I’ve got a new best friend. It’s cool white, very discrete and called Dias. Thanks to Dias for the past week I’ve been listening to some great sounds while I work or unwind.
Brilliant sound is what Dias is about. I like a good stereo sound, over the years I’ve invested a lot in audio equipment and music CD ripping is my business now. But getting a good sound here, while I work, is difficult so I love the sound I get now. Yes, the quality is high – very high – but that’s not the main thing. Thanks to Dias I get a great stereo sound wherever I am in the office.
Incredibly Dias stereo sound follows you round the room.
Just think about that. Like me you’ve probably tried speakers attached to your PC, or maybe driven by your iPod. You probably set things up so you get the best sound where you sit, but then when you move, you lose the stereo. Not with Dias – now, my stereo sound really does follow me round the room. Doesn’t matter which PC I’m working on (I rip CDs using six computers), doesn’t matter which end of the office I am, standing up or sitting down, the same great sound.
I’ll try to describe the quality of the sound from Dias. The first thing that struck me is that it’s loud. Some music just needs muscle, rock for sure but a lot of classical music just is loud. An orchestra is loud, and there’s no point in trying to relive an orchestral experience when you can’t make the windows rattle.
Dias, if you want, is thumping loud. Wind up the bass and my wooden floor does overtime transmitting the low notes. That brings me on to the next thing I noticed. Perhaps it’s best described as detail and I hear it in two ways, First, with a good bass setting the music isn’t lost to a dull thump. Dias delivers the bass I love without smothering the rest of the music. Second, there’s a lot of fine points in sound that Dias delivers brilliantly. Sometimes that’s high notes, but I’ve also noticed (I love live recordings) its often little things like a shout from someone in the audience or an aside to another musician, this new system brings out music data I’d expect to hear only on much more expensive systems.
Great at the top, solid at the bottom and faithfully reproducing everything in between. It’s hard to describe what I hear but Dias conveys emotion. Maybe I should call it a warm sound, maybe it’s a human sound quality rather than an overly technical rendition you get with some computer generated sound. Thanks to that emotional quality the Dias is easy to listen to and doesn’t leave you feeling strained. Dias is a good colleague at work and a relaxing friend indoors in the evening.
Where does Dias stack up among the competition? Well, most of my clients connect their iPods to Bose units and Dias can hold its head up in that company. The sound is every bit as good. Both Bose and Dias have that effortless quality people love, plus a handy credit card style remote – all the sound settings are at hand plus a mute button when the phone rings. Subjective comparisons are hard to make but I’d give Dias the edge over Bose because it generates sound over a larger area and is better at carrying that sound round the room.
I’d love to explain how Dias stereo sound follows me when I move and does so without the traditional two speaker system, but I can’t. Try the Dias website – www.diasmusic.com. I’ll just tell you what you get. The biggest of the three ice white units generates the bass and has a black knob labelled ‘spatial level’ which is what does the clever bit – getting stereo in effect from a single speaker. This box can be hidden out of the way, at the moment it’s living under my desk.
Next is the small white satellite unit with speakers at the front and on either side. By the clever use of sound from these outlets Dias generates the great stereo. Because the sound is outstanding anywhere in the room, the location of this unit isn’t as critical as you’d expect in a good stereo. When I set the system up I played with its location but the Dias sounds good wherever the satellite sits. There’s a docking station for my iPod (which charges the iPod while it plays). The cabling is simple to connect and long enough to enable you to locate the units where you want them.
Finally the small remote control. I put my iPod into the dock, hit a playlist and using the remote got the sound I wanted within a couple of minutes. I tweaked the spatial sound knob and found half way round worked great and I’ve left it there. You can use the iPod dock as a sound source – with the new iPod having such a massive disk all your music would be at hand – or connect your computer’s sound card to listen not just to music but internet radio or sound streamed from websites. If you connected this to Apple’s AirPort Express, or a Roku unit, you’d have a brilliant distributed sound system.
That’s my new friend, my best friend. If you love music check out Dias. If you’re interested in digital music check out how Dias makes sound, it’s just so much better than the old two speaker approach. If you’re thinking of pumping sound round your house, check out Dias. If you’re thinking of Bose, check out Dias – sounds better and its £100 less expensive. Dias should be your new best friend too
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