, and probably preferable to having its metaphorical eyes out on stalks the entire time given the visual sophistication that’s in evidence here. But some music demands a bit more abandon and a little less good taste than the Vega seems willing or able to summon.  

Should you buy it?