So after more a/b comparison with the momentum 4 and almost a full work week of listening to the Dali, I’ve basically come to this. The Dalis sound fantastic, more open and more detailed plus a wider soundstage than the m4. Do they sound $1000 better? Like I said in my initial post…I definitely don’t think so. In fact the momentum puts up a fight. Build is clearly better on the Dali. But one thing that did get me was the amount of battery drain on the Dali as compared to the momentum. I know 30 hours is standard but to lose 20% in a day or whatever it was freaked me out, especially on a $1300 headphone with a non user replaceable battery. Maybe I’m just used to the 60 on the m4 but that did feel like a downgrade. All things considered, to me, they aren’t $1000 apart. Pretty sure I’m returning them. If they were 6 or 7 hundred it would be a different story. But for 1300 Im struggling to justify it.
Side note…unlike whatever that dude in the other forum said, no one forced me into buying the Dali. I legitimately thought I’d be keeping them for the foreseeable future. Dali is highly regarded, the reviews were tremendous and they are a one stop shop headphone so I wanted them to work for me and I thought the extra $1000 would have been justified. That doesn’t mean they aren’t incredible headphones though. They certainly are. Maybe I’ll wait to see if they come down in price I guess.
Everybody's decisions about sound, pricing, design, etc. are very personal and of course your decision for returning the iO-12 is the right decision for you. But I want making some comments.
About the battery:
The official battery life of the iO-12 is 35 hours. In my test from few months ago, from 100% to 5% I obtaining 41 hours and 9 minutes (Hi-fi setting + ANC Off) at average of 50% volume, a volume level that is very sufficiently loud for me (often I personally need less volume even, but for my test I keeping at 50%).
If we imagine that you obtaining only 35 hours with one charge and you have 500 full charging cycles in your battery, this will giving you 17500 hours. If you use the iO-12 for 7 hours every day (including Saturdays and Sundays), you have 2500 days (7 hours x 2500 days = 17500 hours), you have almost 7 years of use (6.85 exactly), and after that time your battery will having still 80% capacity, meaning that you still have several years before needing a new battery.
The 1000 USD / 1000 EUR ML 5909 giving you 30 hours per charge, I think. The 1700 USD / 1400 EUR Solitaire T is giving you 70 hours per charge in normal BT mode and 35 hours in BT "High Quality" mode.
In my particular case I charging my iO-12 every 10-15 days, and I doing this only when the battery is showing about 30%.
About price and sound quality:
Here in Europe the official price of the Momentum 4 is 370 EUR and the iO-12 is 1000 EUR, the Dalis being 2.7 times more expensive. Of course now you can finding the M4 more cheap and is very possible that the iO-12 will becoming more cheap in the future (like the more old iO-6 an iO-4 models). The Solitaire T, by the way, after almost 1 year and 5 months of release is even more expensive than initially (by 100 USD / 90 EUR), but T+A products apparently don't often having price reductions apparently maybe because T+A is a more small company. The ML 5909 you can buying new for about 750-800 EUR now and you have very good discounts with the Focal Bathys too.
Putting a value (price) in sound quality differences is complicated and often a personal opinion and decision. For some people the price difference between the M4 and the iO-12 is not a good justification...and maybe even some people will liking the "more fun" sound of the M4 independently of price differences. For others people the price difference is 100% acceptable because the extra (very) better sound of the Dalis is so important for them. This is my case (and in my particular circumstances I'm VERY happy paying extra for the excellent and unique playback buttons of the Dalis, this being the principal aspect that making me sell my Solitaire T after one year of owning).
I'm sure the Dalis aren't sounding 2.7 times better thannthe M4. In audio, like in others areas/products, this things are never following a linear path, and this is why we have the "law of diminishing returns". Sometimes this diminishing returns are ridiculous or only imaginary (!!), and a (very) more expensive product isn't always a guarantee of obtaining genuinely better sound independently of people's sound preferences.
With my comments above I'm not intending convincing you that you must not returning your iO-12, but only giving a little more perspective.
for me personally, I’m excited about future firmware updates. Dali support has been fantastic so far
