I picked these up a few days ago and think I have enough experience now to give an initial opinion.
My headphones:
Campfire Cascades
Access to Sony 1000xm3 & B&O H9i (family members)
So on to the review...
Setup:
I did testing with the iO6 with a windows 10 machine & amazon music with ultra-HD tracks where possible, HD otherwise.
Comfort:
For me comfort is important. For the cascades I have the large leather pads (the ones that ship weren't quite there, didn't like the cloth). The cascades are comfortable, but bulky, and due to the larger pads more comfortable than the rest in this comparison.
The Sony's are not that comfortable over long use; the clamp and padding are light and end up hurting my ears over an hour or two. The B&O are just a bit more comfortable and come out being similar to the Dali iO-6; the round shape isn't ideal but the way they adjust to your ear and the padding material end up making them more usable over time.
In comparison the Dali are pretty comfortable; they aren't that noticeable when wearing them, although they can get a bit warm. The Sony 10000xm3's become painful (to me) after an hour or two of using them.
Audio (wireless, for Dali):
I'm not sure why people have said these are bass-lite or weak on bass; going to a song like Brass Monkey the bass was there and sounded fine. I mean, nothing like what the Campfire Cascades put out, but with the dampers removed (both optional and built in) that thing is a bass canon. Compared to the Sony it handled the bass in the songs with refinement and didn't drop out the mid's or highs at all. I then switched over to some other songs like Bubbles/Letter from Yosi Horikawa to test soundstage and how easy it is to pick up the small sounds. Compared to the Cascades... there is no comparison at all wireless vs the wired Cascades. The Cascade just sounds better. Compared to the Sony and B&O... the Dali's were clearly better; the Sony's sounded more muffled and B&O sounded more tinny and definitely lacking in bass. However, the Dali over wireless needed to be turned up quite a bit higher for perceived volume; the Cascades at 25% volume were louder than the Dali's at 70%. The Sony and B&O also were louder. Overall, when there is audio playing the Dali iO-6 picks up more detail than the Sony and B&O do by a long mile.
One note: when there is nothing playing there is a noticeable hiss with the iO-6 even with noise cancellation/transparency turned off. This is present if the headphones are turned on.
Audio (plugged in with cable):
Volume is much more comparable to the Cascades once plugged in and not playing through bluetooth. Audio level is definitely improved; the iO-6 sounds much better plugged in than it does over bluetooth. Again, doesn't touch the Cascades (especially with songs that have bass) but they sound better than the Sony by a pretty big margin. The sound-stage seems to be better when wired.
Note: if the headphone is 'on' the internal dac produces a noticeable hiss. When you plug in and make sure the headphones are turned off this hiss will go away; the audio quality is much better with the built in dac turned off.
Noise Cancellation:
The Dali's noise cancellation is... ok? It is nice that it can be turned on and will do noise cancellation without being connected to a device playing audio, but it is nowhere near the equal to the Sony's implementation. They work better than simply passive, but aren't that good compared to the competition. If noise cancellation is a primary factor, the Dali's loses there.
Connectivity:
They are -much- easier to use than the Sony with multiple devices. They remember multiple devices and are pretty trivial to switch, although that said nothing compares to the Apple bluetooth options when it comes to connectivity. It's very easy to use the built in controls of the Dali, turning the various modes on/off and no accidental touches that are easy to trigger on the Sony headphones.
End thoughts:
I think these are better than the Sony and B&O and are great wireless headphones. The noise cancellation works, but is probably one of the weaker implementations out there. There is a noticeable hiss when nothing is playing that can be annoying that only goes away if you use these wired and turned off; the headphones shine when wired and have great audio quality when being driven through an external dac or just the device they're plugged into. There is a much more noticeable improvement than you'd get with the Sony's; they almost seem like they were more intended to be driven through a wired connection.
I think the Dali's are great headphones for the price; comparing them to my "at home" set isn't really that fair, but they're good enough for music/netflix/etc wireless and comfortable enough that I don't have as much urge to drag the bigger wired headphones around.
