DALI

Rubikore 2

Standmount Loudspeaker

USD $4,000

Time flies, doesn't it? It's been a whole decade since DALI launched its Rubicon range of loudspeakers and over two years since its Kore flagship loudspeaker made its debut (pictured below at High End Munich 2022). Safe to say, then, that a reimagining (or at the very least, a refresh) of the Rubicon range is due – and DALI has employed a lot of what it learned developing the Kore in the process of turning Rubicon into Rubikore. This isn't the first of DALI's ranges to benefit from Kore-derived technology, but it's by far the most affordable.

Rubikore is a five-strong line-up – two floorstanders, the Rubikore 2 standmounter tested here, plus an on-wall design and an LCR home cinema speaker. Of the stereo models, the Rubikore 2 is the least expensive, but at $4,000 USD per pair, that's not the same as saying it's cheap. Competition where speakers of this type and this kind of price is concerned is pretty fierce, so it's going to take more than some trickle-down technology derived from a wildly expensive design exercise to crash the top table currently occupied by the likes of Bowers & Wilkins, Monitor Audio and KEF.

UP CLOSE

Anyone familiar with the previous Rubicon 2 standmounter isn't going to be in any way startled by the appearance of the Rubikore 2 – to all intents and purposes, they're identical, at least as far as the cabinet is concerned. At 350x195x335mm (HxWxD), the new one strikes a nice balance between 'purposeful' and 'manageable', and at 9.5kg, it won't frighten a speaker stand or wall bracket.

Build quality is good, and the standard of finish is extremely high. My review sample is in the high gloss black finish, and it's worthy of the description – the cabinet is so lustrously glossy that I can see my face in it. Which is very much a double-edged sword, to be honest. If black isn't your thing, the Rubikore 2 is also available in high gloss white, natural walnut and high gloss maroon – the last being a finish you don't see every day. So there should be something here to suit your purposes where decor is concerned.

The rear of the cabinet features a Continuous Flare bass reflex port, tuned to 44Hz, above some chunky bi-wire speaker terminals. Up front, meanwhile, there's a relatively large (29mm) soft dome tweeter inspired by the original Kore loudspeaker. The manufacturer says it goes without the magnetic oil that's usually present in the voice coil to provide cooling and resonance damping to speed up the coil's movement and enhance dynamic response.

Beneath it is a similarly oversized (165mm) paper-and-wood-fibre Clarity Cone mid/bass driver with five pressed dimples intended to break up the cone resonances inherent in symmetrical designs. The driver is backed by a powerful double-magnet system that (according to the manufacturer) focuses the magnetic field and reduces losses. It also uses DALI's patented 'SMC' (soft magnetic compound) material in its motor system to reduce the braking effects that iron can impose on voice-coil movement.

The upshot is a two-way design with a claimed frequency response of 50Hz to 26kHz, a nominal 4 ohms impedance and 87dB/W/m sensitivity. Crossover is at 2.8kHz, and the crossover itself features components sourced from Mundorf – although it's worth noting that the fancy-pants SMC-Kore crossover inductors fitted to the floorstanding Rubikore models don't feature here.

The driver array can be concealed behind a cloth grille. Unlike the majority of competing designs, these don't attach magnetically but use push-in lugs. So when the grilles are removed, three visible lug holes slightly compromise the otherwise elegant look of the loudspeaker.

For this review, my loan pair of Rubikore 2s had their grilles removed and sat on a pair of Custom Design FS 104 stands. DALI is one of the few manufacturers that doesn't suggest a little toe-in is appropriate when positioning its loudspeakers. Point the Rubikore 2 dead ahead, and stereo focus and soundstaging will take care of itself, it's said. Amplification comes courtesy of a Naim Uniti Star via lengths of QED XT40i speaker cable.

THE LISTENING

This is a deft, insightful, unshowy and supremely unflappable loudspeaker. Try to rough it up with the spindly sound of Dying For It by The Vaselines, and the Rubikore 2 is no more uncomfortable than if you pander to it with the smooth, high-gloss sound of Donny Hathaway's I Believe To My Soul. It's just as happy to deal with the nosebleed attack of Squarepusher's Come On My Selector as it is the air-brushed sound of Yesterday Once More by The Carpenters. This speaker seems disinclined to imprint any kind of personality of its own onto a recording and instead does its best to get out of the way.

The result is a presentation that's effortlessly faithful to the source material, for better or for worse. The sound of The Vaselines, for instance, is all rattling, insubstantial treble and a midrange laden with cheap effects pedals. Karen Carpenter's voice, by contrast, is presented as a masterful demonstration of tone and timbre. If there's character, attitude, or emotional condition to be revealed in a recording, the Rubikore 2 finds it.

I'm sure that some listeners will hanker after a little more low-frequency presence and hardiness, but the DALI not only digs respectably deep into the frequency range but also loads bass sounds with all sorts of timbral and textural detail. It controls the low end with the sort of authority that makes rhythmic expression sound absolutely naturalistic, and when the going gets complicated, it's as agile as a cheetah.

The transition to the midrange is seamless, and once there, this speaker demonstrates the sort of fidelity that might conceivably, on first acquaintance, be mistaken for a lack of engagement. But there's nothing matter-of-fact about how the DALI reproduces the midrange; rather, there's a poise and balance that again has me reaching for the word 'effortless'. And at the top end – the journey to which is equally smooth – there's plenty of shine and bite from that oversized tweeter and a substantial dose of refinement, except when playing those recordings that don't deserve or aspire to it, anyway.

Dynamic headroom is considerable, and the Rubikore 2 has no problem tracking changes in intensity or attack faithfully. Its powers of detail retrieval mean the most minor harmonic variations in an instrument or a voice are contextualised without alarm. And when the source material demands it, the DALI is capable of creating a well-defined soundstage that extends well beyond the physical 'left/right' boundaries of the speakers themselves.

Of course, it is possible to goad the Rubikore 2 if you really set your mind to it. Some recordings – Chicken Walk by Hasil Adkins, for instance – simply refuse to be brought under the DALI spell. But that's true of any loudspeakers that come into contact with recordings as wilful as this, so unless your tastes extend no further than the roughest, cheapest and most gleefully amateurish music you can find, the Rubikore 2 deserves, or more accurately demands, to be heard.

THE VERDICT

It is conceivable that the balanced, considered and faithful nature of this loudspeaker will not suit every listener. Some will demand a little more shock and awe for their money, a bonfire-night description of where their money has gone. But for the rest of us, the adaptable and meticulous nature of the DALI Rubikore 2 will greatly reward over the long haul.

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