Here’s something for you young ’uns in the audience to look forward to. As I was preparing to unbox the new DALI Kupid bookshelf speakers (US$600, CA$600, £299, €339 per pair), I thought to myself that it’s been months since my last DALI review. Maybe even over a year? Could that be possible?
Turns out, it was five years. My first review for SoundStage! Access, published on January 1, 2021, was of the DALI Oberon 1 bookshelf speaker ($599/pair then; $750/pair now) and Vokal center-channel speaker ($549 then; $750 now), and I’m just not sure how that’s even possible. How has half a decade flown by so quickly? And how have I become so mentally enfeebled that I thought it was mere months?
At any rate, that’s a question for me to sort out on my own time. The real issue facing us today is how DALI’s new Kupid stacks up, or at least what first impressions it gives. Not that the outer packaging offers much indication of that, to be fair. But I have to admit: I am and always will be a sucker for any hi-fi company that graces its outer boxes with line art of its wares.
There’s another thing I’m a sucker for: IKEA-style illustrative instructions, even for something as simple as unboxing a pair of standmount speakers. And I like it because there’s this inherent assumption in our industry that if you’re buying a pair of passive speakers, you already know everything there is to know about unboxing and setting up a pair of passive speakers. I like that DALI is at least open to the possibility of this hobby getting some new blood.
To wit: even the printed materials give good guidance for first-time stereo setter-uppers, and although I sort of automatically bristle at the advice about eschewing toe-in altogether (that stern X doesn’t leave much room for any other interpretation), I haven’t heard these speakers yet, so I have to remain open to the notion that this might be the right advice.
I also like the clear instructions for installing the included wall-mounting hardware, should you so choose (I absolutely do not choose, but that’s just me), including the fact that you should add two of the included stick-on rubber tootsies to the lower side of the back of the cabinet if you go this route. That’s not intuitively obvious.
Do I even need to say it? I also have a lot of respect for DALI due to its reliance on pressed paper-pulp padding here instead of foam. There’s some foam paper around the speakers to protect them from dings and such, but the bulk of the shock absorption comes from the pressed paper-pulp padding, which makes my green heart happy. It’s biodegradable and much more sustainable to manufacture to begin with, so kudos there.
Tucked inside a separate sub-box off to the side of the speakers themselves are two speaker grilles, which feature beautifully tapered edges and an undeniable midcentury vibe that pushes all the right buttons for me. Bonus points for their being magnetically affixed. That’s a big upgrade over the Oberon 1’s grilles.
And here we have our first look at the Kupid itself, finished in Golden Yellow vinyl. I didn’t get to request the color of my review samples in this case, but I secretly hoped for the Golden Yellow, just because in perusing DALI’s website, it was my least favorite of the five available options. That may seem strange, but I don’t like to be swayed by aesthetic impressions too much when I sit down to evaluate speakers, so if I have my druthers, I’d rather review the ones whose looks I like the least.
Dagnabbit, though, the yellow won my heart as soon as I’d unboxed the speakers. I still think I’d dig the Chilly Blue or Walnut more (especially given that the 4.5″ paper-and-wood-fiber midrange-woofers are dyed to match the cabinet finish), but laying eyes on the speaker in person has convinced me that there’s no bad choice in terms of finishes. My least-favorite choice on the screen proved to be stunning in the real world. So I’ll have to work hard to set that bias aside when listening.
Here’s a closer look at that midrange-woofer. The way the light grabs the filaments in the driver is seriously striking.
I also dig the accents in the waveguide around the 1″ soft-dome tweeter. What you might not be able to tell from still photography is that those accents are silkscreened in a sort of metallic ink, so they catch the light in quite a lovely way. Frankly, it seems a shame to even consider covering it all with speaker grilles, no matter how nice those grilles may be.
OK, fine. It’s a gorgeous speaker either way you go about it, and the beveled edges of the grilles go a long way toward making this look like a much pricier speaker than it actually is.
Here’s a quick look at the back of the Kupid, where you can see that the bass-reflex port sports the same design accents as the waveguide. Why? Because it looks nice, even if you only ever see it once.
The binding posts and the housing for them are also a massive step up in terms of refinement over what we saw on the Oberon 1. And it’s not purely an aesthetic thing. Even if you tighten a speaker connection a bit more than you ought to, it’s easy to get a good grip and loosen it up again, assuming you’re using a bare-wire connection. These speakers really deserve a good set of banana plugs, though. That’s just my two cents.
And here, at last, we see the DALI Kupid perched atop the Monoprice 42838 speaker stand that will be its home for the next month or so. Compare these photos with those from my KEF Q3 Meta unboxing just to get a sense of how itty-bitty the DALI Kupid is. At just 9.3″H × 5.5″W × 7.7″D, the Kupid is petite, to say the least, and yet it boasts specified low-frequency extension (‑3dB) down to 63Hz.
As to whether or not it lives up to those published specs, you can hold your horses. The answer to such questions will have to wait for my full review, coming soon to the pages of SoundStage! Access.
. . . Dennis Burger
dennisb@soundstagenetwork.com
