DALI Rubikore 2

REVIEW
Simon Lucas
Aug 11, 2025

DALI‘s Rubikore 2 comes from the Kore. It’s been a couple of years now since DALI whipped the necessarily large covers off its flagship ‘Kore’ loudspeaker. Forward-thinking and uncompromised in its engineering, suitably stratospheric in its pricing and (to be frank) with looks only a mother could love, it served – as so many flagship designs from so many loudspeaker brands do – as a design exercise, a statement of intent, and a test-bed for new technologies. Technologies that might hopefully make their way down to loudspeakers designed to compete in the real world.

Yes, 2023’s Epikore 11 utilises some core Kore technologies. Although it’s roughly half the price of Kore, it remains witheringly expensive. Kore’s strengths are finally available to those of us who have to work for a living. With its new Rubikore range, DALI has democratised some of these technologies to the point that the Rubikore 2 – the only stand-mounter in the five-strong range – can be had for a mere £2,299 per pair.

Rubikore or Rubicon?

Visually, there’s very little to overtly separate the DALI Rubikore 2 from 2014’s Rubicon 2 stand-mounter that this model replaces. The cabinet is a very similar 350 x 195 x 335mm (HxWxD). Its front baffle and rear panel are similarly curvy. Mind you, this is not automatically a bad thing. The Rubikore 2 is relatively good-looking in a purposeful sort of way. The standard of build and finish is impeccable. Each of the four available finishes – high gloss white, high gloss black, high gloss maroon and natural walnut – has something to recommend it in aesthetic terms. The description ‘high gloss’ has never been more appropriate or deserved.

On the curved rear of the cabinet, there are four extremely hefty speaker terminals arranged for bi-wiring or bi-amping. They can accept bare wire, spade connectors, or banana plugs. A fairly assertive ‘Continuous Flare’ bass reflex port tuned to 44Hz sits above them.

The DALI Rubikore 2 front baffle, meanwhile, features a tweeter above a mid/bass driver in the long-established manner. The soft dome tweeter, at 29mm, is unusually large for a speaker of this size. It takes inspiration from the original Kore design. This is arranged to function without the magnetic oil that’s usually present in a dome tweeter design. This oil provides both cooling and resonance damping. DALI reckons it can manage without. It cites the improved speed of coil movement and enhanced dynamic response as compelling reasons why.

Fairly Sizeable

The mid/bass driver beneath it is, at 165mm, a fairly sizable unit too. DALI’s paper-and-wood-fibre cone material is the subject of continual development. Consequently, it has that customary rusty reddish-brown colour. This ‘Clarity Cone’ features five indentations that render it asymmetrical. This makes it more resistant to the resonances that symmetrical cones can be prone to. A potent double-magnet system backs the driver. DALI claims it better focuses the magnetic field and reduces losses. It also uses the company’s patented ‘SMC’ (soft magnetic compound) material in its motor system. This minimises the braking effects that the more commonly used iron can introduce to voice-coil movement.

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It’s quite a dramatic-looking driver array. However, supplied cloth grilles hide the array if you want. That would be a shame, in my opinion – although the fact that DALI, unlike the majority of its competitors, doesn’t use magnetic fixings but rather three physical lugs to keep the grille in place spoils the un-grilled look just a little. Lug holes are never a beautiful thing.

Mundorf-fettled

So the DALI Rubikore 2 is a two-way design with a nominal impedance of 4 ohms and an ever-so-slightly tricky 87dB/W/m sensitivity. Frequency response, according to DALI, is 50Hz – 26kHz, with cross-over occurring at 2.8kHz. The crossover itself is fettled using Mundorf-sourced parts – but there’s no sign of the SMC-Kore crossover inductors that are fitted to the floorstanding Rubikore 6 and Rubikore 8 models.

Attached to a Naim Uniti Star using QED XT40i speaker cable, positioned on a pair of Custom Design FS 104 stands and pointing dead ahead – DALI is one of those few loudspeaker brands that doesn’t suggest you toe-in its products towards your listening position – the Rubikore 2 wastes no time in setting its stall out. And what a neat, tidy and well-stocked stall it turns out to be.

No genre refused

There’s no genre of music the DALI Rubikore 2 refuse to get on with, and no recording is too rough-and-ready to be a lost cause. No matter what you listen to – and during this test I listened to everything from Arooj Aftab’s Vulture Price [New Amsterdam] and The Smile’s Wall of Eyes [XL] to Stravinsky’s The Firebird Suite (Radio Symphonie Orchester Berlin/Lorin Maazel) [Deutsche Grammophon] and Up For a Bit with the Pastels [Glass] – the Rubikore 2 are balanced, organised and non-judgemental. If you like it, they want it too.

Detail levels are high in every circumstance – and, no matter how fleeting or how deeply buried in the mix, the DALI Rubikore 2I can put the details into convincing context every time. The soundstage they create is, given the right stuff to work with, notably well-organised and considerably larger on the left/right axis than the physical boundaries of the speaker cabinets themselves. Tonality is carefully neutral. The recording is the only source of heat or suggestion of chilliness you might hear.

Carefully managed

Low-frequency impact is carefully managed – some competing designs will undoubtedly hit harder and with more substance, but no price-comparable alternative controls its low-end activity more carefully. Bass sounds are full-bodied, loaded with variation and straight-edged at the moment of attack – and consequently, the Rubikore 2 describe rhythms with absolute positivity and conviction. Momentum is such that recordings motor along in the most natural and unforced manner. And when push comes to shove, the DALI can summon proper bottom-end impact – but it’s always in the service of the recording, rather than to intimidate.

The opposite end of the frequency range has more than enough substance. It can balance out the undoubted brilliance and bite the DALI Rubikore 2 bring to treble sounds. There’s genuine shine and drive when a recording demands it. However, it never threatens to get out of hand thanks to proper handling. Even if you enjoy listening at reckless volumes.

In between, the DALI communicate midrange information in a manner quite easily described as ‘lavish’. They reveal an absolute stack of information, parse it with complete confidence, and seem to understand a vocalist’s motivations completely. They’re an eloquent and expressive listen with singers of all types. Their confidence, where soundstaging is concerned, means there’s generally a pocket of space in which a vocalist can operate. This elbow-room is never at the expense of the unity of the presentation, though. There’s nothing remote or estranged about the way the Rubikore 2 positions a voice.

Pearly Dewdrops’ Drops

The journey from the bottom of the frequency range to the top is smooth in the manner of a dewdrop – the crossover point is imperceptible and the DALI Rubikore 2 doesn’t over- or understate any area. They have the effortlessly deep-breathing dynamic potency to put significant distance between the quietest and loudest, most intense passages of a recording – always handy when Igor Stravinsky is involved. And perhaps most impressive of all is the casual, unforced and utterly direct way in which the Rubikore 2 demonstrate its command over pretty much every aspect of music-making.

Some listeners, I don’t doubt, will mistake this even-handed, poised and uncolored presentation for a lack of passion or engagement. Some listeners will want a bit more bang for their buck, quite literally. They’re by no means an undemonstrative listen, these DALI Rubikore 2. Still, they aren’t about to demean themselves with unwarranted low-frequency activity or unnecessary forcefulness. What they are about is as faithful a rendition of music, and as full an explanation as possible of the electronics that are driving them, as possible. This is, for most listeners, as much as they might realistically hope for. Or, at least, that’s how it seems to me.

Technical specifications

Type: Two-way; bass reflex port stand-mount loudspeaker
Driver complement: 1 x 29mm soft-dome tweeter; 165mm ‘Clarity Cone’ paper/wood pulp mid/bass driver
Frequency response: 50Hz – 26kHz
Crossover frequency: 2.8kHz
Impedance: 4 Ohms nominal
Sensitivity: 87dB/W/m
Dimensions (HxWxD): 350 x 195 x 335mm
Weight: 9.5kg/each
Finishes: High gloss white; high gloss black; high gloss maroon; natural walnut
Price: £2,299, $2,500, €2,598 per pair