DLS 269 Classic

This speaker looks absolutely bog-standard with a  two-way set of midrange and tweeter on a pole over a bass cone in a pressed Steel chassis. It looks a bit blunt in fact, as the drivers over the bass cone do not use any fancy Neodymium magnetry but rather big old lumps of Ferrite. The midrange is sealed-back and the tweeter is a grille-covered 16mm job. These come in the box with a small triangular sticker over them that reads ‘Caution: Protective film, Please remove before use.’ You get a superior set of very long bolts packed in with each pair. Much better than the standard bag of screws and fixings that most in the test arrived with.
The grilles are a simple pressed plate of metal mesh with a badge as is so often the case with USA or other non-Japanese speaker products (these are as Swedish as my Volvo, by the way) but in this instance could have done with emulating the Alpine Type R grille which has a peek a boo nipple-hole for their tweeters to play through. I played them (indeed all of them) without their grilles on.
– Pressed Steel chassis
– 16mm tweeter
– 50mm cone midrange driver
– Power handling 120w RMS, 240w peak
– Sensitivity 92dB (2.83V, 1m)
– Frequency Response: 50Hz to 20kHz
– Impedance 4 Ohms
– Mounting depth 80mm
– Lug connection terminals for spade -end speaker connectors
– Paper fitting template, fixings and speaker cable included
– Steel mesh grilles
Review by Adam Rayner
These made a really BIG sound. The midband hits with vigour and the highs are really aggressive and cut through, which means that electronica and dance stuff will be brilliant on them. Bass was good and rich so they’re also a real contender for the user who wants his six by nines to make as much thumping low end as possible.
Recommended for hooligans then, they are a street belter and as such excellent at flinging a really full range of tones out the window rather than them only hearing boom as and tizz as you heave into view.
I played that wobbling bass line to see if they could track the fancy footwork and found they loved it. Of all the speakers, these really offered a do-you-have-a-woofer-then? level of underpinning and in all honesty were really surprising when you look at what seems to be a modestly engineered speaker. Maybe they look a bit boring, but for boring read ‘classic design’ and be thankful that they don’t look too desirable ‘cos they stonk.
When it came time to give them some real beans I did make the by now familiar smell of hot voice coils in the afternoon but found them to be pretty imperturbable. They took the power and coped well, without getting all shouty as some lesser sets can. Overdriven and they can be made to clatter against the back plate of the magnet. If you hear this, then turn it down. If like me you only catch a moment or two, you will find they are also rugged as hell and that you got away with it, no harm done.
Without loads of distortion, the loudest I got from them as measured on the AudioControl RTA was 111.9dB, which is definitely impressive.
Overall 8.6
Sound Quality 9
Build Quality 8
Power Handling 8
Efficiency 8
Value For Money 10