Dali KATCH

When compared to the Dali KATCH the Canton Music Box is a significantly superior offering with price being a significant decider. At $699 the Dali KATCH is a beautiful looking player and where the Canton Music Box delivers 60 Watts of output the Dali KATCH only delivers 50 Watts from 2 X 25W Amp.

The pill-shaped aluminium cabinet looks the part and the black speaker grill which consists of ABS/ polycarbonate baffles also adds to the look and feel of this device but the big question does this deliver $200 worth of added value over the Canton Music Box S offering or $400 worth of value over the Bose SoundLink Mini II.

Like the Canton offering there are buttons that control the volume, power, Bluetooth pairing and sound modes are on the top bar of the Dali KATCH.

Again, this device was easy to pair, flip up the rubber button on the device and one can easily plug in none Bluetooth devices like the Canton speakers.

Inside this speaker are dual 3.5-inch woofers that sit on a specially designed chassis.

In a little bit of marketing spin Dali will tell you that the device has an inverted aluminium membrane and a special spider suspension system for their components.

There is also a port for the power charging adapter. The built-in battery takes about two hours to charge and delivers over 18 hours of playtime according to Dali. Though I am still mystified by their reference to “24 hours of untethered playback”.

The driver array includes two 21mm lightweight soft dome tweeters, backed by a strong neodymium magnet with high-power handling and high sensitivity to the tweeter.

Missing is a dedicated app for streaming and like the Canton offering, this device was easy to pair with a smartphone with music streamed via Spotify. I could play, skip tracks and adjust volume using my smartphone.

Like the Canton speakers one must hold the volume down and you instantly get a huge, sound filling a room to the point that it can become uncomfortable when at maximum volume. With the Canton offering sound distortion technology kicks in to balance the output.

I tested both the Canton speakers and the Dali KATCH speaker with recently release Jazz and Pop music. I have often found that older 60’s and 70’s tracks don’t sound as good when testing speakers as the content is often remastered and was not initially recorded as a digital file.