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Sorry for the delayed reply

Posted by Dave_K on November 21, 2016 at 07:14:54

In Reply to: RE: Question for Dynaudio fans posted by MylesJ on November 18, 2016 at 11:10:17:

I've seen a Polish seller on Audiogon offering supposedly new Dynaudios for a song. He's been listing speakers over and over again for many months. Is that the one selling the 400XD for $5k? If so, I would be careful.

The Contour 20, 30, and 60 are new models which were revealed earlier this year at the Munich show but are just getting to US dealers now. The claim is they offer more and deeper bass than the previous Contour models they are replacing. The C20 looks like the one to get for a small or medium size room.

Unfortunately, Dynaudio doesn't offer a small floorstander in the Contour or Confidence series. I would love to have something the size of the Focus 260/400XD or Excite X34 but with Confidence level performance.

Do you have the Audience 52 or 52SE? And are you looking for deeper bass extension, fuller bass, or both? The C1 goes a little deeper than Audience 52 SE, and a lot deeper than the 52. The C1 and C2 have flat bass response, and the character of the bass is relatively tight and well damped. Accurate, but could be too dry for some. The outgoing Contour models had fuller, riper bass. The knock against the old Contours was a somewhat dark top end, but I've heard the LE models rectify that.

As you know, one of the difficulties you will face with a long wall setup in a small room is getting the speakers far enough away from the front wall, and this is especially true with Dynaudio speakers because of the large rear facing port. My experience with the C2s and Focus 160s is that if you plug the ports, the reduction in bass output is too much, and you also seem to lose some dynamics (subjectively). So I would try to avoid that. Also, the closer the speakers to the wall, the shallower the soundstage. So in your situation, if long wall placement is the only option, I would still try to keep the speakers out from the front wall, and put the listening seat close to the back wall instead, with a nice thick (4-6") absorbing panel behind the sweet spot.

In my case, I went for short wall placement, which allowed me to pull the speakers out such that there is about 4 feet behind them, giving me the depth of stage I wanted. The downside is that my setup ends up grouping several room boundary related cancellation nulls near each other in the mid-bass. Bass trapping helped with that, but it's still a weakness. You can seem some old pictures at the link below. Note the wide angle lens in the wide shots makes the room look bigger than it really is.

To answer your last question, I've had the following speakers in this room:
Focus Audio FS-688
Focus Audio FS-788
Wilson Benesch Vertex
Magico S1
Dynaudio Focus 160

I've also tried or demoed a couple others including the C2s I already mentioned. I've mostly run a 2.2 setup with stereo subs. The Focus Audio 688s and W-B Vertex definitely needed the subs. The others I could be happy without the subs. But even with the Magicos I still used the subs at a reduced level because they helped smooth out the response.

• Room pictures   (Open in New Window)

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