By My buddy Randy Goldberg is the co-founder of Bombas socks. He and family (his wife, Jen Isaacson, won an Oscar at 35 as a producer on the Questlove documentary, Summer of Soul, about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, aka: Black Woodstock). While playing golf recently, Goldberg and I were talking about just how expensive it has gotten to fly from New York to Los Angeles. Goldberg’s wife Isaacson is from the area and her parents live nearby, while Goldberg and his family lived in Manhattan until recently moving to Pacific Palisades. Their timing on this long-planned move was beyond terrible, as they moved only a few months before the devastating fires that wrecked my house and eviscerated their newly-acquired home. The ability to fly from New York to Los Angeles with the kind of awesome luxury that one would expect from an international carrier is actually available from upwards of four airlines these days between the nation’s largest two cities. United’s Polaris Class service is one that I’ve used for years now, and it is no secret. United flies the same Boeing 787 Dreamliners across the United States as they then do to Asia, Europe, and even Africa. The seats are great. The service is great, too. The planes are a bit of a return to the glamor of flying in the past that none of us have seen since long before 9/11. The problem is the cost. For example, any of us can fly from Los Angeles to pretty much any location in Europe, also on a Dreamliner with lie-flat sleeper seats, often for a few hundred dollars less than United charges to go to the Big Apple. It isn’t cheap to travel like a king, but once you get a taste for this mode of transport, it is hard to buck up $2,500 for a seat on a single-aisle 737 or Airbus 319 and traverse the nation – especially without some cool toys to keep you entertained for five or six hours in the air.
All this travel talk brings me to the Dali IO-12 headphones (buy at Crutchfield). Priced at a clubhouse-leading $1,750, these are luxurious, audiophile-grade headphones designed for the music lover who is often on the move. Where the Dali IO-12s seperate from the pack is that they are very possibly the leader in headphone comfort, luxury, and ease of use. Are they worth nearly $2,000 for your travel rig, gym bag, or even to be connected with a wire at home for a premium audiophile headphone experience? That’s what we are here to find out …
What Makes the Dali IO-12 Headphones Special?
- The ear cups on the Dali IO-12 headphones are vastly more comfortable to my ears than anything else in the category, including the recently-reviewed $1,250 Dali IO-8 headphones (read my review). The shape of the ear cups is different. They are not round like the Dali IO-8s, bur instead are more oval or even rectangular. These ear cups more effectively cover your ears and provide old-school, physical noise cancellation long before you hit the ANC (digital noise canceling that uses digital circuitry and multiple microphones, pioneered by Sony and Bose but now used in every good headphone product today) button.
- The Dali IO-12 headphones use a very large 50-millimeter driver that shares technology with some of Dali’s larger, fancier audiophile floorstanding speakers. The Harman Curve (a widely cited standard in the headphone world) is designed around making headphones sound like actual physical speakers in a room. Dali brings their SMC loudspeaker driver technology right into your headphones, in the hopes of giving you those “two-channel feels” like you get at home when you are sweating it out on your Peloton or have your fine ass parked in Seat 5J on that aforementioned Dreamliner. The simple reality is that we can’t always be listening to our main audiophile rig. The Dali IO-12 headphones ask the age-old audiophile adage posed by Stephen Stills (inspired by Billy Preston), which is “If you can’t be with one you love – love the one you’re with.” Amazingly, this musical paradigm flows through to headphones better than you might expect with the Dali IO-12 headphones.
- You can connect the Dali IO-12 headphones wirelessly or with a wire for those who don’t mind being tethered with wired headphones. Wired headphones almost always sound better (more open), but the appeal of a product like the Dali IO-12 headphones is their wireless connectivity.
- The battery life on the Dali IO-12s is reportedly 35 hours. All modern headphones now tend to have really long battery lives, and the Dali IO-12 headphones are no exception. There might be some with even longer battery lives, but let’s put it this way … you could fly across the country and spend a week on your trip and then fly back, likely without using up one full charge on the Dali IO-12 headphones. They last a very long time before running out of battery charge.
- You likely do not want to use the Bass Mode on the Dali IO-12 headphones, thus use HIFI Mode instead. The HIFI mode is a curve that is going to appeal to an audiophile 100 out of 100 times. I learned this when spending time with the Dail IO-8s, and that didn’t change with the more expensive Dali IO-12 headphones. Switching is as easy as clicking a button on the outside of the ear cups.
Why Should You Care About the Dali IO-12 Wireless Headphones?
You can only be sitting in your audiophile system for so many hours of the day. Even if you are lucky enough to work in a room with a solid audiophile system installed, there is likely going to be a need for most of us to travel, go to the gym, or head to the coffee shop, and being able to bring our tunes with us is nice. Being able to bring truly audiophile-grade tunes with us is even better. The person who will consider spending $1,750 on Dali IO-12 headphones wants to travel with a reasonable facsimile of his or her audiophile system right in their briefcase or travel bag.
Some Things You Might Not Like About Dali IO-12 Headphones
- There is only current color option, which is dark brown. At these prices, it is perfectly reasonable to expect a more fashion-forward design aesthetic or at least a second color option. The Dali IO-8s offer a different, lighter brown/tan color scheme that visually I like better and which is more in the realm of the Bowers & Wilkins Px8s, which also look really sweet. Looks are one thing, but the Dali IO-12 headphones sound better and are more comfortable than most, which we need to factor into the overall value proposition here. Note: there is a mocha gray option coming soon but not to market at the time of publication.
- Like an EV car, the Dali IO-12 headphone’s battery only charges to about 90 percent, even after hours connected to a USB-C power source. This isn’t as much of a ding on the Dali IO-12 headphones as an FYI for potential buyers. The battery life on the Dali IO-12 headphones is suitably long, even considering that the headphones don’t let you charge past 90 percent. That won’t affect the way you listen, but will protect your battery long-term, thus a good thing. The voice inside your head when using the Dali IO-12 headphones tells you how much battery that you have left when you power them up.
Listening to the Dali IO-12 Wireless Headphones …
One of the best-sounding records that I know of (think the level of, say, Lyle Lovett – Joshua Judges Ruth good) is Rei Momo, a solo David Byrne album. It is a spicy, salsa-flavored record that absolutely gets down, but is staggeringly open-sounding, and wonderfully recorded and mastered. On the Dali IO-12 headphones, it was hard not to be impressed with the way that the many musical layers (tracks) were presented on “The Rose Tattoo,” which is one of the best cuts on a stellar-sounding album. If you handed somebody who isn’t an audiophile a pair if Dali IO-12 headphones and said, “Just listen,” they would immediately get it. As an esteemed audiophile, you will get the sonic message even faster, as the bass extension is tight-sounding, accurate, and not bloated (unless you use the Bass Mode, which I don’t like and am betting you won’t either).
On “Turn It On Again” from Genesis’ compilation of the same name, Turn It On Again, you hear extreme levels of detail in the opening seconds of band members mumbling and instruments coming to life. When Phil Collins calls off the 4/4 timing early in the song, you lunge forward into an immersive classic rock experience. The sonic detail on Collins’ drums is audible, but his vocals are presented in front of the musical bed, which is rare, as most wireless over-the-ear headphones tend to sound more folded-down. The Dali IO-12 headphones sounded more open. You don’t normally hear that from wireless headphones, but you do with the Dali IO-12s.
In looking for something very energetic and complex, I cued up “Synchronicity I” from the Synchronicity album by The Police. This driving tune reminds me a little bit of “The Song Remains the Same” opening from Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy. This is a very complex track in terms of its arrangement, even for a small ensemble rock band. Sting’s voice sounds out front, as we heard with the other two musical examples. What was most impressive was the detail on the driving, 1/8-note, hard-picked bassline. Stewart Copland is the best drummer not named Neal Peart or John Bonham,and this epic song shows off his prodigious skills. The Dali IO-12 headphones kept up with this frenetic jam in admirable ways. I was loving it.
Will the Dali IO-12 headphones Hold Their Value?
Headphones are unlike audiophile components, in that they are much more of a wear and tear item. Personally, I tend to be pretty rough with my headphones, thus they would be unlikely to have much value left after a year or so of regular use. More careful audiophiles might use the very well-crafted case to protect their Dali IO-12 headphones, which helps. The box and packaging for the Dali IO-12 headphones are epic and absolutely worthy of saving if resale value is a concern.
In the end, resale value will have a lot to do with how the first owner used headphones like the Dali IO-12 headphones. Unlike many lower-priced headphones in the category, there is a significant buy-in for the Dali IO-12 headphones, and some of that could be retained under the right conditions.
What is the Competition for the Dali IO-12 Headphones?
The T+A Solitaire (read the review) at $1,600 a pair is a solid comparable for the Dali IO-12 headphones. Both come with European designs. Both are very luxurious. The T+A are hard to find, thanks to tariffs, but are more fashion-forward. Both headphones have that resolved, accurate sound. The Dali IO-12 headphones are a bit more comfortable, but both are ultra-premium. I like the white with red inner-ear-cups look on the T+A Solitaire headphones. My personal pair are black and look much more like other headphones in the space.
My reference headphones in the wireless category are the Mark Levinson No. 5909s (read my review). The Mark Levinson No. 5909 headphones (buy at Crutchfield) are some of the best high-end “cans” that you can find at any price. They have a design language that is representative and respectful of the legendary Mark Levinson brand. They are very also very resolved-sounding, and I can hear the Revel speaker influence the same way I can feel the Dali vibe in the IO-12s.
Final Thoughts on the Dali IO-12 Headphones …
Somebody was going to make a really high-end wireless pair of Bluetooth headphones eventually. Thank God Dali did, because the Dali IO-12 headphones (buy at Crutchfield) meet a market need that was only really being met by a very small number of other very high-end audiophile headphones in this market category.
While not for everybody, mainly because of cost, the Dali IO-12 headphones are wireless headphones that are designed to bring the at-home audiophile experience to the road. That concept alone is worth the price of $1,750 for many of us who travel a lot, or those of us who can’t spend most of our time with our beloved two-channel audiophile system. The Dali IO-12 headphones are a significant audiophile headphone investment but worth every penny, if you ask me.
