The 5.1 Package based around the Dali Oberon 5 has been around for some time now but still holds great acclaim across the industry.
I thought I should take a bit of time to set up the package and review it for you here. Connected to the brand new Arcam AVR5, the Panasonic UB-820 and our shop Panasonic OLED for source material I will put the system through its paces.
This speaker package comes in at £1,899 and consists of a pair of Dali Oberon 5 loudspeakers, Dali Oberon Vokal centre speaker, a pair of Dali Oberon 1s as rear speakers and the Dali E-9F Subwoofer as standard, although I tested it with the REL T/5x for subwoofer duties (which would bump the price up to just about £2,200).
The Oberon 5s themselves are a compact floorstanding loudspeaker at just 83cm tall, featuring Dali's wide dispersion 29mm soft dome tweeter and two 5 1/4" wood fibre bass cones. They are very easy to place because of their wide dispersion and don't like to be toed in.
The matching Oberon Vokal centre speaker critically uses the same tweeter and mid bass units for perfect system matching and the Oberon 1s finish the job as splendid rear speakers.
If you are looking to add Dolby Atmos to this system then you could happily use a pair of Dali Phantom E-60 in-ceiling speakers as heights, and in the shop I'm using our KEF T101s.
Firing up one of my favourite Netflix programmes, 'The Queen's Gambit', it sounds immersive, dark and encapsulating in the quiet moments of the chess final and during some of the more musical sections of the series the system really bounces along to the brilliant soundtrack.
Moving on to Amazon's series 2 finale of 'Star Trek: Picard', the system shows its precision of movement as items fly across the soundstage and bullets and phaser fire fill the room.
As a final test for the streaming aspect, now that Amazon have kindly added all of the James Bond franchise, I queued up the final outing of Daniel Craig in 'No Time To Die and with a full-bodied motion picture soundtrack the system really starts to come to life.
Moving on to Blu-ray, you can immediately tell the system has gone up another level with the increased data bandwidth that the disc-based format offers. Spinning up 'Bohemian Rhapsody', the Live Aid scene brings shivers to your spine with the emotion of being caught up in the concert, which even though I was only 5 at the time I still vividly remember.
Finally, moving on to my last test disc of the brilliant film '1917', my favourite scene, the bridge scene, the German rifleman's first shot still makes me jump physically. The Oberon package deals brilliantly with the atmospheric build up of the scene into the pure fear of the moment as bullets fly and the wonderful music score follows the run of the soldier across open ground whilst under fire.
I really am thoroughly impressed with this speaker package, I love the Oberon 5s as a stereo speaker but as a 5.1 package I think it is truly excellent value for money, delivering dynamics and scale reminiscent of much more expensive speaker packages.
As a whole system at under £5000 including cables, I think it is a splendid system for the money and very immersive to listen to with lots of different types of material from music to streamed series to full feature films.
If you would like to come and hear this great system then please get in touch to arrange a demo or just drop into our showroom to see us!
