Diptyque DP 107

Positioning

Positioned further toward the back wall of my room, more or less in the same spots where I used the Apogees, they still sound open and communicative, rather than drowning in room-induced midbass as it happens with most cabinet speakers in these positions unless I readjust the listening position accordingly. Set up like this, the room actually aids the bass response and -power, and also reduces the treble output but without diminishing the resolution or the immediacy. The midrange also becomes a little less forward in the process, but no detail is lost, nor are the speakers any less linear or transparent when they are placed nearer the front wall like this. In my case, in a room measuring 7 meters deep, the closest I placed them to the front wall was 160cm, but honestly, that doesn’t really say anything about these speakers’ overall preferred positioning because every room is different.

The manufacturer specifies a minimum distance of 1 meter from the rear wall and provided that the room is fairly normal, I have no reason to doubt this. Typically, placement further into the room aids the spaciousness and can reduce bass issues, but in my experiments, besides boosting the low bass and extending the range but without ever becoming boomy, these speakers seem to be decidedly non-picky with regards to placement. Apart from the distance from the rear wall, the manufacturer also recommends placing the tweeters on the insides and to apply some toe-in, which I can both confirm. Using the tweeters on the outsides could potentially work in some circumstances but you’d need to give the speakers considerably more toe-in and place them closer to achieve good coherence between the drivers.

As my review progressed, I found that the speakers were so consistent and even-handed that it took me very little time to get accustomed to them. For days on end, I have listened to them, oftentimes momentarily even forgetting that I was not listening to the Magicos.

Cables

With speakers as neutral, transparent, linear, and delicate as these, many cables will work well and the decision is more up to the user than dictated by synergy. I found the speakers to perform admirably when connected with the most strictly neutral and direct-sounding cables that I have which are the AudioQuest Fire interlinks and the Jorma Trinity speaker cables. But for those who don’t want to spend more on cables than on the speakers, as well as for those who wish to make the speakers sound just that little bit smoother and friendly but without sacrificing any detail, the Driade Flow 405 speaker cables worked remarkably well, as did the Driade Flow Link Reference 808 interlinks.

A change of power amp

Prior to doing the review, Distributor René Degens of Dimex told me in advance that the Diptyque speakers work very well with the NuPrime AMG-STA power amp, and having tried this myself, I can only concur. As described in detail in the amp’s review, this little beauty possesses some qualities that are unusual in its price range and some that are unusual for typical Class-D altogether. Suffice to say that the AMG-STA drove the DP-107’s with more than enough power to play as loudly as I wanted while eliciting a highly detailed, utterly linear, and superbly refined sound from them.

A change of preamp

While I love the direct output of the CH C1 DAC as well as the non-sound of the CH L1 line stage, the Aries Cerat Impera Reference does things for the sound that are beyond the capabilities of any transistor preamp that I have heard so far. Either with the CH A1.5 or the NuPrime AMG-STA, this preamp throws the soundstage open in a way that I have not heard other preamps do and it does favors for the staging in all dimensions, including the depth plane. Additionally, and rather unusually for a tube preamp, the Impera Reference adds a welcome amount of bass heft which, along with its magic midrange makes the DP-107’s turn in an even more alluring performance. Of course, I realize that precious few people will combine 6000-euro speakers with a 22.000-euro preamp, let alone a 33.000-euro power amp but the important lesson to take away from my experiments is that the speakers have absolutely no issue revealing precisely what is going on upstream. They possess a level of transparency that is absolutely rare at their price point.

Neighbors

This section was not intended as a serious part of this review but given the surprising results, I felt compelled to include it. Every now and then, my neighbors, Bart and Jessyca, come over and listen to my system or review components. They consider music lovers and not audiophiles. As such, they may lack the audiophile jargon but I found that Jessyca, in particular, is highly perceptive and has a keen ear. And it has proven interesting, reaffirming, and fun to have her assess things without explaining what to listen for, and subsequently finding that she often hears the same differences as I do. This also goes to substantiate my belief that one does not need “golden ears” or years of training, to hear the differences about which I tend to write on this website. All one needs is a willingness to be perceptive and not dismiss things that “should not matter”. Then, it becomes more a matter of differentiating, perspective, and indeed, of experience and vocabulary.

The neighbors have heard some of the aforementioned Apogees at my place years ago but they have never had such a product in their own living room. With the DP-107’s being as portable as they are, I decided to make that a reality.

The speakers that Bart and Jessyca normally use are the rather unusual Duevel Planets, chosen mostly for their spacious sound. Their amplifier is nothing esoteric: a Marantz NR1710 but speaking as the owner of one of its forebears that is still used in my media room, and even having used it with the Duettas at some point, I know that this is a great performer at its price. It may be the brand’s cheapest cinema model but it has a linear power supply and a true class AB power section and it is highly musical.

Interestingly, upon hearing the FoilFlex cables in their system, they were so impressed with the improvements that they decided to buy the cables for themselves. Although the cables cost three times as much as the amp, their logic was simple in that no matter what upgrades would come, the speaker cable would be set for some time.

The decision of introducing the Diptyques in their system was made because Jessyca was keen to hear what this would do in their own room, not because I expected to obtain a great synergy. But we certainly got more than we expected! Not only did the humble Marantz drive the Diptyques with absolutely no issues, but we were also presented with an unprecedented level of transparency and precision. I enjoyed seeing Jessyca’s jaw slowly drop while she uttered sounds of disbelief. It was one thing hearing more resolution in my system but it was something of a revelation to experience this in their own system. As in my room, the speakers were not particularly fussy in terms of placement even though their room is not acoustically optimized in any way. However, with their chosen listening position, more or less in the middle of the room, the Diptyqes did sound a little too lean in the bass with many tracks.

Given a music diet such as my own, this was not a problem but while exploring Bart & Jessyca’s super-eclectic taste in music, the speakers proved less proficient with the rawer styles such as rock and metal (for instance Idles, Eminem, and Slipknot), in part, because such music requires a certain amount of rawness and in part, because compared to their own ported speakers, some bass and authority were missing.

While the Marantz is a great little amp, the DP-107’s would likely have sounded fuller and more muscular, and thus more suited to Bart & Jessyca’s heavier music, if given a bigger and more potent amplifier, and of course, the balance can also be addressed by rearranging the listening position but in this case that wasn’t an option.

What sounded particularly great in this context were MOID, Big Thief, and Massive Attack. Jessyca mentioned Nils Frahm in particular for the delicate and precise impact of the piano keys. What’s also worth mentioning is that the speakers were positioned no more than one meter from the rear wall, and yet, there were absolutely no signs of the speakers sounding boomy or in any way colored.

Although Bart & Jessyca were hugely impressed with the DP-107’s abilities and their price actually didn’t scare them, the speakers were not a step in the direction that Bart & Jessyca wanted to take given their musical diet and the desire not to change the room setup. But still, I thought this was a nice experience to share.

Conclusion

The DP-107’s sure surprised me in a very positive way. Not only do they excel in the areas where magnetostatic dipoles tend to be brilliant such as resolution, precision, transparency, purity, and lack of distortions and colorations, but they never sound dry or overdamped and they have impeccably natural timbre. Their transient behavior is absolutely impressive, bordering on what the Magicos can do and certainly not what I am accustomed to hearing from Magnepan or Apogee. And in addition to sounding technically impressive, they also move me emotionally. So what’s missing, one might ask. Well, that would be bass impact and overall slam, and to a lesser extent, soundstage depth. But do note that it’s not bass depth that is missing, only the kind of “kick” that you get with cone drivers.

But for a speaker costing 6000 euros, I’d say that is a major achievement. There’s no such thing as the perfect speaker and there will always be lesser aspects. Certainly with cabinet speakers. So, if you are in the market for an ultra-revealing speaker and your musical diet does not lean very heavily on metal or hard-rock, the DP-107’s could be ideal.

No doubt, the DP-107’s owe a good deal of their fantastic performance to the tweeter’s Neodymium magnets and the woofer’s Push-Pull Bipolar Magnet technique. For one, this makes it possible to produce bass of this quality and depth from a relatively small panel, and second, it enables a level of expression and immediacy that I have not yet heard from other ribbon speakers.

Associated Equipment

External Links

Manufacturer’s website: diptyqueaudio
Distributor for the BeNeLux: Dimex

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