Dali Spektor 2 Stand Mount Speakers

[MSRP $500]

[Tl;dr: great pair of stand mount speakers. No particular complaints or suggestions, but may benefit from an amp with a fair amount of power, or in a smaller room/in near-field.]

                                            
Scores:

Cost-agnostic: 9 out of 10 Denalis

Cost-sensitive: 9 out of 10 Denalis

Intro. About a year ago, the powered studio monitors that live on my computer desk (Kef LSX) started throwing the flashing red ring of death. Kef is notoriously painful to work with on repairs, so in the meantime I wanted something to live on my desk for playing games or listening to music while I work. I’ve generally not been super impressed with most powered monitors I’ve heard in the sub-$1000 range, and I have a bunch of amplifiers sitting around the house, so I decided to give a pair of passive monitors a chance.

After a couple of VERY expensive recommendations ($2,000-3,000) left me feeling a little lost, I decided to go down to my local audio shop, Desco AV. They usually have a pretty good selection of mid-range speakers, and I’ve been very pleased with most of the stuff I’ve tried there. I listened to a couple of different sets of Dalis, and the Spektor 2 stood out despite the slightly higher price tag than I’d intended to spend.

These sit on my computer desk on extruded aluminum stands to the sides of my right/left monitors. For purposes of this review, they’ve primarily been driven by a PS Audio Sprout 100 that I’d been eyeing for a few years and finally bought when they went on pretty good sale last fall. The amp is connected by USB to my Mac Studio. The speakers are connected to the amp by cheap low-gauge speaker wire that came with my Klipsch outdoor speakers. There is an old Energy subwoofer connected to the Sprout, but it’s turned down pretty low and mostly there for movies.

Sound. These sound great. So great, in fact, that I’ve mostly swapped over to listening to them while I work rather than the much more expensive hi-fi setup in my office. Part of that is because the good hifi is off to my left while the Spektors are directly in front of me when I’m working on my computer, but it’s also due in part to just how good these sound.

Treble: The treble on these is bright, crisp, and responsive, without being harsh or sibilant. They can be a little punishing for some kinds of tracks; for example, the horn fanfares on Brasstrack’s “Intro” can splatter a little, but it’s actually just an artifact of the recording rather than the reproduction of the speakers. Vampire Weekend’s “2021” is my go to for testing if speakers or headphones reproduce poorly mastered treble, and I can hear every wart through this system. Ditto Born Gold’s “Lawn Knives.”

It also beautifully reproduces well-mastered treble. Miles Davis’ muted trumpet comes through perfectly on “Will O’ The Wisp”, with clear separation and bright intensity. Interestingly, they’re also really good at silence; when audio drops out they are perfectly and instantly quiet.

Mid-range: The midrange is really excellent as well, crisp and dynamic. The claps on “Paradise Circus” by Massive Attack are clear and separated and not bothered by all of the other things going on in the mix. Both male and female voices are reproduced reasonably faithfully. Jill Scott’s power and control comes through beautifully in “Call” by Robert Glasper, and Arlo Park’s voice effortlessly floats through “Impurities.” Vessel’s introductory vocals on Sleep Token’s “Alkaline” are incredibly crisp and tight, and you can hear every ounce of emotion in Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car.”

Bass: For stand mounts, the bass here is really impressive. Not quite up to the level of the Kef LS50, but at a third of the price you wouldn’t really expect them to be. Over time, I’ve turned down the subwoofer under the desk pretty dramatically; I mostly want it for the occasional movie track. “Superpredators” by Massive Attack sounds heavy and imposing, just as it should, and they handle the low-end fuzz on Andy Stott’s “Violence” deftly, even when the bass pours on around 2:30. It’s present, without being oppressive. You don’t get quite as much clarity and depth on “Got ‘Til It's Gone” by Janet Jackson, but I have heard VERY few pairs of speakers (let alone stand mounts) that perfectly reproduce Q-Tips bass line.

Separation: the stereo imaging on these is pretty incredible in the near-field. I’m sitting with the speakers to either side and about eight inches forward of my sitting position, and the phantom center is almost distractingly good. Especially on tracks like “Love Can Damage Your Heath (Laid Mix)” by Telepopmusik and “So Much to Say” by Dave Matthews Band, you can tell exactly where any given instrument is located, and track them as they move in space.

Overall: These are really excellent stand mounts. I briefly ran them with Schitt’s Rekkr desktop speaker amp and they were fine, but they definitely seem to benefit from a well-powered amp like the Sprout. At some point I’m going to swap them with the LS50s in my main system to see how they pair with my Devialet Expert 140 Pro, a much higher-end, well-powered amp, but it’s hard to want to pull them out of this system even temporarily.

Construction. These are built into a nicely-made faux wood grain cabinets with two drivers (a 1” high frequency and a 5.25” low frequency) and a nice, removable transparent foam cover. For stand mounts they’re relatively small (11.5” x 6.7” x 9.35”) and fit nicely on my desk without feeling particularly intrusive. They’re a little too wide to be used as a headphone stand, but they’ll do in a pinch. They have solid five-way binding posts on the back, easily adjusted and accessed, and a small rear-firing port.

Appearance. I think they look good for what they are. Are they ground-breaking? Nah. They look like the Boston Acoustics I bought as my first speakers in 2003. But fine and not super distracting.

Comparisons. I don’t have anything particularly comparable that would be fair to measure against. They’re not nearly as good as the Kef LS50 that sit in my main system, but they’re in an entirely different price category. They also clearly outstrip the Pioneer Andrew Jones SP-B22-LR stand mounts I used to use for ATMOS, and it’s been too long since I listened regularly to my Boston Acoustics CR32s. The only other bookshelf speakers I regularly use are exterior speakers in my bathroom and on my deck, and these are far and away better.

Maybe the fairest comparison is to the Kef LSX they replaced, with the total cost of the Spektor 2 and Sprout 100 pretty comparable to the LSX. I had the LSX on my desk for … four years? And I rarely used them for anything other than playing video games or watching videos on my computers. By comparison, I’ve had the Spektor 2s running most of the time that I’ve been in my office for the last six months, which tells me that I prefer these by a wide margin. I’ll be curious to do some A-B testing when I get the LSX back from being serviced.

Value. $500 isn’t cheap for a stand mount speaker, but these are serious, audiophile-grade and -focused speakers and by that measure they’re relatively inexpensive. At least in my limited testing they seem to benefit from a properly powerful amp, so you’ll need to take that into account if you want to give them a shot. I’ll be curious over the next few months to try running them from a couple of other of my amps to see how they perform.

Overall. I love these speakers. They’re perfect for my near-field use case, and they sound far larger than they are. I probably wouldn’t use them as my primary audio system in a large room, but in the near-field or for a small room they’re pretty excellent. I really have no complaints about them, especially for their category.

#reviews #speakers #dali #spektor2 #psaudio #near-field #computeraudio #Kef #lsx #2024