Dillinger Labs Death From Above & Below Wireless Battery PA Review

Video Review

First Impressions / Setting up

I set all of this up on the Digital DJ Tips balcony in the sunshine, which turned out to be the perfect test for a system that sells itself on portability. The tops and subs arrive as proper covered wooden cabinets, big rubber feet and a decent heft to them. They are built to a professional standard and it shows the moment you pick one up. The subs come in at 15.5kg and the tops at just 6.5kg each, so a pair of towers is a one-person load-in if you take two trips.

The required Dani transmitter (separate purchase, $250) is a small metal box that charges over USB-C. It has the SKAA on-off and volume control on one side, plus professional attenuation controls, inputs and a through connection on the other, so you can drop it into a bigger signal chain if you want. The aerial that comes fitted already reaches a long way, and you can buy a better one if you need even more range. The whole thing feels like a piece of pro kit rather than a consumer gadget.

The one design choice I keep scratching my head over is that the speaker controls sit on the front of the cabinets. That means you have to position the speakers where you can keep an eye on wandering hands, which struck me as a little odd – I would have put those round the back. Beyond that there is almost nothing to describe, because there is almost nothing to see. A single knob doubles as volume and the SKAA bond button, a couple of LEDs tell you power and pairing status, and that is more or less it. The sub is the same story: two beefy drivers behind protective fins rather than a grille, one knob, done (if it looks a bit exposed, I agree – you can buy better grilles as accessories).

Setting up is where SKAA earns its keep. They do not call it pairing, they call it bonding, and it is close to effortless. I turned on all the units, hit play on the music, and everything just started playing together. If you have ever fought with Bluetooth trying to get background music out of a set of PA speakers, you will appreciate how good that is. You can press a button on each speaker to tell it to remember your transmitter, so it always prefers yours if there are ever other SKAA rigs around – though for now you are likely to be the only person for miles with one of these.

Battery life is the other pleasant surprise. Dillinger Labs quotes up to 11 hours at full volume from the subs and up to 16 hours from the tops, with far longer at normal listening levels. You will comfortably get through the longest gig on a single charge, and you can leave them plugged into the mains and play at full volume while charging if you prefer. The power brick is external rather than built in, which I would rather they had integrated to save you losing bits, but that is a minor gripe, and quite usual on battery systems.

In Use

I auditioned this off camera with DJ gear and monitoring headphones, ran the system with my trusty MP3 player feeding the SKAA Pro transmitter for the filming, and pushed it up to a properly loud level to hear what it can really do. Standing right next to the speakers, your ears struggle to separate the tops from the bass cabinets, so I set it up and walked to the far end of the balcony where everything blends together. It sounds really nice – professional sound with lots of crisp highs, and a solid, punchy low end from the subs.

One thing worth knowing is that there is no physical EQ, or app to adjust tone, so you get out what you put in. In practice that means you should EQ on your DJ mixer, or better still on a live mixer sitting between your controller or mixer and the transmitter, so you can adjust as you go. The speakers themselves do have onboard EQ presets you access through the front knob (six on each, tuned for different rooms and music styles), so there is a bit more control there than the “no EQ” first impression suggests, but you would not want to be diving into those mid-set.

The real question with any wireless PA is latency, and this is where the story gets nuanced. One transmitter will feed two speakers in SKAA Pro mode at 19 milliseconds, which is effectively nothing. At that figure you can do anything – scratch, finger drum, monitor in headphones for manual beatmixing – and never notice a thing. But two speakers is not a typical setup. Most of us want to run four, or at least three, with a couple of tops and a sub or two. To feed that many you have to switch out of SKAA Pro and into standard SKAA mode, and that takes you to 37 milliseconds (not 38 as I say in the video).

Now, 37 milliseconds is still very, very good – Bluetooth is more like 100 at best and sometimes 300 at best – but it is noticeable if you are the kind of player who needs millisecond accuracy. For scratch DJs and finger drummers, that is not going to cut it. For every other type of DJing, including beat mixing, talking on a microphone and everything most of us actually do, you will have no problem at all. You may notice it companred to your headphones, but it’s slight. I DJ the way most people DJ, and I found the delay was the kind of thing you forget almost instantly. But you need to go in knowing it is there.

There is a way around it if you must have the lowest latency across a full rig: buy two transmitters and use the through connections to wire them together, feeding two speakers each at 19 milliseconds. That adds cost and a bit of cabling back into a system whose whole appeal is losing the cables, so it is a trade-off. For most hobbyist DJs, I would just accept the 38 milliseconds in standard mode and get on with it.

Build quality holds up brilliantly in use. The cabinets are properly made, the drivers feel well protected, and the whole system survives being lugged around and set up quickly without any sense of fragility. The tops are three-way, tri-amped designs that focus on the range above 75Hz and hand the bottom end to the subs, which is why the two together sound better together. The subs reach right down to 25Hz and have real punch to them.

If I was heading out to play for maybe 50 people outdoors or 100 indoors, and I wanted something I could take with me, set up fast and break down fast, I think I would take this over anything else I have tested.

Conclusion

The full Dillinger Labs Death From Above and Death From Below system is not the cheapest small PA on the market. What you are paying the premium for is the wireless, and specifically for wireless that actually works without an app, without fuss, with a big range, and guaranteed latency levels low enough for performance. Coupled with the batteries, that all equals extreme convenience. Every other battery-powered PA compromises in some way. This one does not, and after years of testing gear that promises convenience and then makes you jump through hoops, that simplicity is notable.

It will suit the mobile hobbyist DJ best – someone playing garden parties, small halls, weddings and outdoor sets who wants a rig that goes from car to playing in minutes. If you are that person, and you can live with the 38 millisecond latency in full four-speaker mode, this is an easy recommendation. The people it will not suit are scratch DJs and finger drummers who need absolute timing precision, unless they are prepared to run the two-transmitter workaround. If budget is your main concern, cheaper battery PAs will get music out of a box for less, they just will not give you this kind of clean, easy wireless across a whole system.

This is the wireless PA I can see myself turning to most for the small, neighbourhood gigs and events I’m interested in. It’s uncompromising (you better be into wireless, as no wired option exists), and the looks may not be for everone (luckily, different coloured Death From Above grilles are available), but it does what it does with singular simplicity. If they would add a single transmitter that could send 19ms latency to four speakers, it’d be even closer to perfect for DJs, though.