Dali MegaLine overviews from owners ?

Atmasphere, first off, I am not trying to be a jerk (but probably am doing a good impression of one with this post!)

You state that the Megalines don't need a lot of power to sound great, and to get thunderous bass. Correct?

And yet, Albert Porter is using four VTL Ref. 750's for his speakers. (Bi-amping is, of course, required for these speakers.) That is 1500 Watts per channel. That is a bit more than the average person uses for speakers. In addition, the recommendations from Dali are that 100 wpc is the minimum amount necessary, up to 1000 wpc.

Now perhaps Albert just loves his VTL Ref. 750s that were "required" to run his previous speakers, (the SoundLabs A1's, if I remember correctly), and he hates to give them up. (I know that if I went to a more efficient speaker, I would hate to give up my Lamm amps as well, even though I might not need the power!)

Anyway, it just struck me as "funny" that you state they are easy to drive, and yet you mention Albert Porter, who uses a lot of power to drive his. Perhaps Albert will chime in and let us know how much power he thinks is really needed to power these to their proper levels.

The reason I bring it up is that if Terryakhan is thinking of buying these and using small amps (such as 100 wpc amps that you mentioned) with them, that it might not work for him, depending on his room, and other factors, of course.

My two cents worth.

One of my customers has Megalines. The driver quality appears to be good, but the jumpers and connectors between the three sections appear to be poor, not befitting a $50k speaker, and I must assume the internal wiring and connections are similar. The crossover could be better.

I am the lucky guy who got the pair offered for sale here in December complete with the tube crossover. In the last three weeks I have finally managed to get them up and running. WOW!! Even without ANY tweaking they are stunning, wall to wall soundstage and a sound and image that seems consistant no matter where you are in the room, standing, sitting or leaning on a wall - any wall, its so cool! The tube crossover is a big plus giving more body and dynamics to the sound plus the ability to adjust the the gain between the amps. As for placement I used the Cardas dipole speaker guide as did Albert, as he states break in is all important even for a used pair if like mine that have been sitting unused for a while. Mine seem to be waking up more every session - in the last couple of days the soundstage has expanded and the speakers seem to be disappearing. As for power i think they love power although they should have identical amps on both sets of drivers I have Atma-sphere MA-2s on the bottom and VTL- 750s in Tetrode on the ribbons. Looking forward to playing and seeing what combo wins for me. It's very early days for me and in truth I have been unable to spend lots of time with them yet, but thats going to change.
Talk to Albert he has been of help to me also do a search here on Dali Megaline you will find the customer who Ralph is talking about he has two sets of MA-2s driving his Megalines he is a nice guy and happy to swap information. I can't see how anyone could be unhappy with these speakers the only major fault is once you turn the system on you can't stop listening to it. If you want to know more drop me a line. Regards Steve.

My friend Clemment Perry of Stereotimes, has a fully tweaked up pair of Megalines, and he is extrmely picky. A properly setup pair of Megaline's produces a sound quality comparably to the Wilson Alexandria or the NOLA Grands,for so much less!

I disagree about the thunderous bass comments. The Dali Megalines or in general the entire line does not produce thuderous bass at all. Dali tunes for speed and bass defination rather than depth and extension.

Clemment has used a multitude of powered and unpowered woofers to agument the speakers bass performance and once integrated the speaker will take on all comers!

As per the high power vs low power argument, I would like to see a speaker with this kind of dynamic range with a larger amplifier to gurantee the effortless sound they are capable of, but the choice and utilization of the amplifier is a personal one.

As per the build quality issues it does depend on the vintage latter Megalines are better made than earlier ones and many people has modified the crossovers to even higher quality.

Oracle is, of course, a Dali dealer which most certainly needs to be disclosed in this discussion.

Any opinion on his part without that disclosure is irrelevant.