UHF 57 - Dynaudio Contour 1.3

Dynaudio Contour 1.3 MkII

A lot of great speaker systems are designed around Dynaudio drivers. Does the company know how to build its own systems?

(Reprinted from issue 57 of UHF Magazine. To purchase the issue, click here. Or click here to subscribe to UHF)

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The company announces its colors right on the packing box: Danes don't lie. A moment's thought makes it evident that this is at once a promise and a threat. You're going to hear the real sound of your system...whether you like it or not.
     In some quarters, it should be said, Dynaudio speakers do have a reputation for not lying. The company is a major player in the professional studio monitor market. Not that studio engineers are necessarily the most demanding listeners--some of them aren't fussy at all if you ask us--but they don't much go in for "euphonic" distortion. And then there's the fact that so many other speaker companies purchase Dynaudio drivers for their own speaker systems.
     Older audiophiles may first have been exposed to the company many years back when Dynaco was famous for its amplifiers and speakers. The electronics were US-made, but the speakers, including the famous A-25, were built in Denmark. When Dynaco folded (another company later bought the name and designs), the Danish factory had lost an important customer. It was reborn as Dynaudio, making drivers and later complete speaker systems.
     Since this issue of UHF includes other speakers of the same size costing a fraction of the price of the Contour 1.3, you might well wonder why it's so expensive. And there are reasons, though not all of them are externally visible.
     Start with the cabinet. Most speaker cabinets are resonant systems, storing energy and radiating it out slightly later in distorted form (the technical term for this is "rattling"). In large speakers the problem is extremely difficult to solve, but even in small ones undamped vibrations can color the music so that it doesn't sound anything like the original. The Contour 1.3's cabinet is a double box, made of an MDF sandwich, with a proprietary nontoxic glue made of natural substances, developed in the company's own lab. Internal bracing is of course extensive, and there is a chemical coating (also non-toxic) on the inside of the cabinet for more damping.
     The 17 cm woofer, with its huge dust cap molded right into the cone, has a look that could only come from Dynaudio. These woofers are nearly impossible to overload, because the suspension gets gradually stiffer as the cone moves off-centre, so that they'll compress the dynamics when driven hard instead of overloading and spitting distortion at you. The basket is diecast metal, not sheet metal. The voice coil is aluminum, which has more resistance than copper but is good at radiating out heat.
     The tweeter has a soft dome. The crossover uses coils with air cores (the coils could be made smaller if metal cores were used, but metal cores saturate at high level and add distortion). Solen polypropylene capacitors are used in the crossover, and they're not cheap either.
     Surprisingly there is only a single pair of binding posts, so biwiring is not possible. Those posts are made by WBT, however, a tangible sign of the fact that these speakers are not built to a price. The posts, by the way, are not an off-the-shelf item, and they are a long way apart, not practically touching as on some other speakers. We realize that this poses a problem for people who use those horrible double bananas, but anyone with those is pretty much wasting money on speakers of this caliber anyway.
     The cabinets on our speakers were an attractive clear beechwood, though other finishes are available, including cherry, rosewood and even piano black lacquer. There is an oddity, readily visible in our photo: the sides are made of two separate veneer panels, assembled not to match.
     The Contours come with foam plugs for the rear ports, to be used if the speakers are mounted on a bookshelf, and have their ports blocked. Which is of course not how we ran them. We fastened them to our Target HJ-24 stands with Audio-Tak, found a room position which they seemed to like, and dug into our stack of records.

Would you like to read the full text, with illustrations, of the review of the Dynaudio Contour 1.3? Click here to order the print edition of UHF No. 57.

PARTIAL TEXT: The Music Revolution, A Fall Tuneup, Dynaudio Contour 1.3, Gershman X-1/SW-1, Coincident Super Triumph, Oskar Aulos, KR 18 BSI
FULL TEXT: Castle Inversion 15, Farewell Divx, State of the Art

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The company announces its colors right on the packing box: Danes don't lie. A moment's thought makes it evident that this is at once a promise and a threat. You're going to hear the real sound of your system...whether you like it or not.
     In some quarters, it should be said, Dynaudio speakers do have a reputation for not lying. The company is a major player in the professional studio monitor market. Not that studio engineers are necessarily the most demanding listeners--some of them aren't fussy at all if you ask us--but they don't much go in for "euphonic" distortion. And then there's the fact that so many other speaker companies purchase Dynaudio drivers for their own speaker systems.
     Older audiophiles may first have been exposed to the company many years back when Dynaco was famous for its amplifiers and speakers. The electronics were US-made, but the speakers, including the famous A-25, were built in Denmark. When Dynaco folded (another company later bought the name and designs), the Danish factory had lost an important customer. It was reborn as Dynaudio, making drivers and later complete speaker systems.
     Since this issue of UHF includes other speakers of the same size costing a fraction of the price of the Contour 1.3, you might well wonder why it's so expensive. And there are reasons, though not all of them are externally visible.
     Start with the cabinet. Most speaker cabinets are resonant systems, storing energy and radiating it out slightly later in distorted form (the technical term for this is "rattling"). In large speakers the problem is extremely difficult to solve, but even in small ones undamped vibrations can color the music so that it doesn't sound anything like the original. The Contour 1.3's cabinet is a double box, made of an MDF sandwich, with a proprietary nontoxic glue made of natural substances, developed in the company's own lab. Internal bracing is of course extensive, and there is a chemical coating (also non-toxic) on the inside of the cabinet for more damping.
     The 17 cm woofer, with its huge dust cap molded right into the cone, has a look that could only come from Dynaudio. These woofers are nearly impossible to overload, because the suspension gets gradually stiffer as the cone moves off-centre, so that they'll compress the dynamics when driven hard instead of overloading and spitting distortion at you. The basket is diecast metal, not sheet metal. The voice coil is aluminum, which has more resistance than copper but is good at radiating out heat.
     The tweeter has a soft dome. The crossover uses coils with air cores (the coils could be made smaller if metal cores were used, but metal cores saturate at high level and add distortion). Solen polypropylene capacitors are used in the crossover, and they're not cheap either.
     Surprisingly there is only a single pair of binding posts, so biwiring is not possible. Those posts are made by WBT, however, a tangible sign of the fact that these speakers are not built to a price. The posts, by the way, are not an off-the-shelf item, and they are a long way apart, not practically touching as on some other speakers. We realize that this poses a problem for people who use those horrible double bananas, but anyone with those is pretty much wasting money on speakers of this caliber anyway.
     The cabinets on our speakers were an attractive clear beechwood, though other finishes are available, including cherry, rosewood and even piano black lacquer. There is an oddity, readily visible in our photo: the sides are made of two separate veneer panels, assembled not to match.
     The Contours come with foam plugs for the rear ports, to be used if the speakers are mounted on a bookshelf, and have their ports blocked. Which is of course not how we ran them. We fastened them to our Target HJ-24 stands with Audio-Tak, found a room position which they seemed to like, and dug into our stack of records.

Would you like to read the full text, with illustrations, of the review of the Dynaudio Contour 1.3? Click here to order the print edition of UHF No. 57.