DALI iO-6 WIRELESS ANC HEADPHONES

WIRELESS NOISE-CANCELLING HEADPHONES

DALI’s first-ever headphones are proof that when a loudspeaker company gets into the headphone business, other headphone designers should pay serious attention!

Around a decade back, the headphone market exploded. Driven by the youth-orientation of then-Monster’s Dr Dreslash-Beats headphones and boosted by Bluetooth freedom, the size of the market mushroomed. Dozens of new brands were introduced to grab their share, and every hi-fi brand on the planet rushed to create its own headphones. In this category you might imagine that established loudspeaker brands would have an advantage—headphones are, after all, merely loudspeakers writ small and stuck on your noggin. Yet DALI never did so.

Danish Audiophile Loudspeaker Industries, which had been founded in 1983 by Peter Lyngdorf (originally as Danish American Loudspeaker Industries), watched from the sidelines, seemingly unwilling to jump on the bandwagon.

So when DALI’s first-ever headphones had their premier public outing at IFA 2019 in Berlin, DALI’s booth in Hall 1.2 was positively loaded with demonstration pairs of these over-ear wireless headphones in their two finishes of an attractive ‘Caramel/White’ combo or more purposeful ‘Iron Black’.

These were, in fact, DALI’s first-ever and second-ever headphones, since they were showing two models: the iO-6 reviewed here, which has noise-cancelling including a transparent ‘pass-through’ mode, and the iO4, which seems to be physically identical but without the noise-cancelling and its controls.

THE EQUIPMENT

More to the point, DALI has not simply grabbed some affordable off-the-shelf parts and delivered a ‘me too’ headphone. While relatively compact, the iO headphones manage to incorporate large 50mm cone diaphragms which show DALI’s speaker heritage in using not the common Mylar or other synthetic material, but honest-to-goodness paper/fibre cones. The over-ear enclosures are braced and stiff like speaker cabinets.

There are also with rubber dampeners inside to eliminate vibrations. And even the fabric inside that protects the diaphragms is imprinted with a matrix structure like a loudspeaker grille.

“Yes, we approached these like we were building loudspeakers, but for the head,” DALI’s product manager Krestian Pedersen told me as he held out the sample drivers so I could examine the pulpy paper cones. “Every part is uniquely DALI—these are by far the most complex products we have ever done.”

Pedersen admitted that DALI had looked briefly at the headphone market during the boom years, but had been put off by the quality of Bluetooth, which was then “not ready for quality hi-fi transmission… we waited until the market was absolutely mature,” he said.

That maturity of Bluetooth will depend on the codecs supported by your sending device. Android devices that support Qualcomm’s aptX codec will get slightly lossy near-CD-quality transmission.

Those with aptX HD can achieve up to a slightly lossy 24-bit/48kHz. It’s good to see the AAC codec also, so that owners of Apple devices, which don’t (yet) employ aptX codecs, can at least move up from the base-level default SBC codec.

Even with the higher-quality Bluetooth that’s available now, DALI discovered that headphone design wasn’t such an easy task as it had expected. “We probably didn’t appreciate the sheer complexity of headphones before we started the iO project,” says the company, admitting that originally it thought too simplistically in terms of shrinking DALI loudspeaker tech down to a wearable size. But no. “We quickly realised that to create a headphone worthy of carrying the DALI logo, we would have to dedicate an R&D team to look into every aspect and detail of the design, audio performance and construction.”

The result is something genuinely distinctive. Over-ear design was quickly chosen as a given in order to allow a large driver and a full seal against external noise, since they wanted to produce a version with active noise-cancelling. Like many rivals, the ear pads of the iO headphones use viscoelastic or ‘memory’ foam which will soften under pressure but return to its original shape afterwards—it’s a material often used in mattresses that claim to shape to your body, though depending on the formula used it can also retain and reflect heat.

To improve comfort (and durability), then, the foam here is covered in a soft synthetic leather, and each earpad can be removed with an easy ‘bayonet’-style fitting which Pedersen delighted in demonstrating to me, so that once the pads do eventually show signs of wear, they can easily be replaced.

The padding under the headband is the other common wear point on over-ear headphones, and for this DALI has chosen durable but soft silicone rubber, which can be cleaned if needed. Indeed the iO-6 is IP53 rated, so good against all but the worst dust storms, and resistant to light rain—which is just as well as I got them unexpectedly drenched during one walk, and they emerged unspoiled.

DALI’s other two main priorities were fairly obvious essentials—lightness of weight, and ease of use. DALI said it considered weight as a key criterion of material choice in every individual component, and has achieved a very bonce-friendly 325g for the iO-6, with a mere 5g shaved off that for the non-noise-cancelling iO-4.

IN USE AND LISTENING

As for ease of use, the Danes done good.

The headphones arrive with a little sticker on the centre cap of the right head-shell showing that you can press it once to pause/ play, twice for next track, and thrice for the previous track.

While relatively compact, the iO-6 headphones manage to incorporate large 50mm cone diaphragms

And you can’t miss the giant instructions printed rather gloriously on the inside of the lid as you open the box—although these are pictographic only, and we would have much preferred the inclusion of the excellent and well-written 12-page manual which is only to be found on DALI’s website.

Also in the box is a solid semi-hard zip case, stylish though significantly larger than those provided with, say, Sony’s WH1000XM3 or Sennheiser’s Momentum 3 headphones, partly because the iO headphones fold once to go flat, but not twice to go foetal. Tucked into an internal pouch is a cable for non-Bluetooth listening, which can be either passive or active, and a USB-A to USB-C cable for charging—and for playing, as we were pleased to discover: the iO-6 offered itself to my Mac computer as a USB playback device capable of receiving up to 24-bit 96kHz playback. Since most of my music is 44.1kHz, I dropped it back to 24/44.1 (there was, unusually, no 88.2kHz option).

As for getting them onto Bluetooth, anyone with a passing familiarity with headphones won’t need any instructions anyway. Switching on the iO-6s via the slide switch initiates pairing, which was straightforward, and you need do it only the once, after which they will automatically connect to that device every time you turn them on. A HAL-like voice announces through the headphones how full your battery is, also whether they’re pairing or connected.

If you want to use the USB-C for listening, you have to disconnect them from Bluetooth and have no cable connected, as rather than add a switch to move between sources, DALI has simply set a priority—the analogue cable overrides Bluetooth, and both override USB audio. This is sensible ordering, as it means you can charge them while using the other inputs simply by having the USB cable attached and one of the other inputs also in use.

DALI does not offer a control app, and I think that’s a good thing.

Apps generally connect by using a second LE-Bluetooth connection, which is a complication, and besides I am always nervous of any product which overly relies on an app. Apps have been known to disappear or become incompatible with later device technology before the end of product life (remember when all those 32-bit iOS apps stopped working with iOS11, or last year when a bunch of products stopped working with Spotify Connect?). This is doubly so with a product like this which you might hope to have extended longevity.

The only real loss from going app-less here is a lack of EQ, other than using the built-in EQ of your device (and the EQ settings on iPhones and iPads are frighteningly coarse, and best avoided). But this is only a problem, of course, should you not like the sonic balance served up by the iO-6… and I would predict this to be unlikely. They were first left tissing away to themselves in the attic for 24 hours, with me enjoying only a brief spell investigating their USB qualities while charging them, after which I slotted them into my daily lifestyle, mainly via Bluetooth, but also settling in for some critical listening via each cable option.

Not that Bluetooth is poorly served.

While my preference was for the mild data compression of aptX delivery, they were a wonderful listen even using AAC from an iPad Pro. There was an initial impression that they were marginally bass-light, but within minutes I had adjusted to the iO-6’s balance, which eschews the undue pushy emphasis down low delivered by so very many brands to make people go ‘Cor!’ but which can become fatiguing and bloomy with so many tunes and with extended listening. There’s simply none of that here.

A test sweep sounded utterly flat down to 70Hz with a smooth and slow decline beyond that to the low frequency limits of hearing, with none of the usual ‘push’ down low followed by a gap further up. So flat, not bumpy.

This linearity, along with familiarity, is one reason DALI used a large-diameter paper-fibre diaphragm with well-controlled break-ups, backed by neodymium magnets. Indeed when researching its first headphone DALI says it was shocked to discover the fact that “within the headphone industry, drivers are often considered as cheap commodity components, with no real engineering attention paid to them. They all appear to be ‘copies of copies’ originating back to the 1950s telecom industry and often still referred to as the ‘receiver’.”

The resulting sound is entirely natural, and sailed through torture tests with flying colours. The twin basses of Herbie Flowers opening Walk On The Wild Side were not only clearly differentiated but more obviously one acoustic and one electric than I’ve heard on anything short of high-end electrostatics. Lou was thrillingly crisp but never edgy, the strings soft and sweet. Leonard Cohen’s broadband vocal was delivered as one piece, rather than, as with many headphones, with separate bass and treble components. The Teardrop Explodes’ difficult Colours Fly Away was fully supported by the upper bass which can be lost in the dip of ‘pushed’ EQ designs.

The nightmarishly edgy vocal of Dion on I Read It (in the Rolling Stone) was entirely on the nail—its sharpness was evident, because it’s in the production, but it wasn’t exaggerated, and was again supported by such a solid bass that I could hardly believe I’d first thought them light in that department.

DALI has prioritised sound quality, simplicity of use and battery life, in a design which looks stylish and luxurious

Going to Tidal for Tyler, The Creator’s EARFQUAKE the opening forward bass synth was superphat and fizzy, and the verse’s descending bass notes wildly loud, as they should be, but without this monstrous bass preventing the diaphragms from accurately reproducing the rest of the mix, which very often happens with Mylar drivers. Cabled sound usually trumps Bluetooth, but not in the case of passive listening here. Left hanging from Apple’s Lighting-to-minijack flying DAC, the iO-6’s sound was still highly enjoyable but more boxy than the Bluetooth version, with Lou Reed’s vocal positively pointy and thin, though the spread of sound, ambient detail and the clear edging of sounds was improved in clarity.

The third option is to use cabled with the power on, which will still chew battery life, but was the preferred balance so far. A slight bloom under Leonard’s vocal evident on Bluetooth was banished, but the sound was still warm and rich, while also gaining the detail and precision of the cabled connection.

Finally I put them back on the USB connection, which requires their power to be on, not that you’ll drain it because they’re charging at the same time, and this proved exemplary in both clarity and tone, the best way to experience the iO-6’s best abilities, clearer and tighter still, although since you’re tied to your computer by a one-metre USB cable, this is the least mobile of your listening options.

Noise-cancellation was excellent, though I couldn’t road test this in my normal way, what with getting on a plane being entirely out of the question during the review period and even a bus being a green-sticker lottery. Instead we blasted broadband noise from our largest speakers and sat by a terrifically noisy bathroom fan to judge them against our Sony and Sennheiser references. The DALIs were pretty impressive just in their passive isolation from noise, adding excellent low-to-mid noise cancellation when it was actively engaged. They didn’t go much further up the frequency scale (NC never does), so they didn’t prevent, say, TV sound coming through, other than the deadening from the passive isolation.

Active noise cancellation uses a chunk of power, but given the iO-6’s remarkable (quoted) 60 hours of operation without NC, battery life is reduced only to a still-impressive 30 hours with it turned on, more than enough for the longest flights. And crucially you can turn it on or off even when using the wired connection, so you’re good to plug into in-flight systems—a double-pin adaptor is in the case if required.

The lower-most of the right earcup buttons shuttles between ‘transparency’ (feeding outside sounds in), ‘noise-cancelling off’ and ‘noise cancelling on’, with the calm bloke returning to talk you through these.

Here he sounds less like 2001’s HAL and more like the bloke who read the UK ‘Protect and Survive’ nuclear attack warnings in the 1980s (and on Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s Two Tribes). We’re not sure which is the more alarming association, but it’ll only disconcert those of an age to have been pumping away to Relax in their youth.

CONCLUSION

So in all essentials we had zero complaints on the DALI iO-6s’ operation. Musically, meanwhile, not a single example was delivered with less than delight. They sound more open than many closed dynamic headphones, their warmth and balance beat several of our references hands-down, their sound far smoother and less pumpy than Sony’s premium noise-cancellers for example, the Sonys winning only on physical storage size and noise-cancelling that goes higher in frequency—though it can cause pressure imbalance in the process, something I never felt with the DALI iO-6.

The DALIs do not have the ‘smart’ functions of some, such as pausing when you drop them to your neck—you have to turn them off, or wait for them to power themselves down. But what’s smart for one user can be annoyingly dim to another.

DALI has prioritised sound quality, simplicity of use and battery life, in a design which looks stylish and luxurious. We wish it sold for $100 less, because its $699 RRP puts it in some premium company, including planar magnetics. But if it were my money, I’d put it here. The DALI iO-6s are just more relaxing. Jez Ford