USHER Dancer Mini One Diamond
Floorstanding loudspeakers
Grieg’s Peer Gynt orchestral suite opens with a magic and moody flute that lures a listener into an early morning landscape. The soothing sound is supported by velvety strings that are joint by the rest of the orchestra with tour de force to make a wonderful contrast with the fragile intro. Try to listen to the first movement of Peer Gynt through the Ushers and you will agree that they are very mature speakers.
Function and form
The Usher’s Dancer series have been renowned for the 9980-20BeA 1“ beryllium dome tweeter. This extremely airy, detailed and sweet sounding unit have become a serious contender for top class drivers of JMLab Focal, Revel or even Dynaudio. Now the beryllium tweeter has been discontinued in production in favor of a new Diamond DMD driver.
In the past we have tested Usher’s BE-718 stand-mounted speakers and Dancer Mini One and BE-10 floorstanders. Any of these speakers showed a great price-to-performance ratio and have become a top ranking item on a potential buyer’s shopping list. All of them utilized beryllium tweeters that significantly contributed to their sound to be... just great. Have they really needed to be modified?
The new diamond dome is basically a layered structure: a shaped metal sheet is covered from both sides by a modified DLC carbon layer with chemical properties of diamond (you should know that diamonds are carbon modifications, shouldn’t you?). The diamond-metal-diamond sandwich is said to have excellent antiresonant properties, efficiency and speed.
Bass management
The popular moment of Peer Gynt trying to escape from the mountain king’s cave is a monumental orchestral climax underlined by an excellent bass fundament making you hold your breath. I wish you could hear this with me as well as I wish the bass were a bit faster and more resolved. However, it is a minor quibble considering the price of the Ushers - they may easily challenge much pricier models.
Clarity & delicacy
Though we may discuss the performance of the Usher (Dancer Mini One) below 2kHz and put it to a question, there is no point in discussing what happens in highs. The Usher’s tweeter is a champion that readily reveals the tinniest details and nuancees. Listen, for instance, to the excellent Percussion Fantasia CD (First Impression Music); the CD features both popular and less known classics played by an orchestra of percussionists and provides ample studying material for those who are convinced that ´percussions´are just drums, cymbals and triangles. Once you taste the multilayered world of rattles, kettles, chimes and hammered strings you will learn that you need the tweeter from Usher to be able to savor it. Every delicate detail of Carmen Fantasy is precised and polished and conveyed to a listener with both authority and fragile textures. Metal sounds like metal, wood sounds like wood and emotions erupt when a big drum enters the score at around 6´00.
When I rave about the hyper-resolving tweeter I mean grace, charm, seamless integration and sweet presentation at the same time. The tad of the sweetness reminds me of Dynaudio´s silk domes. The combination of all these elements results in a very listenable pair of speakers that show no hint of sterility or exaggerated brilliance.
Tonal accuracy
The DMD tweeter spits fast and well timed transients and percussive attacks show fine dynamic contrasts. I had a sense of transients to be slightly rounded, a bit more than they should. The sound of canvas mimicking blowing wind in The March to the Scaffolds (4´45 mark) is not an easy sound to reproduce, however, the Dancer Mini Ones DMD brought its textures alive. Yet again, I had the sense of enhanced softness as if I was sitting in an acoustically overdamped room.
Spatial resolution
Sade only reconfirms the qualities of the Ushers (Love Deluxe). The smooth voice of Sade had the timbral accuracy including that slight veiling which lends erotic tension into Sade’s singing. The DMD driver definitely outperforms the previous model's beryllium here: though the beryllium provides more open and precise sound, the DMD is more natural and uses richer and truer colors to render the voice. With Sade I verified my former observations: should you are comfortable with the hint of oversmoothness (that may be corrected by a good choice of cables or amplifier), the Diamond DMD version is more sophisticated, refined and relaxed. If you are looking for a straightforward spark and energy, then it is OK to stay with beryllium.
Recommended resellers
Horizon Trading Prague, Praha, +420 222 715 959
PP HiFi Studio, Otrokovice, tel. +420 603 581 305
SK: Nisel SK, Bratislava, tel. +421 905 203 078
Manufacturer's website: http://www.usheraudio.com.tw
Associated components
- Sources: BMC AUDIO BD CD1 + DAC1, NAD M3 Masters
- Amplifiers: NAD M5 Masters, Luxman L-550A II, McIntosh MC501 and BMC AMP C1
- Interconnects and speaker cables: Rapport, Audioquest Gibraltar, WSS, Oehlbach Crystal Silver Star
Gallery
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