DLS 126 Performance Series Coaxial speakers

Coaxial pressed steel chassis, six and a half inch speaker with simple six decibel passive filter for the tweeter. The midwoofer has exactly the same specifications on paper as that used with the component versions of this speaker yet of course bears a pole rising up through the middle in order to house the tweeter which is fixed-position. A single quite large capacitor sits alongside this tweeter by way of highpass filter. There are cables and fixings supplied and you also get simple metal mesh grilles with a smart DLS badge upon them, and a separate paper printed template to use to cut your mounting holes. (I found a small printing error deep in the supplied spec and installation sheet for the whole range that said the mounting depth was 28mm rather than the actual 58mm.)
– Woofer size: 16.5cm (6.5in)
– Tweeter: 16mm (0.63in) EFR Dual Cone
– Power handling capacity: 50w RMS/80w max
– Frequency range: 50Hz to 20kHz
– Crossover: simple 6dB cap
– Sensitivity: 92dB (1W/1m)
– Magnet size: 80mm (3.15in)
– Mounting depth: 58mm (2.28in)
– Mounting hole:145mm
– Impedance:4 Ohms
Review by Adam Rayner
DLS are a very specific sort of an outfit. They make speakers for real music fans rather than boomers. They may make some badass woofers but this set is about once again sounding good on headunit power as well as better on small amps. As such, they also have many holes around their edges and their grilles are really just non-ornate jobs, meant for unobtrusive use for if you have to.
Putting these behind stock grilles is a good option as they are a very forward-sounding speaker and on the horribly low-fi pop-music grade production on Kate Nash’s ‘Foundation’ CD single, the vocal was a spitchy and almost painful thing on-axis. Then, I listened off axis and it was a load better, as after all, no-one will ever hear these except for off-axis in a car. After that, I slapped an SACD into the Sony MEX DV1000 SACD deck (very rare beastie indeed) as it has so much higher resolution than regular CD and I was amazed at how good these speakers were revealed to be for the money asked.
They image well and they even have some creditable bass response, although this is accurate and not overblown so really begs for a decent subwoofer to be used with them. They are a good looking speaker for all their simplicity and the very best bit is definitely that tweeter.
It is very fast and sweet for all it looks like a cheapie and that ‘EFR’ or Extended Range Frequency Response really seems to work. A very keen set of coaxes for those with a leaning towards the better sound quality end of life who don’t mind that they are not able to roar like lions.
Sound Quality 8.0
Build Quality 8.0
Power Handling 8.0
Efficiency 8.0
Value For Money 9.0
Overall rating 8.2