advantages
- Elegant design, luxurious construction
- Subtle, dynamic and refined sound
- Hides cables
disadvantage
- Strain a touch at high volumes
- Expensive
- Will cause envy among friends
key specifications
- Valuation Price: £2699.00
- 2.5 way bass reflex design
- Aluminum cabinets and plinth
- 28mm soft dome tweeters and two 5″ woofers
- High gloss finish in red, black or white
- magnetic grid
- “Invisible” cable management system
As the name suggests, Dali is a company with serious artistic intentions, as renowned in Hi-Fi circles for their groundbreaking designs as they are for their refined sound quality. Whether the Dali Fazon F5 is used for home theater or music, its speakers will please both your eyes and ears.
The Fazon F5 are a good example of what the Danish company is all about. These floorstanding speakers look unlike anything else, with a design so lavish and luxurious you might feel self-conscious just by their presence.
But priced at £2,700 these aren’t the sort of speakers you throw in the car at Tesco. They’re aimed at buyers whose love of polished sound quality runs as deep as their pockets, which might rule out many of our readers. But with such an irresistible design that defies convention, we couldn’t help but give them a whirl.
The Fazon F5 are not considered part of a 5.1 system, nor is there a matching subwoofer to create a 2.1 system. As such, they’re primarily designed for music playback, but of course they still add shine to movies or TV programs in their stereo configuration.
Carefully lifting the burly units out of their boxes, their lineage is immediately apparent. The molded aluminum cabinets are 919mm high and finished in a stunning high gloss Ferrari Red that is smooth and shiny to the touch. The sides and rear are seductively curved – a feature that not only looks good but also helps eliminate standing waves – while a black magnetic grille snaps onto the front to cover the drivers.
The whole thing stands on a stable, round aluminum base that has a clever cable winding mechanism. On the back of the stem is a small panel that can be detached and pulled out, which has spring clips attached that accept raw wire or banana plugs. You can route the cables through a hole in the base and into the clamps, then snap the panel back into place for a clean, cable-free appearance. This method is ideal if you intend to run the cables underground, as they run directly and out of sight into the speaker.
The Fazon F5s are quite possibly the most beautiful speakers we’ve ever seen – sleek, modern and distinctive, guaranteed to turn heads in any room. The biggest appeal is the sexy red finish, but if that’s too much for you then it also comes in black or white gloss finish.
The Dali Fazon F5 features a 2.5-way bass reflex design that inherits technology from Dali’s MENTOR series, including a soft dome tweeter that’s a few millimeters wider than most (28mm versus the typical 25mm ), which is supposed to deliver the sound “more air”.
It sits above two 5-inch mid/bass drivers, with cones made from Dali’s wood fiber blend—an ultra-light, stiff material that resists unwanted vibration. The overall frequency response is specified as 49 Hz – 23 kHz, with a sensitivity of 87.5 dB and a recommended amplifier power between 40 and 180 W.
The baffle (which holds the drivers to the front of the speaker) uses a two-layer construction. Its two parts are sandwiched together with polymer sealant to ensure an acoustically inert structure. Combined with the aluminum chassis, this gives the Fazon F5s a wonderfully tight and rigid feel from top to bottom.
This phenomenal build quality results in exceptional sound that is just as insightful and polished as you would expect for the money. Unlike some style-focused speakers that look stunning but have solid pants, this is a proper audiophile achievement – a wonderful example of how style and substance can coexist in perfect harmony.
We played Kind of Blue by Miles Davis on CD and the jazz masterpiece sounds smooth and silky, with the F5s easily digging out the crucial treble detail on the slightly shuffling drums and breaths during the sax and trumpet solos. They orchestrate the complex arrangements and the interplay of the instruments wonderfully, giving each element room to breathe.
They also do justice to Paul Chambers’ deft double bass work, which sounds clunky yet nimble. The perfectly tuned drivers and competent crossovers deliver a harmonious sound.
The F5 are best with Hi-Res music on SACD. The amount of musical detail they unearth is breathtaking, with a dexterity and precision in the high frequencies that you just don’t get from budget speakers.
But that doesn’t mean it’s all dry and clinical – it’s an exciting listening experience when you use the right material. With fast dance music, the sound is effortlessly entertaining, with a sense of rhythm and dynamic punch that draws you into the music. Kick drums and basslines have noticeable depth and solidity.
The Dali Fazon F5 speakers also deliver clean and unadulterated vocals and demonstrate excellent midrange reproduction. They’re accomplished, versatile speakers that make everything from Hi-Res discs to MP3s burned to CD sound absolutely mesmerizing.
Movies also sound great through the F5s, especially ones with lots of busy background noise and subtle details they pull out brilliantly. Loud action scenes are suitably intense, and even in this stereo setup it delivers a wide, spacious soundstage. If we’re picky, the F5s didn’t sound 100% comfortable when we cranked the volume up loud, and showed one or two very minor signs of strain. But other than that, we can’t rate them highly enough.
verdict
Overall the Dali Fazon F5s are a fabulous speaker set that combines stunning design with the right audiophile sound quality. They offer a wealth of detail, with agile bass response and beautiful tone for vocals. Music is their bread and butter, but they can easily handle the rigors of an action movie. Such sonic and aesthetic luxury doesn’t come cheap though – with a £2,700 price tag, you’ll need a large bank balance to make them yours.