Hi-Fi: Digital Designs DD-PM151 Powered Moniter Speakers – Review – 76
Any regular reader of Tone will know that we delight in checking out the most insane hi-fi products and waxing lyrical about our experiences listening to sounds that, to the average punter, are probably considered fanciful or possibly even imaginary.
So it’s fair to say that the speakers under review pose a dilemma. They don’t quite fit into our recipe for true hi-fi, but neither are they by any description poor speakers.
In truth, Digital Designs’ nifty powered monitor speakers are a hybrid, and one that meets the demands of the times with ingenuity. After all, they’re described by their maker as being “designed for the digital media generation”.
The size of small bookshelf speakers, but with a shiny white casing that implicates them as cousins to media/PC speakers rather than the wood grain faà§ade associated with hi-fi, they’re actually everything you need except for the sound source.
Yep, powered means that an amplifier is built in, so all you need to do is slam an iPod onto the handy dock (on top of one of the speakers) or connect a CD player (or a PC with a decent sound card, for that matter), and away you go.
I tried the Digital Designs in several different contexts, and in all situations they gave the ‘wow’ factor. Using my iPod on shuffle in my dining room they were consistently good, no matter what style of music, and made a great fist of an acoustically challenged, A-frame, glass-dominated room. Placement wasn’t perfect, and I had to make sure the ported speakers weren’t too close to the wall (which produces boomy bass) but I was amazed at what I was hearing out of these unprepossessing speakers.
Moving them into my lounge and placing them on dedicated speaker stands, they really took on a life of their own. Plugging them into my trusty Yamaha CD player, my first thought was that they would give any mid-price bookshelf speaker a run for its money.
The most impressive thing about the Digital Designs is their handling of bass frequencies. While it’s impossible for them to reach subwoofer-level bass (you can hook one up to them), the mid-bass they do put out is phenomenal and fleet footed.
There’s absolutely no drag in its steps, and on Led Zeppelin’s ‘Immigrant Song’ I heard John Paul Jones’s nimble work in a way I haven’t heard even on my incontestably great Theophany M5s. On Massive Attack’s bass-heavy ‘Safe From Harm’ they handled it all with aplomb, and I just couldn’t believe what I was hearing (or feeling).
Digital Designs has its origins in car audio, however, and there are parts of the sound spectrum that hi-fi listeners won’t dig. While the sound is super-clear, they don’t attain the transparent top end that audiophiles go for. This is understandable, because the Digital Designs speakers are clearly not aimed at audiophiles.
To go back to my original point, speakers like these are hybrids that clearly look for a way to sound spectacular across a range of media, and music via CD is only one of them. While I found the top end on tracks by Joni Mitchell, Billie Mackenzie and Jefferson Airplane was just a little too sharp for my liking, electronic music really sounds spiffing.
The Digital Designs speakers are amazingly dynamic, and I’m picking that they’ll mostly be used as PC speakers for a lot of multi-tasking. The soundtracks to movies and games (or should I say “sound effects”?) are obvious areas where these speakers will stand out from the pack.
GARY STEEL
TECH SPECS
DD-PM151
Powered Monitor Speakers
$1399
MID-WOOFER: 144mm
TWEETER: 25mm
FREQUENCY RESPONSE: 42Hz-24kHz
AMPLIFIER POWER: 50wpc
INPUTS: iPod univeral dock, RCA, 3.5mm DIN
DIMENSIONS: 272.5 x 185 x 201mm
WEIGHT: Master – 5.44kg, slave: 4.12kg
Pros
- Gob-smacking dynamic sound
- Truly adaptable product
- Price point that has to appeal
Cons
- Top end can seem a little harsh
Verdict
- Truly dynamic sound with the ‘wow’ factor, this hybrid product will appeal to cross-platform users – nearly everyone, in other words
Contact
This Review is from Tone Issue #76.
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