Dynaudio Accent 3 powered loudspeaker
When it comes to loudspeaker drivers, Dynaudio has earned an enviable reputation for quality and reliability. To use an automotive analogy, they are the Mercedes Benz of the driver universe. If you're a speaker builder, the odds are that you have already experimented with these drivers. And even if you're not a speaker builder, it's quite possible that your speakers use Dynaudio drivers. After all, some of the finest speaker systems in the world do. A case in point is the Duntech Sovereign, which single-handedly embodies almost the entire Dynaudio catalog.
Dynaudio Confidence 30 loudspeaker
Over a lifetime of audio shows, I've consistently enjoyed Dynaudio speaker demonstrations. Each time, I've told Dynaudio North America's Michael Manousselis that I'd love to review the speaker on display that year. But I never followed through. So, when Jim Austin suggested I review a Dynaudio speaker "because they haven't gotten much press," it resonated with my deep-seated guilt. A little research revealed that the last Dynaudio speaker Stereophile reviewed was the 40 Special in November 2018. The last floorstander was the Dynaudio Sapphire in 2009!
Dynaudio Confidence C4 loudspeaker
Judging absolute sound quality under the unfamiliar circumstances of an audio show is always fraught with difficulty. If a system sounds bad, there are so many possible reasons for it to do so that pointing a finger of blame at the components is possibly unfair. Conversely, when a room sounds good at a show, it is probable that the components being used deserve some recognition. Such was the case at Home Entertainment 2002 in New York last May, when Dynaudio's Confidence C4 made its debut.
Dynaudio Contour 3.0 loudspeaker
It was one of those uncommonly warm late winter Sundays when you hardly need a coat. The fine weather had set aside any critical listening sessions, the door to the kitchen was open, and I was playing my audio system—then equipped with a pair of Spendor BC-1 loudspeakers—at moderate levels. Playing on the Linn turntable was an LP that the kids loved—"The Magic Garden Song," sung by the two female leads from the children's television show of the same name (footnote 1), My wife doesn't often comment positively on audio equipment, but that day she walked in from the kitchen to say, "Those voices sound real—as if two people just walked in our living room and started singing."
Dynaudio Contour 3.3 loudspeaker
"Danes are boring," Dynaudio US's president Al Filippelli said. "Let's face it: They work hard, they tell the truth, they give full measure in deals, and they don't embroider. What you see is what you get."
Dynaudio Contour 30i loudspeaker
Ah, Denmark. Land of the Vikings and blue-eyed, blond-haired folk with faces sculpted just so. I loved my week there as a Stereophile correspondent and member of a scraggly scrum of audio journalists whisked to DALI headquarters on a promotional junket.
Aside from its universal attractiveness, what struck me during my stay in the southernmost and smallest of the Scandinavian countries was how by North American standards the more densely populated cities I visited, Copenhagen and Aarhus, seemed orderly and clean. Cars, pedestrians, and cyclists kept tightly to their lanes. I saw no cigarette butts on the sidewalk and only sparse pockets of graffiti. There seemed to be a natural, sequential flow to everythingan evenness and balance that was close to idyllic.
Outside its bigger cities, Denmark looks pastoral, with long stretches of grassy fields sporadically interrupted by broad bodies of water, and bucolic towns that seem to have sprouted in the middle of nowhere. It's in these towns that a lot of Danish hi-fi is made: DALI in Nørager (population 1143); Dynaudio in Skanderborg (population 20,000). Skanderborg contains evidence of human settlements belonging to the earliest Nordic Stone Age, starting some 100,000 years ago.
Dynaudio doesn't go back quite that far; the company was founded in 1977...
Dynaudio Evidence Master loudspeaker
I can't resist reading about a company's flagship loudspeaker—the price-no-object product that embodies the most advanced ideas from a company's research and design department. Flagship loudspeakers tend to be large, heavy, and complex, and are designed to perform best in large rooms; often, each part of each driver is hand-built to the highest level of quality, with precisely tight tolerances. The cost? Don't ask. Some two-channel, audio-only flagships cost more than a BMW M5 sports sedan or a Porsche 911.
Dynaudio Evidence Temptation loudspeaker
Film sequels are a mixed blessing. If an action movie holds my attention, I can't wait to see the sequel: same characters, same actors, new adventures. And if the first film was successful, studios are more than willing to oblige. So Jurassic Park begat The Lost World, which begat Jurassic Park III. But the results are often unsatisfying.
Dynaudio Sapphire loudspeaker
With hindsight, it should have been obvious at the time that the 1970s witnessed a glorious flowering of high-end audio. Almost all the brands now regarded as leaders had their start in that decade, though with perhaps the exceptions of Audio Research, Linn, Magnepan, and Naim, those of us working at audio magazines missed the significance of the new names. Dynaudio, for example, was founded in 1977, but not until the end of the 1980s did I become fully aware of the ground being broken in drive-unit and overall system design by this Danish loudspeaker manufacturer.
EgglestonWorks Andra 5 loudspeaker
Big loudspeakers are where diligent hi-fi reviewers really earn their pay. Not only are they heavy and difficult to move, but they also require attention and patience to set up so that they sound their best in our listening spaces. They take time to understand and study. And they all sound quite different from each other.