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.
