DALI Loudspeakers Wow Listeners With High-End EPIKORE Series Launch

Dali EPIKORE Introduction

DALI Loudspeakers recently launched a new high-end series with events in both New York and a northwest suburb of Chicago, and Audioholics was lucky enough to attend their Chicago suburb event which was held at the A/V retailer Simply Stereo. The new series, dubbed the EPIKORE series, uses a lot of technology developed for their flagship $120k/pair KORE speakers. The EPIKORE speakers can be thought of as baby KORE speakers since so much of the KORE technology makes its way into them. They replace the EPICON speakers and use some of the same technologies, albeit in an enhanced form, but they are very much a step up from the outgoing series.

Dali EPIKORE Drivers

These new speakers feature a host of advances in loudspeaker design, and let’s start talking about them with discussion of the drivers. These drivers use a new version of DALI’s SMC technology called SMC GEN-2. In areas around the voice coil within the motor, namely the pole piece and top plate near the magnetic gap, DALI uses a material called SMC or ‘Soft Magnetic Compound.’ What SMC does is transmit the magnetic field without being electrically conductive. Typically, iron would be used in these areas, but while iron is good at carrying a magnetic field, it also has some electrical conductivity which can degrade the linearity of the driver. The advantage of using SMC in these areas is a major reduction in eddy currents and hysteresis and thus reduction in odd-order harmonic distortion and an increase in upper-frequency sensitivity. The bass drivers and midrange drivers in the EPIKORE speakers use SMC GEN-2. For those who want the gory details about SMC use in drivers, Dali's product page describes it, but the reader can also refer to the patent for a more precise description. Further lowering distortion and broadening the bandwidth is the use of aluminum shorting rings in the midrange driver.

The EPIKORE bass drivers and midrange drivers also use a voice coil former made out of titanium rather than the standard aluminum, Kapton, Nomex, or fiberglass. Titanium has a great combination of stiffness and non-conductivity that combines the best qualities of all of the traditional former materials. Aluminum is very stiff, but it has electrical conductivity that can cause hysteresis and eddy currents which can lead to distortion products. The usual alternatives such as Kapton or fiberglass have very little electrical conductivity but are not nearly as stiff, and strength is an important quality, especially in a low-playing bass driver that encounters lots of stress. Titanium is twice as rigid as aluminum and twenty times less conductive. An advantage of this extra strength is that this allows larger ventilation holes that can be used in the former thereby increasing dynamic range by reducing thermal effects. 

The cones of the bass and midrange drivers are made from a material that DALI calls the ‘Clarity Cone’ diaphragm. The ‘Clarity Cone’ is a composite of paper and wood fiber that has been formed into a very particular shape and then treated with a unique lacquer. The paper/wood fiber material offers a good combination of stiffness yet light weight. The embossed shape helps to stave off ‘break-up’ effects- cone deformation at high frequencies which can cause major response problems- by adding structural reinforcement in areas prone to bending modes where the cone would naturally begin to bend at high frequencies. That allows the driver to play at a higher bandwidth which reduces the need for steeper crossover filter slopes and thus less phase distortion that come from those steep filters.

The EPIKORE tweeter system consists of DALI’s signature hybrid planar/dome tweeter that they have used for some time now. It is a two-way system with a planar tweeter taking the reins at 12.5kHz from a 1.4” dome tweeter. The reason why DALI does this is because they want a wide dispersion over the entire bandwidth as well as wide dynamics. Typical flat plane tweeters like ribbons and planars can hold a wide dispersion out to very high frequencies, but they aren’t usually able to displace a lot of air which is needed for the lowest octave of a tweeter’s bandwidth. A robust dome tweeter can move a lot more air and so can handle lower treble and upper midrange frequencies well, but dome tweeters tend to tighten their dispersion at higher frequencies. DALI gets the best of both worlds by simply using both. The planar tweeter is more than just a typical super tweeter since its job isn’t just to play high treble frequencies but to also hold a wide dispersion to the top of the speaker’s bandwidth. DALI has used this system for some time now, but in the EPIKORE series, it sees some major improvements in the form of an 8dB increase in sensitivity as well as lower distortion and power compression due to upgraded motors and a re-profiled waveguide on the dome tweeter.

Dali EPIKORE Crossovers

The crossover circuits for the EPIKORE series also have some pretty heavy-duty engineering in them. The big guy of the EPIKORE series, the EPIKORE 11, uses a 4.5-way network which means a high count of components. The other EPIKORE speakers are fairly complex as well, with the EPIKORE 3 using a 3-way network, the EPIKORE 7 using a 3.5-way network, and the EPIKORE 9 using a 4-way network. DALI does not cheap out on components either. Inductors that need high-inductance values are usually taken care of by iron-core inductors, although that is an imperfect solution due to the conductivity of iron. DALI again turns to their SMC technology to fill in for iron, and it has advantages over air-core inductors as well. Compared to air core, SMC core inductors have lower DC resistance, shorter signal paths, and less vulnerability to cross-talk. Compared to iron core, SMC core inductors have significantly lowered current distortion.

Dali EPIKORE Enclosures

The enclosure is given a great deal of attention. It is said that form follows function, and in this case a gorgeous sound is produced by a gorgeous loudspeaker. All panels except for the bottom panel have curvature, and this is done because rounded structures are stiffer and more rigid than flat panels, and also the absence of parallel internal surfaces help to break up standing waves within the cabinet. Within the cabinet lies a network of window pane braces for panel reinforcement, and the floor-standing EPIKORE speakers divide the cabinet between the bass drivers with a solid brace. The midrange driver is given its own sealed compartment to protect it from the back pressure waves of the bass drivers and to also give it its optimal space and damping. The midrange and tweeter assemblies are mounted to a sculpted aluminum baffle plate that will have practically zero panel resonances and is shaped in a way that will greatly reduce baffle reflections and diffractions.

Each bass driver (or set of bass drivers in the EPIKORE 11’s case) is given its own port. Instead of just a straight port with flared ends, the EPIKORE speakers use continuously flared ports for their entire length. Continuous flaring has been shown to help minimize port turbulence, so this design should allow higher output levels from the port than typical port designs.

Dali EPIKORE Initial Listening Impresssions

At the launch event, the EPIKORE 9s were demoed extensively, and they had a spacious and dynamic sound that I could see becoming addictive. The event was hosted by Simply Stereo in Palatine, IL, one of the largest dealers of DALI products in North America. They had some excellent demo rooms where I was exposed to more DALI products and even had the mighty KORE speakers in house, although the star of that evening was the EPIKORE speakers. Anyone remotely near the Chicagoland area who has an interest in DALI’s speakers ought to pay Simply Stereo a visit. The EPIKORE speakers are not inexpensive and range $15k/pair for their EPIKORE 3 bookshelf speakers to $60k/pair for their top dog EPIKORE 11 tower speakers. Any way you slice it, that’s a lot of money for a pair of loudspeakers, but these are some of the best looking and best built loudspeakers around that sound great and are hand-made in Denmark. There is no way to get anything like that cheaply, but I would suggest anyone shopping for speakers in this class to give them an audition. I am glad I did, and I hope to hear more of them in the future.

Unless otherwise indicated, this is a preview article for the featured product. A formal review may or may not follow in the future.