Acoustic system DALI Zensor 5: description, features and reviews

DALI is a company that has nothing to do with surrealism or Tibetan Buddhism. This is an abbreviation, which stands for Danish Audiophile Loudspeaker Industries, the Danish company for the production of speakers for audiophiles, which for 30 years has gone from sales in the local market to a respected international brand. Despite the success, the company's products can not be found often.

Compact mini-tower

The considered acoustic system is represented by three of the five models of the ruler. It includes the Zensor 5 mini-tower for the left and right channels, the Zensor Vokal for the central, and the Zensor 1 compact shelf pair for volume-channel positions. The remaining columns are a large tower and a large shelf acoustics. With the Hsu Research VTF-1 MK2 subwoofer, they are a well-scaled system, with an equally attractive price of $ 2,244. In addition, the DALI Zensor 5 AX is being modified, which features a built-in stereo amplifier with a power of 2x50 W, Bluetooth, apt-X, an analog mini-jack and a TOSLink optical port.

Dane from China

Although the Zensor speakers are designed and engineered in Denmark (at least as it is written on the boxes), they, like almost all competitive acoustics today, are manufactured in China. True, it is claimed that they are assembled in an enterprise completely owned by DALI, where they also produce their own drivers, and where the work is carried out under the daily supervision of the Danish manager, in accordance with the standards established in the European factory.

Dali Zensor 5: Features Overview

The design features a removable front panel, a stable aluminum base and a single-wire connection. The model is two-striped and is made of MDF, finished with a vinyl coating, available in white (DALI Zensor 5 White), black (Black Ash) and nut (Light Walnut). Together with their own drivers, the speakers are equipped with crossovers that demonstrate the quality of the components. At the heart of the hull design is a simple box, which is a rectangular parallelepiped. It is unpretentious and inexpensive, but beautifully trimmed with visible care and quality that can not be counterfeited. The dimensions of the column are 163x825x267 mm. Weight - 10.3 kg. After a decent run-in period, the DALI Zensor 5 easily copes with its duties and demonstrates features that seem incredible to the "pocket" racks with a 25 mm soft dome tweeter, a pair of 134 mm wood fiber, MF / LF drivers and a front Hole bass reflex with a frequency of 44 Hz. Acoustics allows you to reproduce sounds from 43 Hz to 26.5 kHz.

The sound they produce is broad and coherent, and the intimate-texture vocals are unshakably centered. The upper part of the frequency range is clean and detailed, and the integration of the highest sounds with the lowest ones is very smooth. Sharp dynamic shifts are not a problem, and tonally DALI are balanced and unified. True, the Zensor 5 has difficulties with a clear transfer of low frequencies - instead, the speakers swallow slightly the front of the note. This slightly spoils the rhythm and deprives the recording of the last span of the attack, slightly complicating the audition. But this is not critical.

The sensitivity is 87.5 dB at frequencies from 500 Hz to 2 kHz.

Customize

All Zensor speakers have rigid multi-connector, so the connection is simple and mechanically strong. By connecting all six speakers and balancing them, you can start testing.

Attentive listening to full-range stereo (without a subwoofer) quickly confirms what is visually clear from the very beginning - the DALI Zensor 5 mini-towers are too low. Their small height displaces the acoustic center 30 cm below the height of the ears when the listener is in a sitting position. Vertical dispersion is quite good, but still leaves a noticeable decrease in the "atmosphere" if you sit straight, compared with lowering to the level of the speakers. You can correct the situation by simply tilting the speakers back so that their sound axes are directed toward the ears. The manufacturer delivers DALI Zensor 5 Black Ash, White and Light Walnut with adjustable legs (and rubber bumpers for wooden floors), but to get the required height, it was required to use additional items. This gave a slope of about 12 degrees - not enough that the case left above began to slide, but it was not far from it.

Listening

Due to such manipulation, the sound of DALI Zensor 5 becomes noticeably more open and wide. The speakers have a very honest, natural tonal balance. According to users, compared to monitors with a similar aperture area and volume of resonators Energy Veritas, Zensor 5 sounds a little "darker", with a barely perceptible shade of less airiness (or, possibly, less depth). They do not transmit the lowest frequencies, which is a consequence of the small size of the bass speaker, only hint at the warmth of the middle basses, and do not give crystal clarity to the bass timbre, although they tend to approach it. And it is commendable, as Energy Veritas cost twice as much as in the times when they were produced.

Demanding material, such as Why We Can Orchestra Gordon Goodwin, showed the mini-towers on the positive side. Their ability to design the complex musical texture of this big band, including not only the wind instruments, but also the leading bass, all in a sterile, close-to-original closed perspective, was impressive, yet quite fascinating. Problems with immersion in this heavily colored music did not arise, and large transients from bass and drums collided, demonstrating real authority. The stereo effect was, as is usually the case with small two-way speakers, fairly accurate and stable, but slightly less rich in frontal depth and atmosphere, compared to what I would like to hear from much more expensive designs. The clarity of the middle range of strong solo elements (such as trumpets or female vocals) is excellent, they have a nice, solid (albeit modest) projection in the front of the stereo, as well as a reliably clean, distinct tonality, even at significant loudness.

Budget alternative

If you compare the DALI Zensor 5 with the shelf Zensor 1, then we can say that they are very similar, despite the presence of an additional woofer and front-end bass reflex, in contrast to the rear in the second version and a much higher body. Both models sound quite close to the original, although in adjacent but physically discrete positions. The Zensor 5 produces only slightly lower frequencies and is slightly louder, but the differences are much smaller than one would expect, and in a multi-channel system with a well-chosen and carefully tuned subwoofer, perhaps the flaws of the shelf model will be vanishingly small, at least in rather A small room. It will be useful to know those who want to save money. Mounted on racks at the correct height without tilting, the shelf version ideally fits the inclined mini-towers. Almost perfect correspondence between the first and fifth models is all the more surprising since they have different separation frequencies: 2400 and 2900 hertz.

One of many

By and large, nothing bad is said about DALI Zensor 5 owners: acoustics is a finely balanced and well-designed system. Nevertheless, it has many competitors: almost all respectable manufacturers (and even less respected) offer a relatively inexpensive assortment of two-lane columns made in China, also of very high quality. Such a wealth of choice, of course, positively affects consumers, and the acoustics of DALI Zensor 5 will be a good solution for them.

Verdict

Among the positive aspects of the model, users call the neutral balance, excellent tonal alignment of the center with the left and right channels, and its main drawback is the small height of the mini-tower. The combination of superior performance of high - quality two - way acoustics with an inexpensive 10-inch subwoofer creates an affordable system that competes with many speaker manufacturers in this price class. The system is focused on sound quality, not ostentatious, detailed, but not analytical, balanced, but not boring. For them, you need a suitable room and quality accompanying acoustics.