The world of premium all-in-one music systems has grown significantly in the past few years, with some of the biggest names in hi-fi adding their own take into their line-up.
Dali is the most recent of those brands, with its announcement of the Vega all-in-one wireless system. Now, I’ve had the chance to have a listen to it, and it’s got some pretty interesting tricks up its sleeve – but I think one of them in particular makes it really interesting.
You spin me right round
For a start, as well as sitting on a piece of furniture, it can be wall mounted – and not just horizontally, but vertically too. Dali says there has been a lot of work done to ensure the Vega retains it character no matter how you listen to it, which is all down to something the company is calling its Adaptive Orientation Adjustment.
Developed in-house by Dali engineers, this uses a built-in accelerometer to detect the Vega’s position, with its stereo channel mapping automatically reconfigured on the fly if this changes. Custom EQ settings for each orientation have been created to ensure very similar sound across all orientations.
And it works. Or certainly, that was my experience when I heard it on the show floor at High End Vienna. Therefore the usual trade show caveats apply, but as it was rotated for me on moving wall-mount (a party trick for the show – the wall-mount that comes in the box is fixed), I was really impressed with not just how steady it holds its sonic profile, but how uniformly its sound is pushed out into the room too.
Considering how drastically the layout of the Vega’s left and right channels change as its position moves, that feels like an achievement. I’m still not wholly convinced that many people are looking at installing this vertically, but if you’re short on furniture and wall space, perhaps…
Vega only loves in stereo
However, I was also suitably impressed by another bit of Dali-developed technology, namely its Adaptive Stereo Enhancement (ASE) – but perhaps not for its main use case.
The aim of ASE is to ensure all recordings can fill a room, by dynamically applying stereo widening depending on the details of the input signal. It does this by upmixing the stereo input into five channels, then analysing the results to decide how much – or little – ASE is required.
That means that if you’re listening to a jazz trio, for example, the ASE would – if switched on, it is optional – kick in stronger to make that more simple sound have a similar stereo presence to a full orchestral arrangement.
While certainly effective in a show floor environment, I generally don’t like any additional processing on my music, so on the surface I’m not sure how much use I would get from it at home. Where I think it could be much more interesting is with movies.
While Dali is very clear it does not consider the Vega a soundbar, it does have an HDMI eARC input, meaning connecting it to your TV is a possibility. And when I got to hear the ASE effect switched on for a Netflix stream of Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King,it made all the more sense to me. The immersive widening effect was really quite convincing, and only makes the Vega more compelling as a soundbar replacement.
It’ll take a full review to see if these first impressions ring true in a home environment, of course, but if the Dali Vega can take over a number of jobs in my living room, it’ll certainly make its £2,599 asking price all the easier to swallow.
