Dynaudio Magazine 2017 Issue 2 Web Only

Magazine
Just
push
play
Introducing Music:
the simplest, most
intelligent way
to listen to tunes
Plus...
The new Special Forty,
exclusive how-tos, new
studio speakers and more
Issue
02
Custom install Car audio
Dynaudio performance – tailored How it started… and how we’ve
just for you and your home taken it to incredible new places
Hello
Welcome to Dynaudio Magazine.
Twice a year we bring you everything you need to know

about our latest models and tech – plus exclusive
features and interviews with musicians, recording
studios, industry gurus, automotive experts and more.
In this issue we lift the lid on Music, our new intelligent

wireless hi-fi system (it navigates the streaming waters
for you so you’re never stuck for something to listen to)
on p6; take you inside Jupiter, the massive robot
lurking inside Dynaudio Labs (p16); journey back to the
dawn of in-car hi-fi (p26) and put the spotlight on our
new Special Forty anniversary speakers (p56) and LYD
48 studio monitors (p74).
Plus lots more. Enjoy!
Issue 02 03
12
Contents
Behind the Music:

how we created our new
intelligent wireless hi-fi system
Contents 06 Music: intelligent wireless audio

12 How we designed Music
16 Inside Dynaudio Labs
22 How to… set up a home cinema
26 The history of in-car hi-fi
32 How to… take care of your speakers
36 Emit
56
40 Excite
44 Xeo
48 Focus XD
Introducing Special Forty: 52 Connect
our 40th anniversary speaker 54 Picture special: Dynaudio at 40
56 Special Forty
60 Contour
64 Confidence
68 Evidence
72 Sub
74 LYD 48: new for the studio
76 LYD
78 M5P Evidence
80 Automotive
84 Custom Install
88 Finishes
90 Meet the family
94 Made in Denmark: about Dynaudio
98 Next issue
04 Dynaudio Magazine
Contents
16
Journey to Jupiter:
an exclusive look
inside Dynaudio Labs
26
One for the road:
the history of in-car hi-fi
32
How to…
care for your loudspeakers
(hint: don’t touch the tweeter)
Issue 02 05
Music 5
Dynaudio Home Music
Performance
wherever you
put it – even
on a wall with
the optional
steel bracket
Music
Want to listen to music?
Listen to Music…
our new intelligent wireless speaker system
You love music. We get it. We love music, too.

Dynaudio is world-famous for making handcrafted
high-end loudspeakers for living rooms, pro recording
studios and cars. We think you should be able
to get that kind of quality at any level, so we’ve
engineered the products in our brand-new range
of wireless speaker systems with the same attention
to detail (and love of music) that’s driven us since
the very beginning.
Dynaudio Music provides one-touch simplicity. It

adapts seamlessly (and automatically) to any room
or position, and to surrounding noise levels – so
your music always sounds its best. It even gives
you personalised playlists of all the music you
love with Music Now. All at the touch of a button.
6 Dynaudio Magazine
Music 3
Dynaudio Home Music

A battery good for
up to eight hours means
all-day listening to
the music you love
Issue 02 7
Dynaudio Home Music
Music Now
Instant intelligent playlists
of only the music you love
RoomAdapt
Optimises performance
for any room position
NoiseAdapt
Compensates for varying
noise levels in your room
All-in-one The system that adapts to your lifestyle

Plug it in and you’re ready Create intelligent playlists for yourself and your friends –
to go. It’s that simple so you can keep their dubious musical tastes away from
your awesome ones. You can even drag-and-drop Music
speakers into stereo pairs or multiroom groups
Volume Presets Control
Dynaudio Home Music

Remember when listening to some tunes was as simple Each speaker has five presets
as turning on a radio? All you had to do was let the DJs You can assign anything you like to any of them:
entertain you. internet radio stations, smart playlists, even single songs
Nowadays, we’re betting you spend a few minutes trawling

through your TIDAL or Spotify playlists, debating which of It doesn’t matter where you put it
your 40 favourite internet radio stations to listen to or scrolling Music is smart in other ways, too. It doesn’t matter if the
through all the songs on your network drive. And after all that, speaker is in a corner, up against a rear wall or in free space:
you might even get fed up, then just go and do something else. its built-in RoomAdapt technology senses where it’s been
placed and continually optimises the speaker’s tonal
You do everything, in fact, except actually listen to music. characteristics to deliver the best performance possible.
You’ll hear it most in the clean, accurate bass and midrange.
Your music, your way… every time
There’s such a thing as too much choice. We like all the stuff Essential musical details will always be clear too, thanks to
in our vast music libraries – and because of that, we just NoiseAdapt – even when the room is noisy, and the speaker
can’t decide what to listen to. Dynaudio Music can help. volume is low. You don’t need to crank the volume to hear
Its sophisticated Music Now algorithm learns your musical your tunes properly when the conversation gets louder
tastes and plays automatically generated smart playlists (or quieter), and you don’t need to adjust any tone controls.
with one touch of a button on the speaker. It’s all automatic.
It means there’s no need to scroll through endless playlists, All this is based on our expertise in DSP (digital signal
only to get bored trying to find something to listen to. This processing), gained from researching and developing
is just like turning on a radio – but the station is guaranteed high-end active speakers (p44), professional studio monitor
to play music the listener wants to hear. (The added benefit? set-ups (p74) and cutting-edge in-car systems (see p80).
No irritating DJs.)
All the connectivity you need
The speaker connects to popular music-streaming services Every speaker in the Music range can stream via Wi-Fi,
including TIDAL and Spotify. Each Music speaker has five Spotify Connect, aptX Bluetooth and Apple AirPlay, and can
presets. These can be filled with anything accessible from the access DLNA devices on your home network. They all have
app: smart Music Now playlists (from multiple user profiles), USB inputs for iOS audio and charging iOS devices, and
internet radio stations, TIDAL albums, artists, Spotify playlists can all accept 3.5mm analogue inputs too (so you can
and more. TIDAL content can be accessed straight from even hook up your old personal stereo if you want).
the app, while Spotify can be added to presets from the
‘Now Playing’ screen. Then whenever you want music, all you The Music 5 and Music 7 add digital optical inputs to the
do is press the button on the speaker and you’re listening. mix (both support signals up to 24-bit/96kHz), while the
Music 7 also has an HDMI input with Audio Return Channel
to turn it into a soundbar under your TV.
Up to six speakers can be connected at a time, and arranged

into multiroom groups or controlled individually from the
Dynaudio app. ►
Issue 02 9
Dynaudio Home Music
Music 7
Music 7 has two 1in soft-dome tweeters,
two 3in midrange drivers and twin 5in
woofers. Like the Music 5, it’s mains-
powered with an optical input. It also has an
HDMI input with Audio Return Channel so
you can use it as a soundbar under your TV.
Music 5
Music 5 uses two 1in soft-dome tweeters,
twin 3in midrange drivers and a single
5in woofer. It’s mains-powered, and
also has a digital optical input.
Dynaudio Home Music
Traditional Dynaudio craftsmanship
All the speakers use Dynaudio’s proprietary MSP cone
material in their woofers and midrange drivers (the same
material used across our entire product family, right
up to the range-topping Evidence Platinum series;
see p68). Their soft-dome tweeters are based on
our high-end speakers. And it’s all been tuned by the
same team who work on our money-no-object hi-fi
speakers and no-compromise pro studio systems.
Each model is available in Light Grey, Dark Grey, Red

and Blue designer cloth finishes, custom-made by
the acclaimed Danish textile house Gabriel, and is
constructed from honest, high-quality materials –
including a one-piece brushed aluminium surround on
the Music 5 and Music 7. Make no mistake: these are
built to last – both in terms of style and wear-and-tear.
The grille cloths on the Music 5 and Music 7 are
interchangeable too, so you can change the look as you Music 1
change your tastes, and both the Music 5 and Music 7 Music 1 contains a 1in soft-dome tweeter
can be wall-mounted using a dedicated steel wall-bracket. and a 4in woofer, and a built-in rechargeable
battery that will give you up to eight hours
And it all adds up to one thing: simplicity. Just push play. ■ of continuous listening.
Music 3
Music 3 has two 1in soft-dome tweeters
and a 5in woofer. Like the Music 1,
its rechargeable battery will last for up
to eight hours of continuous listening.
Issue 02 11
Dynaudio Home Music
Behind
the Music
How do you design a brand-new product?
It starts with an evening sketching session
and a sense of frustration…
Malte Köhn, our Design Director, spends a lot of his

time thinking. He’ll sit at home, or in his office, or on
the train – anywhere, really – planning new products
in his head. He thinks about what they’ll look like,
what they’ll be made from, which tiny touches they’d
have to set them apart from everything else on the
market. Then come the sketches. Endless sketches
of ranges, details, shapes, finishes, colours…
They’ll be great, of course – that almost goes without

saying, coming from the guy who designed the
new Contour, the updated Focus XD range and
the stunning LYD 48 studio monitor. But it’s still
a process: some of those initial, back-of-an-envelope
ideas won’t have that ‘wow’ factor. The ‘if we don’t
build this, we’re idiots’ factor.
Beauty from any angle

None of the Music speakers have
a ‘good side’. They’re all good sides
Dynaudio Home Music
“I wanted to design a product
that, when you first see it, you’re
like, ‘Nice’. It has to be timeless”
Malte Köhn, Design Director
“The Music family came out of that frustration,” Malte says. roles in their owners’ lifestyle, and they come in at different
“I had five other concepts for it: some square, some round, prices. So how do you expand one design into four?
some other weird things, but nothing that really made me
think ‘wow – that’s cool!’. “I started with the Music 5, but you can see that the Music 7
is very similar. It has more drivers, but it’s more than just being
“So, I was sitting in the evening and just sketching, and I drew bigger,” Malte explains. “Taking your first product – your first
the front – with those lines – because I’d started wondering darling – and then just scaling it up and down is really
if we could angle the drivers in a way to make the product dangerous. You have to look at the main characteristics,
sound much bigger than it looks. I wanted to see how we the facets and the user interface, and then try to incorporate
could support its acoustic performance through design. them into what’s essentially a brand-new product.
Music is one family, then, but four separate products.”
“The first one I drew became the Music 5. I wanted to make
a product that people either love or hate. In between, there are (If there’s another thing Malte is definitely not guilty of,
so many that are just too mainstream; their design language it’s being unambitious.)
is too average. I wanted to come up with something based
on our acoustic principles that also had a really different look.” Having that same DNA, that same recognisable line running
through the whole family, was essential in the design process.
That thought experiment quickly blossomed into the range It’s also something you can see in the finish, the colours and
you can see on these pages. the special cloth.
One family, four members Malte’s worked in textiles before himself, so when he looked at
“I wanted to design a product that, when you first see it, the standard stuff available on the market, he knew immediately
you’re like ‘Nice’. Then you look at it more and really start that he had to go a different way. “We chose Gabriel because
to discover it. It has to be timeless, because think about it’s an old Danish company. They really fit into our philosophy
generations two and three…” of quality and craftsmanship,” he says. “We went to them and
looked at the current cloth as well as some different, more
(If there’s one thing Malte is definitely not guilty of, it’s not standard materials. Those more basic ones just didn’t work very
thinking ahead.) well because of how three-dimensional these speakers are – so
we went with a more three-dimensional finish to the cloth, too.”
“We needed a foundation strong enough to carry; strong
enough to handle all the updates that will hopefully come It’s an approach that’s really paid off, Malte says, pointing out
in the following years.” how the speaker looks different in different light and from
different angles: “They have a liveliness about them. The shape
These speakers aren’t just bigger or smaller versions of each seems to change as you walk around them, and I think the
other: they have different numbers of drivers, they fulfil different fabric really supports that.” ►
Issue 02 13
Dynaudio Home Music
Front to back, outside in to look nice too. It’s very matte on the surface, and acoustically
Bigger boxes almost always help when it comes to getting it’s very dead. It’s just a totally honest material – this is how it
bigger sound, but for speakers like this going all rectangular looks and performs when it comes out of the mould.”
seems like a wasted opportunity. Malte began by sketching
the back side as a basic box, but found that the physical One-touch simplicity
volume made things too bulky. The team was also adamant about making sure Music is
easy to use. Remember your old radio? You pushed a button
“Everyone can make a box and put it somewhere in the house, to turn it on, and then you were listening. You tuned it to
but making a product that looks nice on the table from all another favourite station by pressing another button or
angles is really difficult. I wanted to make these as slim as turning a dial. And that was the end of your involvement
possible, at least visually,” he explains. “So now when you – the DJs did the rest.
look at it you have the long axis – like a mirror, basically.
That’s also why we put the cloth on the back, even though Malte and his crew talked about all sorts of fancy control
it doesn’t serve any acoustic purpose.” methods – touch-sensitive glass, hidden sensors in the
aluminium frame and more – but rejected them all. “We were
There were just as many discussions about what sits under sitting there and then just said: ‘You know what? This should
the cloth. You can remove the grille cover on the Music 5 and
Music 7, so it was every bit as important for the team to make
look them nice once disrobed. Nice-looking materials, however,
aren’t always the best for performance. “Plastic has its own
aesthetic, so we wanted the material we chose for the baffle
App control
The free Dynaudio app for iOS and Android lets you set up and control
your Music speakers individually, in stereo pairs, or in multiroom groups
Dynaudio Home Music
be a really simple thing. The feeling of touching a button hasn’t The Music 5, for instance, had a vertical split along the whole
changed in the past 100 years’. So we went with buttons.” centre-line. It meant the team could experiment with different
back shapes once they’d got the front right. They made rough
Buttons are solid. You can use them when you’re wearing mock-ups from milled foam to get the shape and size right,
gloves, or when you’re cooking and have sauce all over your then went to 3D-printed SLA for acoustic testing.
fingers. They just… work.
For the love of it
“When we look at the Music 1 and Music 3, there are still You have to love what you’re designing. You have to be able
buttons – but because the speakers are a different shape, we to look at it and want it in your house to know you’ve got it
had to look at how else they could be used. We wanted to get totally right. And you have to be able to see new details when
across the fact that these two speakers are portable, so we you look at it – even when you came up with it in the first
built them into the frame, which also doubles as a handle.” place. “It still surprises me that if you look at it from one end,
it looks like an upside-down ship,” laughs Malte. “It’s dynamic,
We printed our prototypes but it’s still very calm in its expression.”
Iteration is one of the most important parts of design, which
is why the Music family went through an absolute boatload He’s cagey about what’s sitting on his drawing board for future
of prototypes. It was teamwork, Malte says, that got the job versions, of course – but if the first Music family is anything to
done. “I went to my team with something that I thought looked go by, it’s pretty clear that it’ll look every bit as spectacular. ■
really interesting. They liked it, so we took it to the product-
management guys, and they told us it looked really cool.
I started sketching it in 3D the same evening. The marketing Button up
team saw it after that and wanted to get their hands on it Everyone knows how to push
because it didn’t look or behave like anything we’d done a button. Simplicity is key…
before. Then we took it to the acoustics guys, who said so why change it?
‘Oh yes. We can really do something with this!’.”
The design team worked closely with the acoustics team,

tweaking lines and positions, to really dial in on the final
shape. If a driver moves, an angle or a facet has to change.
Then the DSP needs tuning again. Back and forth, back and
forth. Then they print out a playing prototype. Yes, print.
“We sent the design file to our local 3D-printing suppliers,

and they produced it in SLA – which is an incredibly stiff,
stable plastic that’s very close to the final material. It was
really important to get it as close as possible so we could
work on the waveguides and the bass ports.”
That 3D printing approach made prototyping quick and easy,

too, Malte continues: “We made 10-15 full versions, but also
lots of different components. We designed the models in a
way that made it easy to swap out parts rather than making
a whole new unit.”
Issue 02 15
Journey to Jupiter
Journey to Jupiter
ourney
to
Jupiter
Dynaudio Labs is the new
research-and-development
building at our HQ in Skanderborg.
And lurking in its lair at the very

centre is a huge robot…
Issue 02 17
Journey to Jupiter
We’re going to let you in on a big secret: one of the

keys to being a great R&D engineer is never being
truly happy with what you’ve created.
“All I can hear is the problems,” says Stephen Entwistle,

Senior Designer in Dynaudio Labs. “I’ll take some prototypes
home and live with them for a month. Everyone says they
sound great, but I’ll only ever hear what needs fixing.”
But make no mistake: this isn’t false modesty, despondency

or self-flagellation. Stephen and his colleagues want to think
like that. It means they’re making progress. Making things
better. Their motivation isn’t to compete with everyone else.
It’s to compete with themselves: to challenge everything, pick
it apart and put it back together again in a new, better way.
But none of this is guesswork. The Dynaudio Labs team
Mark Thorup, VP of Innovation and one of Dynaudio’s very first needs the right tools to move technology from the research
employees, agrees. “A lot of people ask if we’ll ever run out of stage into real-world developments. In the past, they relied
ideas. No, there’s always something: you’ll look at a tweeter and on smaller listening rooms, an anechoic chamber 90 minutes
ask what’s good about it, and what’s bad. The ideas come from up the road in Aalborg, and a painstaking three-day process
the things that are wrong with it. Maybe we could improve the of moving a measuring microphone around prototypes to
reflections on this one surface, or modify the rear chamber. Or map out their response.
even change something incredibly simple that gives us a result.
Meet our robot
“If you think like that every time, you’re moving forward – you Now, they have a brand-new three-storey building at our
don’t need to turn the world around,” he says. headquarters in Skanderborg. And at the very core of that
building sits Jupiter. It’s a colossal 13 x 13 x 13m room,
and its sole job is to measure speakers.
The first thing you do when you go into Jupiter is look up;
“
you can’t help yourself. That’s because suspended 6.5m above
you is a massive robot. It can take 31 measurements at a
time in a giant 7m arc, creating a spherical sonic model of
how a loudspeaker behaves when we put a signal through it.
The biggest mistake an engineer can make

is to think they know the solution to a problem
Journey to Jupiter
What once could take three days, our robot can now do
in 28 minutes. That robot, and the massive space it lives in,
are just two parts of our endless drive to elevate our
research to new levels.
Why’s it so big? Because we want to measure complete

loudspeaker systems in there – a cabinet plus multiple
drivers, rather than just one cone or dome at a time.
“The most neutral way to measure a loudspeaker driver is
to mount it in an infinite baffle,” says Stephen. “International
standards say 1.8m2 is ‘infinite’, but that isn’t big enough
for us. In this room, we’ve buried two 500-litre cavities
in the floor, into which we mount the drivers. The whole
floor becomes the baffle – so 13m2. That’s more like it.”
Keep your distance

What about the height? Why not just build a giant robot on the
ground? Because of the need to obtain a spherical analysis of
the speaker’s performance, and the importance of not allowing
reflections from the walls to interfere with the microphone array.
Stephen explains: “If you have multiple drivers in a real cabinet,

you want to see how their sound interacts with each other and
with the cabinet at your listening position in your living room.
That’s typically about 3m away from the speakers, at one point
of an equilateral triangle. So we elevate the loudspeaker to
the centre of the room and put the mics 3m away from it.
“We measure all 31 microphones simultaneously. We start

vertically, then rotate the robot in six-degree increments until
it’s horizontal. Then we rotate the speaker six degrees and
do it again. And we keep doing that until we’ve got the
spherical measurement.”
The old-school way of doing that would’ve been to use

an anechoic chamber – a room full of sound-dampening
material that almost completely eliminates echoes and
reverberations. Clap your hands right now; unless you’re
actually in an anechoic chamber this very second (and if
you are, then why?), you’ll hear the sound tail off. Anechoic
chambers get rid of that by absorbing that extra energy
and remaining totally quiet (some to the point where you
can hear your own heartbeat and joints creaking). ►
Issue 02 19
Journey to Jupiter
Jupiter was the king of the Roman gods.

And, as the big guy himself, he had to settle
arguments between his underlings and the
humans scurrying about below Mount
Olympus. He was the arbiter of truth: if
someone wanted the right answer to their
question (not just the answer they wanted),
they asked Jupiter. Our Jupiter is the same
– only without the beard and lightning bolts.
The problem is, anechoic chambers don’t tend to work so

well when you delve down really deep into the frequency
range. Their weird wedges and foamy bits only really work
well in the midrange and treble. The only way to get around
that is to make the room bigger – which means more acoustic
treatment, much more cost, and not that much gain.
Instead, we’re able to simulate the good effects of an anechoic

chamber inside Jupiter without having to deal with the That’s because Dynaudio Labs is much more than just a
undesirable ones thanks to its sheer size. Simply put, we shut measuring room. It’s a technology incubator. Its engineers
off the microphones between their measuring the impulse are encouraged to come up with wacky ideas and then share
sound (an instantaneous ‘click’ that contains all frequencies) them with colleagues. “I was R&D manager for a time,” says
and the reflection coming back off the walls. It’s split-second Mark Thorup, “and I was never interested in budgets. I wanted
stuff, but it effectively takes the room out of the equation. to give people space to do pre-developments. You need
knowledge if you want to make decisions about which
You can see it at work products to make, and part of that process means actually
Best of all, there are windows that look down into the room. trying things before you decide to manufacture them.
If you’re lucky enough to be granted access to the Labs
(you’ll need special clearance and to be able to pronounce “It sounds funny, but often when you have the first playing
‘fastelavnsboller’), you’ll be able to see Jupiter doing his thing. speaker prototype, you’re actually only 10 per cent of the way.”
“It’s on the ground floor, and the windows are on the upper Setting the zany free
two floors where the R&D offices and listening rooms are,” The engineers do everything in the Labs building, from
says Stephen. “It means everyone here can experience prototyping the tiniest components in a speaker driver, to
Jupiter as an active room – not a closed, secret box.” developing entire audio systems for Volkswagen cars in our
automotive clean-rooms. It’s a place where our 50 designers
and engineers can set the zany free. Where they can say
“Hey, what if we...”, and then remove the “what if” part.
It’s a place where they can create, and focus, and test, and
measure, and work together, and work alone, and listen,
and then listen some more. And shape the future of audio.
(And the bonus? No one has to drive all the way to Aalborg.)
Journey to Jupiter
The room could
hold almost as much The robot is fitted
water as an Olympic with 31 Brüel &
swimming pool Kjær microphones
There’s a 6-degree
It’s fully soundproofed angle between
with 0.5m-thick walls each microphone
– what’s in there
doesn’t get out Both robot arms are
5m long, and can
It has two lifts rotate
The speaker on
We can measure any test can rotate 360˚
loudspeaker spherically
– and quickly… It’s suspended 6.5m
… what once took above the floor
three days now
takes just 28 minutes
We’ve always had that drive, ever since Dynaudio started in Our ears are the most important piece of measuring equipment
1977. We’ve never been typical; never content. It drives our we have – they’re the things that tell us when we’re going in
friends mad sometimes. “That’s good enough! You’ve been the right direction (or the wrong one). The way we measure
working on that for weeks! It’s good enough!” is getting closer and closer to how the brain perceives sound,
but there’s still no substitute for getting in a room, putting
Our most crucial instrument: the ear on some music, turning it up and finding out how it sounds.
But ‘good enough’ is not good enough. There’s always a
way to improve something – maybe not now, maybe not with “The biggest mistake an engineer can make is to think they
the technology available – but there will be eventually. And know the solution to a problem,” says Stephen Entwistle.
if the technology doesn’t exist, we’ll develop that, too. “There are so many different ways to do it, even if you take
the simplest two-way passive speaker. There’s no one right way
Everything we do is focused on sound. So, yes, we’ve to do it. But there are lots of ways that are completely wrong!”
got a massive robot. We’ve got the huge impulse-response
room. We’ve got the flashy new building, with its meeting When you build a new speaker you’re also building knowledge.
rooms and workshops and state-of-the-art measuring And working as a team is the key to success because, as it
equipment. But we’ve made sure we still elevate one thing turns out, even making something simple is really complicated.
above all else: our ears.
“I’m always looking five years into the future,” Stephen adds.
That’s why the R&D centre has dedicated listening booths, “That’s where my focus is. It’s not even on the project I’m
both for solo and team sessions. And, like the one in our main working on right now. I’m always looking forward.”
building, they’re full of speakers, and cables, and reference
equipment, and half-built prototypes, and coffee cups, and That’s why Dynaudio Labs exists. We aren’t doing it because
chairs, and people. They’re messy, and used, and we love them. we must; we’re doing it because we can. ■
Issue 02 21
How to build your home cinema
How to...
build your
home
cinema
Don’t just put your speakers down
wherever and hope for the best.
Here’s how to take the guesswork out of
placement, angles, fine-tuning and cabling
Congratulations! You’ve put the hours into researching
and acquiring your dream (maybe your first ever) home
cinema system, and finally the factory-fresh Dynaudio
speakers, stack of AV boxes and coils of cable are
sitting in your living room. It’s a warm feeling, isn’t it?
You’re almost ready to rip the cellophane wrappers off

your new Blu-rays. Almost. But not quite, for you’re still
one (very important) step away from AV heaven. by a budget or high-end AV amp, or featuring the likes of our
get-you-out-of-the-gate Emits or show-stopping Evidences.
The final hurdle is, naturally, setting it all up – and you can
take our word for it: this isn’t the time to start cutting corners. Tape measure at the ready? Let’s get to work.
Home cinema building is far from plug’n’play. It’s all about
– repeat after us – positioning, connecting and calibrating. Where to put it all
And of course, it has to look the part, too. A daunting task, Speaking of cutting corners, there’s much more to speaker
perhaps, but a worthwhile one. placement than avoiding them. Whether you’ve opted for a 5.1
or 7.1 configuration (you might even be using more than one
The following pages will provide chapter and verse on how to subwoofer) and whether that’s made up purely of floorstanders,
get the most from your home cinema system – be it one driven bookshelf speakers or a mix of the two, the rules are the same.
Ideally, place the front three speakers (the left, centre and right)
at least a metre apart – but, more crucially, equidistant from
your listening position. The idea is to have them all level on a
horizontal plane if you were to look down on them from above.
The front left and right speakers should also be at a 45- to
60-degree angle from your listening position. We recommend
digging out a protractor and a laser pen to angle up.
A general rule of thumb: the front speakers’ tweeters should

be around ear level. We don’t need to tell you not to put your
centre speaker in the way of your display, but do bear in mind
that it should sit as close as possible underneath or above your
display. After all, you want people talking at you, not two feet
over your head or at your knees. If you consider how much
dialogue there is in films and TV programmes, it’s clear the
centre speaker is your surround package’s frontman – so
it’s important to get its placement right. Giving it space to
breathe on a stand (one of our Center bases, say) is preferable
to shoving it inside a piece of furniture.
Bad vibes? You might be as compelled to put your surround speakers

If you’re using stands, make sure the speakers on top of directly behind you as you are to turn the subwoofer all the
them are firmly seated – unwanted vibrations will ruin your way up to 11 (more on that later), but that’s not how you create
system’s performance. A blob of sticky putty under each a convincingly enveloping soundfield with a wide sweet-spot.
corner of the speaker can really help here. The space directly behind your seat is best saved for a sixth
and seventh surround channel.
The best position for your main rear speakers is exactly where
you wouldn’t want someone to stand while you’re reading: over
your shoulder, just behind you to the side, and slightly above
ear level. That way, surround effects will sound more immersive
and also integrate more tightly with the front three speakers. ►
Issue 02 23
Keep your sub subordinate With this in mind, using two subs isn’t
Deep bass is less directional than treble necessarily for more bass, but better
or midrange, and almost non-directional bass. Exciting two places in a room as
below 80Hz. That means it’s usually opposed to just one will help reduce
safe to put your subwoofer(s) almost localization for a smoother response
anywhere – flanking the centre channel, in a soundfield. The less localized
for example. the bass, the better. Also keep in
mind the size factor: two small subs
To take its placement to the next level, might be easier to accommodate
though, put the sub where you’d in your room than one bigger one.
normally sit (yes, on the sofa) and play a
familiar song with a hearty bass line. Why Think about the room
music? Because you’re probably more In an ideal world, you should be able
familiar with what bass guitar should to draw a more or less perfect rectangle
sound like than a quick-fire movie effect. between your speakers, but that’s
Now crawl around the room (you might easier said than done if your living
want to close the curtains) and listen for room has more concaves and corners
where bass notes sound smoothest and than an IKEA show floor.
most defined. That’s your subwoofer
spot… providing it’s not blocking a Sounds like yours? Don’t move house.
doorway or where the dog sleeps. Don’t reach for your hammer. Don’t
panic. The advice is the same: avoid
Cranking subwoofers up to the maximum corners (if that’s nigh on impossible,
joins “Don’t push this button” on The List avoid rear-ported speakers), and aim
of Temptations to Overcome. In fact, you for that equilateral triangle between
should hardly be able to hear the sub. your front speakers and sofa as best
Its job is to blend in seamlessly. It should you can. Keep yourself centre stage,
contribute without taking charge, and the display head-on, and the speakers
you shouldn’t ever hear it during firing the length, not the width, of the
on-screen dialogue – even between room. If you can’t achieve that 40-to-60-
Vin Diesel and Darth Vader. The bottom degree aspect, try angling in the
line: use your ears. speakers towards you.
TV or
projector?
The display you choose depends on preferences and practicalities. Want a sub 75-inch
screen that can play 4K content? Get a TV. Fancy an enormous screen? If you’re happy
to settle for regular high-definition and a bit less practicality (unless you spend really
big money) but want a real cinematic spectacle, go for a projector.
Whichever path you trample, consider the distance between you and your screen.
To avoid sore eyes and your picture looking too pixelated or lacking detail, this should
be approximately double the diagonal size of the screen. For example: for 55in or
65in displays, park your sofa around 2.5-3m away. For 40 inches, 1.7m. And, as
with speaker calibration, you’ll want to adjust the factory settings, too. You can do
that easily with the aid of the THX tune-up app for iOS and Android.
5 2
1 1
0°
22°-30° 22°-30°
3 3
90°-110° 90°-110°
135°-150° 135°-150°
4 4
De-cluttering cables Fine tuning

(At least) six speaker cables, a few HDMI leads and probably You’ve laid your last metre of wire. It’s now time to calibrate the
an Ethernet chord, plus assorted interconnects and USBs… system. Most modern home cinema amplifiers have built-in
there’s big potential here for your system’s cabling to get automatic calibration software, which fine-tunes your system
really messy. That’s why, in a hi-fi environment, wireless by mapping out your room and calculating your speakers’
active speakers like Xeos and Focus XDs work so well. sizes, distances and response levels within it using weird-
sounding electronic noises. All you have to do is plug in the
Sadly, cables are the wheelie bins of home cinema systems: included microphone, place it in your listening position(s)
ugly essentials. But there are many ways to minimise spaghetti: at head-height, and follow a few on-screen instructions.
cable-ties, media centres and sock-like tubes all work – and
you can even hide cables inside or behind walls (see p84). Clever software indeed, but don’t take it as gospel and always
check the results afterwards, manually making adjustments
Just be wary that, because power cables carry higher if need be using a sound meter app on your phone. Remember
currents than speaker cables, running the two parallel to what we said about making sure the speakers are equidistant:
each other could cause interference – and thus unwanted check that there aren’t any decibel level outliers, too.
noise in your music or films. If your room or set-up dictates
contact between the two, though, any crosses should ideally Happy? Then there’s only one thing left to do: wake the
be at right-angles. neighbours. ■
Issue 02 25
One
Car audio
for
the
road
Car audio
100 years after it first appeared,
car audio now rivals enthusiast hi-fi
for sound. Getting this far has been
quite a journey.
The thrum of tyres on hot tarmac. The wind in your hair.

Escape. Freedom. Adventure.
That, or perhaps you’re stuck next to a truck in a traffic jam in

the city. Wherever you are, you already know that any car
journey is made better by a good soundtrack.
But car audio is tricky. Most of the rules of hi-fi design go out
the window when you’re working in a metal box dotted with
speakers just centimetres from the listener’s ear. And that’s
before you think about reflections from hard windows,
absorption by soft seats, road vibrations, wind noise and
extreme, unpredictable changes in climate. From crackly AM radio, through tape
and CD, and right up to world-class
Despite all that, we’ve worked out how to do it – and then digital reproduction, we’ve always
some. Dynaudio has set new benchmarks in car audio loved listening to music in our cars.
technology, combining our deep knowledge of acoustic In fact, in-car audio has been around
design with our expertise in digital sound processing almost as long as the car itself…
to ensure that what you hear in Volkswagen’s cars is as
good as any other hi-fi experience you have. Like everything
we do, it’s truly high end. Development was going on in earnest to find a more
appropriate solution. There’s fuzziness in the historical record
Not that the pioneers of car audio were concerned about as to which manufacturer first offered bespoke car radio installs
the very best sound experience. Their big problem was – some say Chevrolet did as far back as 1922, others suggest
getting it working. At all. the first dedicated car radio was 1925’s Airtone 3D – but all
agree that the breakthrough came from the US-based Galvin
Any sound will do Manufacturing Corporation in 1930.
The car audio systems of the early 1920s weren’t built by
emerging audio companies. They weren’t made by car Its product was the Motorola* Model 5T71, and its greatest
manufacturers. They were created by garage enthusiasts achievement was not what it added to car audio, but what
and tinkerers who spent their free time working out how it took away. At the time, in-car sound was a mass of static,
to fasten battery-powered radios to their dashboards. plagued with interference from other vehicle components.
Founder Paul Galvin’s challenge was to isolate his radio’s
To be clear, ‘battery-powered’ here does not mean ‘portable’. innards to provide an audio experience free of electrical noise.
Such radios were often huge tins containing hot-running
vacuum tubes that demanded high voltages and big, heavy By all reports he succeeded. What’s more, the Motorola was
batteries to run. They weren’t installed so much as heaved. elegant for the time, with a dash-mounted remote control and
speaker and those huge batteries hidden beneath passengers’
feet. What it provided – the ability to drive to the unsullied
sounds of Glenn Miller and Duke Ellington on monophonic
AM radio – was enough to spark a revolution. ►
*Yes, that Motorola – Galvin adopted its product’s name later in the decade. Issue 02 27
Car audio
The quest for better

Demand for car audio
soared, and by the close of
the ’30s the car radio was
a fixture. Installs remained
expensive and unwieldy,
though, and ‘sound quality’
were still words that made
little sense used together,
so there was work to do.
In 1954, inspiration would

come from another Record-breaking drives
battery-powered device: the Regency TR-1 (above). The first Manufacturers launched in-car record players with varying
‘transistor radio’ used solid-state electronics in place of degrees of failure. Chrysler’s Highway Hi-Fi played specially
vacuum tubes. With no pesky filaments to heat, this pocket- made ‘Ultra Microgroove’ 16 2/3 rpm 7-inch records that stored
sized plastic box could furnish listeners with rock’n’roll 45 minutes of music per side. It only offered albums available
wherever they went. It heralded a breakthrough in size and on Columbia and exerted so much pressure to reduce skipping
efficiency that paved the way for the car hi-fi of the future. that they rapidly wore out. It lived from 1955 to 1959.
Mono sound remained the in-car standard throughout the Soon after, both Philips and RCA had devices that worked with
’50s and early ’60s, although some vehicles had an additional standard 45s. Philips’ Auto-Mignon pre-empted CD with its
speaker in the rear and offered an ‘echo chamber’ effect by slot-loading mechanism. The RCA AP-1 was remarkably clever,
delaying the sound playing out of it. Japanese brand Clarion featuring a 14-disc changer that played records upside-down.
brought out a true car stereo in 1964. While some early installs But again, that required pressure – so records didn’t last long.
retained the front-and-rear speaker arrangement, somewhat
missing the point, it wasn’t long until drivers could enjoy a real
stereo image thanks to door- and dash-mounted speaker pairs.
Let’s get personal
This was excellent news, given that the likes of Pink Floyd For the first few decades of its existence, car audio lagged
and The Beatles were every bit as enthusiastic about behind home listening in one crucial respect. Home music fans
experimentation in audio as they were in illicit chemicals. And were used to hearing the tunes they liked, when they liked. In
by this time, drivers could choose exactly which psychedelic a car, drivers were still entirely at the whims of the disc jockey.
soundscapes they wanted to immerse themselves in, too…
Vinyl, the pervasive format of the time, was not suited to life
on the road. Anything that relies on the precise tracking of the
tip of a diamond in a groove less than a twentieth of a millimetre
across abhors a pothole. But that didn’t stop manufacturers
from trying (see Record-breaking drives, above).
In 1962, and not a moment too soon, characterful American

inventor Earl ‘Madman’ Muntz unveiled his Autostereo.
The first in-car tape machine played proprietary 4-track
‘Stereo-Pak’ cartridges; all of a sudden, drivers could listen
to complete albums in an endless loop with no skipping.
1994’s Volvo C70 was the first
partnership between high-end car
and audio brands. Its five-channel
It was almost magical, but there were soon to be other
magicians in the game. Philips introduced the Compact
system has become legendary
Cassette in 1964, and in 1965 RCA, Motorola and Ford
collaborated to bring the new Stereo 8 – better known
as 8-track – to the car. While technically inferior to the
Stereo-Pak, both formats’ lower cost meant more drivers
than ever could choose what to listen to.
Stereo-Pak was worn out by 1969, and while 8-track

dominated certain markets for years, cassette ultimately
endured. Sure, you had to turn it over halfway through, but
you could rewind it. Better still, most home cassette players
could play and record music, enabling one of mankind’s
all-time greatest achievements: the mixtape. Volvo C70
The DIY comeback

Car audio was sounding better and better. Dolby B noise wedging drivers in just about anywhere they could fit
reduction took on tape hiss. Speakers got dedicated mid-bass (and creating new cabinets and fixtures if they wouldn’t).
drivers and tweeters. Integrated circuits made amplifiers A new standard for slot-in head units, DIN, made swapping
smaller and more efficient. and upgrading easier than ever.
Then, at the 1978 Winter Consumer Electronics Show in One such head unit was Pioneer’s CDX-1, the first in-car
Las Vegas, American Rich Coe exhibited something of a CD player. In 1984, it offered drivers a leap in audio precision,
showstopper. His Audiomobile 1K VW was a very special effortless track skipping, and forever banished the concern
1969 Volkswagen Beetle, customised with two subwoofers that the car would eat your copy of Brothers in Arms.
and a pair of mid/bass drivers and tweeters, all mounted in
fibreglass. Coe’s aim: to bring real hi-fi performance to the road. The aftermarket embraced DSP and centre-channel speakers,
but was no longer just about music: it was a form of self-
The hunger captured by Audiomobile birthed an industry that expression. It got a taste for neon underlighting as it collided
would grow through the ’70s, explode in the ’80s and, by the with the custom car scene, as immortalised in magazines such
’90s, go fully mainstream. ‘The aftermarket’ enabled car owners as Max Power and TV shows like Pimp My Ride. Some installs
to eschew the systems their vehicles came with for something were sublime, many were ridiculous, but most provided a big
bigger, brasher and much, much louder. step up in quality from ‘stock’ – and served to underline an
expectation of in-car audio excellence.
In-car amplifiers evolved from built-in stereo units to standalone
multi-channel beasts. Speakers became more complex and In 1994, Volvo took the radical step of commissioning Dynaudio
hi-fi-like, and appeared in greater volume, with installers to produce an audiophile speaker system for its forthcoming
C70. Although carmakers had sold premium stereos from
well-known hi-fi companies before, it would be the first
attempt to create a full Dolby surround-sound system in a car.
“This car should be magnificent in all the parts, so naturally,
Volvo wanted to have a very high-end sound system in it,”
says Morten Hermansen, Senior Sound Tuner, Car at Dynaudio.
“They didn’t care that our speaker drivers were ten times
more expensive than what they could buy in China.”
The Dynaudio/Volvo partnership lasted for more than ten years,

and several premium Dynaudio sound systems were developed
for different Volvo models – including the S80, S60, V60,
next-gen C70 Coupé and Cabriolet. ►
Issue 02 29
1922
Did Chevrolet invent the first
car system this year…?
1925
… or did the Airtone 3D
take that honour three years
1930
later? Records are sketchy. The Motorola Model 5T71
debuts – along with a
static-free performance
1954
1962 The battery-powered
Regency TR-1 heralded the
end of vacuum tubes.
The first in-car tape machine
finally frees listeners from
capricious radio DJs
1964 1964
Philips introduces the Japanese brand Clarion
Compact Cassette introduces the first true car
stereo system
1984
Pioneer’s CDX-1, the world’s
1994
first in-car CD player, makes
its debut
Volvo commissions Dynaudio
to produce the first in-car
Dolby surround system for
its forthcoming C70 model
1998
The first in-car MP3 player is
launched – followed by the
introduction of MP3 CDs
2001
Volkswagen approaches
Dynaudio to create in-car
audio systems for its range
Now
Sophisticated DSP and driver
tech lets us customise the
in-car audio experience to
previously impossible levels
imelin
Totally up to date
The new VW Arteon has an optional Dynaudio system…
a no-brainer decision, of course
Computer music
Meanwhile the digital audio revolution was gathering pace. A
British company called Empeg launched the first MP3-playing
head unit in 1998, two years before Napster cast the emerging
scene into notoriety. It was way ahead of its time, capable of
storing upwards of 12,000 songs. Soon after, MP3-encoded
recordable CDs would provide a digital follow-up to the
mixtape, and audio systems started playing digital files stored
on external devices – iPods, SD cards, USB sticks and so on.
But one piece of the puzzle was still missing. Because of

the way in which speakers are arrayed within a car’s cabin,
creating the sense that the performers are on stage in front Using sophisticated DSP and
of the passengers was a huge challenge. This ‘soundstage’ trained ears, we can now create
is one of the hallmarks of a great stereo hi-fi system. In 2001,
audio sweet-spots anywhere in the
when Volkswagen approached Dynaudio to create in-car
audio systems for its range, we tackled the challenge head-on.
car – even in individual seats
We specified a DSP (Digital Signal Processing) system that Volkswagen and Dynaudio had shown the route other
could map the precise layout of the car and manipulate the manufacturers would take. The aftermarket and the DIN
delivery of the system to an incredibly fine degree. “DSP is a standard waned as quality hi-fi and satnav became standard
computer, and we can make that computer treat and change factory-fit options. Entertainment evolved into infotainment.
the performance for every channel we choose,” says Morten ‘Connectivity’ became a buzzword as cars got their own SIM
Hermansen. “We can change the parameters, we can change card slots or borrowed the internet connections of Bluetooth-
the frequency response of every speaker driver in the car.” connected smartphones. We still listened to CDs, but more
often than not would choose to stream our music via Bluetooth,
The theory went that adjusting the timing with which each or select the Spotify app from Android Auto or Apple CarPlay.
of the car’s speakers fired was the way to fool our brains
into thinking that sound was coming from performers in front We’ve come a long way since DIY-ers tried to attach noisy
of us. And thanks to DSP, we now had that power. “We can metal boxes to their Model Ts. Now, we can listen to just about
delay a single channel in steps of 0.02ms if needed. That anything in our cars – and, finally, there are systems available
means we can move the singer away from the door, up in that make it sound just as good on the road as it does at home.
front of you, and then over to the right,” says Hermansen.
Audio ‘sweet spots’ could be created and adjusted at will; In our next issue, you’ll find out what’s going on in all that
indeed, with all VW sound systems, you can focus that genius DSP – how it’s created, how it’s tuned and what it
spot on individual seats within the car. sounds like to listen to… stay tuned. ■
Issue 02 31
How to take care of your speakers
How to...
take care of
your
speakers
Spruce up your system and keep it looking nice with these DIY tips
You’ve spent good money on your speakers,

so it’s only natural you want to keep them
looking their best.
But spraying them down with the old furniture

polish you found under the kitchen sink and
then scrubbing them with an equally old rag
will do more harm than good.
Here’s how to do the job properly (and deal with

damaged tweeters and woofers while you’re at it).
Leave the buffing tools in the shed

First, find two high-quality microfibre cloths.
Second, fetch a can of compressed air. Third,
make sure you remove any jewellery that could
cause scratches. Now, blow the entire cabinet
with the compressed air to gently remove any
small particles that might have found their way
onto the finish. ►
Two essentials… and one no-no
Compressed Soft Jewellery

air cloths
Issue 02 33
Time to clean the tweeters. But before you do, stop right there.
Back away from the tweeter.
“But my cloth is really soft. What if I just…”
“Unfortunately, it’s easier than you think to create scrapes No. Just no. Don’t touch.
in the lacquer: gritty particles and even flower petals can
blemish the cabinet. But blowing these things away before Soft-dome tweeters are fragile. While you might be tempted
you start wiping down really helps avoid accidental damage,” to take a vacuum cleaner or dusting cloth to them while
says John Christensen from our production department. you’re cleaning, that’s dangerous territory – and you’re
more likely to end up doing more harm than good.
Next, you need your cloths: soak one of them in lukewarm
water and wring it out well, and leave the other dry. Make “You can actually just leave any dust that isn’t blown off the
sure there aren’t any folds or stitching in the part of the cloth tweeter when you play music,” says product manager Otto
you’re wiping with. Jørgensen. “But if you don’t like the way it looks, the best
method is to blow gently at the tweeter. Any dust that isn’t
Now, with your well-wrung, well-folded microfibre cloth, wipe blown off by the speakers themselves will have little to no
the entire speaker with long, gentle strokes. (Everything except impact on their sound, though.”
the tweeter; do not touch the tweeter!) Then repeat that with
the dry microfibre cloth – still using long, gentle strokes, While it might seem odd to blow at your tweeters, it is by
making sure to get every inch of the cabinet. far the safest way to clean your soft-domes: compressed
air or vacuum cleaners pack way too much punch.
Lacquer is more delicate than you think
Going over your speakers like this might reveal a scratch or In some unfortunate cases (we’ve all seen the horrific pictures),
two. What do you do then? While it might be tempting to find tweeters get pushed in for a variety of reasons – small fingers
some car polish and get out your buffing tools, we strongly being among the most common. The solution is low-tech and
recommend that you take a deep breath… and then don’t do it. a little unorthodox, as Otto explains: “You have to suck it out.
Place your lips tightly around the tweeter creating a vacuum.
“The lacquer is delicate, and without knowing the exact And then you use your mouth to create suction.
chemical composition of the polish, it’s tough to predict how
it’ll affect the lacquer. In most cases, you’ll end up doing “Time is also a factor here. You need to start the rescue mission
some damage,” says production manager Allan Kristiansen. as quickly as possible. If the diaphragm is allowed to settle,
it can become almost impossible to get out again,” he adds.
“Talk to your local dealer or contact our support team: send
a detailed description of the scratch, with well-lit pictures, The tweeter might still have small creases or dimples after
and tell them what finish you have (colour, high-gloss, satin, it’s been rescued. Unfortunately, there isn’t much you can
etc). Together we might find a solution, but it really depends do about that. And sadly, these imperfections might have
on damage,” he adds. a slight effect on audio performance.
From there, your dealer will know how to get you the proper
replacement units for your speakers. In some cases, you’ll
be advised to change them in pairs. This is especially true
for tweeters, and units in older speakers.
“Tweeters change over time, so there’s no guarantee that a

new tweeter will match one that’s eight years old. That’s why
we recommend that you replace them in pairs,” says Otto.
“In some of our series, we match the tweeters to complement
No.
each other with extreme precision [see p64]. With these
speakers, we actually require that you replace them in pairs to
ensure the highest level of performance afterwards,” he adds.
Just no. When you get your loudspeaker units replaced, we recommend
you don’t even consider using anything other than one-to-one
replacements of the same model.
Don’t touch. “It’s never a good idea to replace a unit with something
different,” Otto explains. “It will most likely have different
specs that affect sound reproduction.”
But you don’t have to wait until something breaks to change it.
More severe problems will be more easily identified: “A forceful You can also change tweeters in an old pair of speakers to
push could damage the voice coil. But it will be a much more extend their life expectancy. “If your speakers are more than
obvious problem, as the tweeter either won’t play or it’ll sound 10 years old, we actually recommend you replace your
wholly unnatural. It’ll be very obvious,” Otto says. tweeters altogether,” Otto says. ■
How to clean your woofers

Compared with soft-dome tweeters, midrange and bass Otto Jørgensen,
units are a sturdier breed. You won’t see us diving in front product manager
of midranges as we would if you were about to touch a
soft-dome tweeter.
“You can safely use a dry microfibre cloth,” says Otto.

“If it’s more than just dust, use a damp cloth that you’ve
wrung out really well and then wipe it with a dry one.”
Historically, speaker surrounds have been prone to degradation How to clean

as they were made from foam – something there really wasn’t
a fix for other than to leave them alone. Nowadays, surrounds
are usually made from rubber, and that’s a good thing, but
your speakers
you should still avoid exposing them to direct sunlight. 1. Take off your jewellery
Otto suggests using Sonax and other kinds of rubber care
products to keep them in top condition. 2. Blow your speakers down with
compressed air
When the damage has been done
It’s also unlikely that you’ll see a pushed-in bass unit anytime 3. Two microfibre cloths: one wet
soon. “Replace it on the spot. Even if you could get it popped
and wrung-out, and one dry
out again, it would look awful – and the process would most
likely cause audible damage,” Otto says. 4. Use the wrung-out cloth to
wipe down the entire cabinet
What should you do if a loudspeaker driver is broken? First,
don’t panic. Second, resist the urge to start fiddling. Third, with long, gentle strokes
bring the speaker to your local dealer and have them remove
5. Repeat it with the dry one
the affected units.
6. Don’t touch the tweeter!
Issue 02 35
Dynaudio Home Emit
Who would’ve thought ‘entry-level’

could be so good?
Just because something sits at the introductory end Make no mistake: we’ve poured just as much
of our loudspeaker range, that doesn’t mean we’ve enthusiasm, knowhow and innovation into our
made any compromises when it comes to sound Emit range as we have into our ultra high-end
quality. We just can’t bring ourselves to do that. Evidence loudspeakers (see p68). We don’t
believe in cutting corners.
Instead, we’ve gone above and beyond to make sure

Take a close look at a pair of Emit speakers and
that every speaker in the Emit range can be easily
you’ll find the same materials in their drivers as
paired with different amplifiers and AV receivers.
you’ll find on every other model in our range.
We designed them to be easy to position in your
You get the same Magnesium Silicate Polymer
room, and we made sure that they can all be used
for the mid/bass drivers (a material we
as part of a stereo or surround-sound system.
developed in-house in our Skanderborg factory),
the same philosophy behind the precision-
Come on in. coated soft-dome tweeters, and the same
lightweight aluminium voice-coils for greater
precision, power-consistency and control.
And they’ve been designed, engineered and

tuned by the same people who’ve produced
some of the most cutting-edge, high-end
loudspeakers of the past 40 years.
You’re in good hands. ►
Dynaudio Home Emit
Winning formula
The UK’s legendary What Hi-Fi? magazine named
the entry-level Emit range Product of the Year
Issue 02 37
Dynaudio Home Emit
Flexible placement
We’ve designed the
Emits to sound just as
great wherever you
want to put them
Emit M10
Don’t go assuming that a compact speaker has small-scale
sound. The M10’s 14cm MSP mid/bass driver and 28mm
soft-dome tweeter team up with a first-order crossover and
a forgiving linear 6-ohm impedance that lets them play nicely
with pretty much any amp you power them with. The tuned
bass-reflex port and long-throw driver are optimised for smaller
and mid-size rooms, and our designers have made sure they’ll
still work shoved up against a wall or on a shelf – because they
know not everyone has (or wants) a dedicated listening room.
Emit M20
Move up a step in size and you get a 17cm mid/bass driver
designed to fill mid-size and larger rooms. The 28mm soft-
dome tweeter remains, of course; we’ve spent 40 years
working on our tweeters, and until one of our engineers
rushes in brandishing something revolutionary and shouting
“I’ve done it!” (which, admittedly, does sometimes happen),
we see no reason to change.
Because the M20s are a little bigger, we recommend putting

them on stands (you can see the matching Dynaudio Stand 6,
among other accessories, at www.dynaudio.com), and giving
them a bit of space behind to breathe.
Emit M30
The M30 floorstanders share the same DNA as our top-of-the-
line loudspeakers. Their twin 17cm MSP bass drivers each
feature a large 75mm aluminium voice-coil (larger voice-coils
Emit M10
mean more windings, which means more control over
dynamics, detail and finesse), and their 28mm soft-dome
Dynaudio Home Emit
Designed, engineered and tuned
by the same people who’ve made
some of the most legendary
speakers of the past 40 years
tweeters have rear damping chambers for even greater

precision. It’s the sort of thing you might expect to see in
much higher-priced speakers (such as the 2017 What Hi-Fi?
Award-winning Special Forty anniversary speakers on p56).
And it’s the sort of sound you might expect, too.
The M30s are designed to work just as well in a stereo

set-up as they are in a multichannel system.
Emit M15C
It’s been said that up to 80 per cent of the movie-watching
experience is down to its sound. And when you’re watching a
movie using a surround-sound system, most of it comes from
the centre channel. We’ve made sure the M15C can live up
to that kind of pressure. Two 11cm MSP drivers and a 28mm
soft-dome tweeter handle the business end, while the angled
centre base lets you position the speaker for listening on
Emit M30
a sofa. You can also put it flat on a low sideboard, or fix it
to the wall with a dedicated Dynaudio mounting bracket. ■
Emit M15C
Complete your home
cinema with this dedicated
centre channel speaker
Issue 02 39
Dynaudio Home Excite
Excite
Elegant, refined and versatile…
and they pack a serious punch.
Use them in stereo. Build a multichannel

system. Even go active. High-quality
furniture-grade cabinets – painstakingly
assembled and finished by experts in
Skanderborg – plus sophisticated
crossovers, coated soft-dome tweeters
and new long-throw mid/bass drivers,
set Excite apart when it comes to getting
the most from your music and films.
After all, the clue’s in the name…
Issue 02 41
Systems grow and change over time. We know you

might not start off with a full-fat multichannel system (or
maybe you will, in which case step this way). We know
you’ll add to your set-up, subtract from it and swap out
various components, cables and accessories over time.
That’s why we designed Excite to be able to roll with the

changes you might want to make. We’ve tuned the speakers
so they’ll play nicely with almost any amplifier you pair them
with: their linear impedance and advanced MSP drivers
(a material developed in our own labs; see p16) see to that.
And they’re available in five sizes – so there’ll always be
one right for your living or listening room.
The smallest, the X14, has been fitted with a new 14cm
long-throw mid/bass driver for greater depth and power
(we think you might be surprised by its punch), while the
short distance between it and the 28mm coated soft-dome
tweeter offers improved timing. The X14 is versatile enough
to put on stands (we recommend the Dynaudio Stand 3X),
bookshelves or sideboards (check out the SF 1 speaker
foot for an elegant way to place them there).
Move up a size to the X18 and you’ll get a 17cm mid/bass

driver alongside the 28mm tweeter, plus a greater cabinet
volume for even more low-frequency potency. It also uses our
celebrated lightweight aluminium voice-coils and powerful
Esotec+ magnets for greater precision, punch and control.
Take the floor

Want to make more of a statement? You can choose between
three sizes of floorstanders. There’s the slimline two-way
X34 with twin 14cm long-throw MSP mid/bass drivers and
a 28mm tweeter; the three-way X38, which puts two 18cm
woofers and an 14cm midrange driver under the tweeter;
and the uncompromising three-way X44.
Versatility without compromise.
An Excite system grows with
you – wherever you go
Centre of attention
Turn your Excite system into a full-blown home
cinema with one of its dedicated centre speakers
At 1.2m tall and packing two specially developed Esotec+

20cm woofers alongside its 14cm midrange driver and
28mm coated soft-dome tweeter, the flagship of the Excite
range is perfectly capable of waking the neighbours several
houses over (not that you would, of course, we’re sure…).
Why midrange drivers? Because they further improve clarity and

imaging – even in larger rooms and at longer listening distances.
Precise crossover tuning ensures they work in absolute
harmony with their bass- and treble-focused cousins, too.
And there’s more…

If you want to go active, there’s the X14A. It’s based on
the passive model, but contains its own powerful digital
amplification – one 50W amp for the tweeter and another
for the mid/bass driver. We’ve optimised each amp specifically
for the driver it powers, so you don’t have to worry about
system-matching or interconnects, and you can even tell
the speakers where they are in the room (in a corner, in free
space and so on) to let them fine-tune their sound for you.
All you need is a source.
Completing the range are two centre speakers: the X24 and
X28. Two 11cm mid/bass drivers flank the 28mm tweeter in
the compact X24, while the X28 ups that to two 14cm drivers.
Seamless design They let you build an Excite-based cinema set-up for pretty
Magnetic grilles much any AV receiver and room.
give your speakers
a cleaner look Excite is all about versatility without compromise. It’s a system
that grows with you – wherever you go. ■
Issue 02 43
Dynaudio Home Xeo
Xeo
Cut the cables… not the sound quality.
Xeo is the world’s first high-end
wireless stereo speaker system. And
we’ve poured every one of our 40 years
of hi-fi experience into creating it.
You can hook it up to almost any source – your phone, tablet,

computer, TV, CD player and more – or make it multiroom
with Xeo Hub or Dynaudio Connect.
Advanced DSP filters tailor its sound to your room, and

adaptive bass technology and powerful integrated amplifiers
drive its low frequencies to really surprising depths.
Sometimes you just want to listen to some music.

You don’t want to rummage through your shelves (or
somewhere on the floor) for a CD, then find the box for the one
you left in the player last night… then realise, half a song in,
that you actually wanted a different CD. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Xeo frees you from all that. It’s a range of wireless speakers
that can play music from your computer, smartphone, docking
station, network player, CD player, TV, portable device,
tablet, video system…
No speaker cables, no amplifiers, no big equipment racks: the

only thing you have to do is pick a song from your library and
stream it. And your ears will be greeted with the same honest
performance that Dynaudio has been legendary for since 1977.
Dynaudio Home Xeo
How they work
Xeo speakers are active. That means they contain their own
amplifiers and electronics. Each speaker driver in the cabinet
has its own amp – specifically matched, individually tuned
and precisely optimised to drive that one unit. It also means you
don’t need to concern yourself with matching other components
to the speakers – we’ve done the hard work for you.
They don’t need a physical connection to each other, either –

one speaker streams to the other wirelessly, so you don’t need
to trail speaker cables or other connections across the room. ►
It’s easy…
1. Just plug them into the mains
2. Connect your source via bluetooth
3. Play your favourite music
Issue 02 45
Dynaudio Home Xeo
Just plug them into the mains,

connect your source
and off you go
Xeo 2: wired, wireless, whatever

You want versatility? Here it is. The Xeo 2s can play anything
you stream to them wirelessly via Bluetooth – from any
compatible device. They also have on-board physical inputs:
digital optical (which can handle 24-bit/192kHz hi-res files),
analogue RCA stereo, and analogue 3.5mm minijack.
Control them from the supplied remote control, or using the

touch-sensitive buttons on top of the cabinet.
Hook them up them to a Dynaudio Connect box (see p52)

via the USB and digital coaxial connections and add wireless
hi-res streaming up to 24-bit/96kHz, Spotify Connect,
iOS control, multiroom and DLNA support.
But it doesn’t end there. We don’t believe you should have to

change your room layout to get the sound quality you deserve.
That’s why we’ve given the Xeo 2s some of our most advanced
digital processing technology: these speakers aren’t just well
connected, they’re smart too. Mount them on stands; keep
them on a shelf; put them in a corner; seat them on the optional
wall-brackets for a seamless look. Just tell the Xeo 2s where
they are via a rear switch, and they’ll optimise their sound
for that position (and for the volume they’re playing at).
The Xeo 2’s 28mm tweeter and 14cm mid/bass driver sit in
a solid aluminium baffle and ultra-stable composite housing.
It’s all designed to minimise unwanted interference – giving
the twin 65W amplifiers everything they need to do their work.
And you can upgrade them without upgrading them: our R&D
engineers can send out future firmware updates to add new
features and functions. (They love to tinker.)
Dynaudio Home Xeo
Xeo 4: Pure wireless, pure sound
These two-way, 100W-per-side Xeo 4 bookshelf speakers are
purely wireless. All you need is a source and power. Hook them
up to a Dynaudio Connect and you’ll have access to all your
components as long as they have the right connections – be
it a turntable, hi-res network player, smartphone, TV, CD player
or that weird tape machine you found in the attic. And you
can make it all multiroom, too. Multiroom vinyl? Yep.
And, like the Xeo 2s, they’re happy wherever you put them.
Just tell them where they are using the rear control and
they’ll do the rest – all you have to do is sit back and listen.
Xeo 6: Power and nuance

Want more oomph? You got it.
The Xeo 6 floorstanders pump out 150W per side from their
twin 14cm mid/bass drivers and 28mm tweeters.
Like the Xeo 4s, they hook up to your system (and to other
wireless Dynaudio speakers) via the Connect box, and can be
controlled from the supplied remote or free iOS app. They have
the same position switch for optimising their sound to your
room, and they auto-detect your music source too.
The Xeo 6s let you take your music up to new, even more
powerful levels – while still conveying the artist’s honest sound. ■
Issue 02 47
Dynaudio Home Focus XD
Wireless, hi-res and active

It’s the holy trinity: ultimate performance
without compromise. Every part of
the Focus XD range is specifically
optimised to keep the music digital
until the moment it reaches the driver
The Focus XD range is a complete hi-fi system… without
the clutter of a complete hi-fi system. These high-end
active speakers bring true high-resolution wireless
playback, from every conceivable source, to your home.
Send in a digital signal (wired or wireless, it’s your

choice), and it’ll stay that way right up until the last
possible moment – meaning it stays pure all the way
from the recording studio to the speaker driver.
There’s no clutter, no fuss… and no catch.
You’re welcome.
When we set out to design the Focus XD line, we had one

philosophy and one goal: keep the signal pure for as long
as possible… and make the best active speakers ever.
And because our R&D engineers aren’t the type of people

to back down from a challenge like that, that’s exactly what
they accomplished.
Focus XD is the pinnacle of Dynaudio active speaker tech.

Each individual drive unit is powered by its own tailor-made
digital amp. And running the show is cutting-edge digital
processing technology capable of handling full-fat,
24-bit/192kHz hi-res files.
All the speakers in the range share common controls and

connections – so if you want to mix-and-match, you can.
There’s digital coaxial in and out, plus analogue input (with
adjustable sensitivity), as well as a seven-position control
for fine-tuning the speakers’ performance for their placement.
And if you add the Dynaudio Connect wireless transmitter,

you get digital optical, another digital coaxial and RCA and
3.5mm analogue inputs – plus mini-USB (which can stream
24-bit/96kHz files), aptX Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity
(including Spotify Connect and DLNA). ►
Issue 02 49
Full hi-res support

Free your high-quality files from their computer prison.
This is how they’re meant to be heard…
The Focus XD’s firmware can even be upgraded when our
engineers have another Eureka! moment (they get them a lot).
In fact, that’s exactly what’s just happened. In the latest version,
not only have they redesigned the crossovers and found
a way to use less processing (for an even cleaner sound),
they’ve managed to extract more volume from the drivers
without distortion or compression. And because there’s less
processing happening there, we’ve been able to use more in
the EQ for even better speaker-position compensation. We’ve
also included tech from our LYD pro-studio monitors (see p74)
that lets you tweak overall brightness with a switch on the back.
Use them with your existing system (they’ll integrate just fine),
build a multiroom set-up (you can use them with the Xeo
range too; see p44), or even hook them up to your TV…
while getting genuine high-end wireless hi-fi into the bargain.
Focus 60 XD
The 600W floorstanding Focus 60 XDs are the ultimate union
of quality, power and performance. With twin long-throw
18cm woofers and a dedicated 14cm midrange driver –
both made from our proprietary MSP material – plus our
legendary 28mm soft-dome tweeter, they’re designed just
as much for finesse as they are outright thump.
Focus 30 XD
These compact 450W floorstanders have the same MSP
woofers and precision-coated soft-dome Esotec+ soft-dome
tweeters as the Focus 60 XDs. Their tri-amp configuration
and intelligent digital amplifiers means each driver gets
exactly the right amount of the right frequencies, at the
right time, to help your music sound exactly as it should.
Control it how you want
Focus 20 XD You can control the Focus XD range
Dynaudio has spent decades repeatedly redefining the with the included remote handset,
compact loudspeaker – starting with the legendary Contour 1. or via the Dynaudio Connect box
And with the 300W Focus 20 XD, it’s happened again. and your iOS device
The MSP driver and 28mm tweeter from the rest of the
Focus XD range appear here, too – along with all the authority
and control of the larger speakers. It’s quality, concentrated. ■
Issue 02 51
Connect
Run one set of speakers, build a multiroom system, go hi-res.
Use a turntable, a CD player, a TV, a streamer. It’s your choice.
Just connect…
Dynaudio Connect brings together all the inputs you Total control
need to integrate wireless Focus XD and Xeo speakers Download the free Dynaudio Control app for iOS and you
into your system. can ditch the remote for the Focus XD or second-gen Xeo.
It lets you control both speakers directly, and the Connect
You can hook up any conceivable source – even those itself: flip between inputs (which you can name yourself),
old-school analogue ones you haven’t brought down from change the volume and switch zones in a multiroom set-up. ■
the attic in years – and then stream their playback to your
digital active loudspeakers.
And because it uses Wi-Fi, you can use Spotify Connect to

stream from the internet (and not have to worry about busting
your mobile data allowance). It also means you can access
your own digital files from any DLNA device on your network.
High-quality aptX Bluetooth support lets you stream from
any Bluetooth device – including smartphones, tablets
and computers, while the digital optical and coaxial inputs
accept full-on 24-bit/192kHz hi-res audio files (USB is 24/96).
Want to stream wireless hi-res to your Focus XD speakers?
No problem: Connect also outputs 24-bit/96kHz over the air.
Dynaudio Home Connect
If this, then that
CD player and Tablet and smartphone Network Computer
AV receiver player
Input: Input: Input: Input:

R L Line in Wi-Fi Wi-Fi Wi-Fi
Coax in Bluetooth Coax in Bluetooth
Optical in Aux in Optical in USB in
Turntable Cassette / Mp3 TV

walkman
Input: Input: Input: Input:

R L Line in R L Line in Aux in Optical in
Aux in R L Line in
Inputs Wireless Formats

3.5mm analogue Bluetooth (A2DP, aptX, AAC), Hi-res mode for streaming one digital
Stereo RCA analogue Wi-Fi (Spotify Connect, DLNA) input up to 24-bit/96kHz to the Focus XD;
Optical digital (up to 24-bit/192kHz) multiroom mode for simultaneous
Coaxial digital (up to 24-bit/192kHz) Control streaming of inputs up to 16-bit/48kHz to
Mini USB (up to 24-bit/96kHz) Dynaudio Control app for iOS Xeo (second-generation) and Focus XD
Issue 02 53
Dynaudio at 40
Dynaudio at 40
1977 Hugo Nielsen

with a
Contour 2.8,
1992
Consequence (1983)
HQ 1977 Contour 1 (1986)
Dynaudio 100 (1978)
Arbiter amplifier
Left: Knut Weber,

one of our leading
carpenters
Accent 3
(1988)
Evidence Master
(1999)
Special one (1989)
Confidence C2
(2002)
Wilfried Ehrenholz
in around 1982
(see p94)
Sapphire 30 Year
Anniversary (2007)
Dynaudio at 40
Morten Hermansen – Senior Tuner, Car (and his friend H.E.A.D.Z.)
Excite X12 (2008) LYD 48 (2017)
Contour 60 (2016)
Xeo 2
(2015)
Contour basket, diaphragm

and suspension
Contour driver Focus 20 XD (2016) Jupiter (2016)
2017
Special Forty (2017)
Crossover and tweeter
Issue 02 55
Dynaudio Home Special Forty
Special
Forty
Cutting-edge acoustic technology in a classic Dynaudio design
They say ‘life begins at 40’. Take a peek Laurels aren’t for resting on
inside Dynaudio Labs and you’ll see that’s We still surprise ourselves. Some people might be content
absolutely true. Say hello to the next to sit back and be complacent about their successes after
evolution of passive stereo speakers 40 years of constant innovation. We aren’t. In fact, we only
get hungrier for new techniques and technologies.
“What are you going to do for your 40th birthday?”, everyone
asked. We thought about it for a bit and decided that since we That’s why we developed the Special Forty. We wanted to revisit
aren’t big on huge decorated cakes and candles (although those innovations and see what we’d do differently this time.
we are partial to a tasty fastelavnsbøller), we’d celebrate a
little differently. With a new speaker. What you won’t find here is anything revolutionary (check out
our active speaker range for that – you’ll be amazed). Instead,
And yes, we know you’re the ones supposed to be giving us you’ll discover a look at our past – along with some special
gifts – but we just couldn’t help ourselves. sneak-previews of the future.
Happy birthday to us! Meet the Special Forty. The Special Forty is classic Dynaudio: all the craftsmanship,
attention to detail and total love of authentic sound you’ve
come to expect. It’s the connoisseur’s choice – a simple pair
of passive hi-fi speakers. But it isn’t about looking back,
misty-eyed, at past glories and leaving it at that. It’s about
using those glories as a platform from which to launch our
next set of breakthroughs.
That’s why it has one of our classic first-order crossover
designs, incorporating our unique Phase Alignment and
Impedance Alignment technologies. The crossover expertly
marshals the input signal between the woofer and the tweeter
– so each driver gets only the frequencies it’s supposed to, and
can perform at its very best. Its specially selected components
Greatest hits… reimagined handle the impedance optimisation and, because both drivers
We do compact speakers really well. We always have. have extended frequency ranges for even better overlap and
So, as a nod back to classics including the Special One, integration, that performance borders on the mesmerising.
the Special Twenty-Five, the Crafft and the Contour 1.3SE,
we kept the Special Forty pure – if incredibly advanced. The song remains the same
The Special Forty uses our proprietary MSP (Magnesium Silicate
Of course, it wouldn’t be an anniversary speaker if it didn’t Polymer) material for its main driver. MSP delivers precisely the
include some of our greatest hits. But we haven’t just got right combination of lightness, stiffness and inner damping for
the old band back together to trot out the same old stuff, the most faithful sound reproduction. And, unlike some other
unchanged. We’ve remixed, remastered and rearranged cone materials, it doesn’t change over time – so your speakers
things to bring those old favourites into 2017 – and beyond. will still be singing just as sweetly come our next anniversary. ►
Issue 02 57
The Esotar Forty
Advanced airflow tech behind the magnet reduces

unwanted pressure for even better performance
The brand-new Esotar Forty tweeter takes air-movement

to another level. It moves the air in typically sweet fashion
in front of the DSR (Dynaudio Secret Recipe) precision-coated
soft-dome, of course, but there’s a lot of advanced engineering
going on behind it as well.
Take the new pressure conduit. It’s a shaped vent in the

back of the magnet system that allows more space in the rear
chamber. That space lets us pack in more damping material
to reduce back-pressure, while the shape itself optimises
airflow coming backwards from the rear of the dome.
Then there’s the outlet; the aero-coupled pressure-release

system. It sits underneath the voice-coil and reduces unwanted
pressure build-up that could affect its movement. Stopping
those pockets of air from forming reduces resonance – and
less resonance equals even greater potential for detail.
The cone itself uses a painstakingly developed symmetrical
excursion for even better midrange performance. Behind it Flux optimisation and beam control
sits our asymmetrical spider – our Passive Harmonic Rectifier. We love playing with the laws of physics. Physics wins in
It minimises upper harmonics to further tighten the performance the end, of course (usually), but we almost always manage
and make it possible not only to pick out individual parts in a to bend it to our will along the way. Just like we have with
piece of music, but even individual instruments in an orchestra. our advanced magnet systems.
(So now, finally, the Third Violin section can have its day in the
sun.) And, like all our other MSP cones, it’s a one-piece design The magnet turns electrical energy that flows from your
(you can tell by the special balance ribs around the integrated amplifier into the voice-coil, into the physical back-and-forth
dust-cap). This gives it an incredibly solid connection to the movement of the driver diaphragm. These movements are very
voice-coil, as well as stabilising its form – which is crucial small and very fast (especially in the tweeter), so they need
when you decide to crank the volume. a lot of finesse if you want to hear all that luscious detail and
emotion in your music.
Airflow is king
It all sits in our special AirFlow Basket – the bit that holds the In the woofer, we’ve achieved that finesse in two ways:
driver motor securely in place in the cabinet. Its development by placing the magnet inside the voice-coil, and by playing
was one of those ‘Eureka!’ moments our engineers seem to get with magnetic energy itself.
a few times a week in Dynaudio Labs (you can often hear them
cheering from across the road in our factory). We asked them
to reduce internal reflections and increase air movement
without compromising the basket’s stiffness or stability,
and this genius design is what they came up with.
We love messing with the laws of physics.

Physics usually wins, but we almost always
manage to bend it to our will along the way
Red or grey?
We painstakingly laminate
Finnish Birch veneers many,
many, many times and
cross-cut them to achieve this
striking pattern. Then we use
special stains to bring it out
even further. Nice, isn’t it
Other manufacturers typically put it around the outside edge, Box clever
leaving the voice-coil hollow. Putting the magnet inside keeps And then there’s the finish. Whichever veneer you’ve gone
the magnetic energy (or flux) in the optimum position for getting for, the Grey Birch or the Red Birch, our designers have
itself wrapped around the voice-coil – where it should be. given you a treat. We’ve always done something special for
That means we can use more of its power for a given weight. our special anniversary speakers – from the luscious bird’s-eye
It also reduces internal reflections because there’s less maple of the Contour 1.3 SE to the Special Twenty-Five’s
material for sound to bounce off inside the driver. stunning burled birch and the Sapphire’s amazing Mocca,
Bordeaux and Ivory veneers.
Second, we use a hybrid magnet for even greater control over
the flux and voice-coil movement. An incredibly powerful The Special Forty takes that to a new level. We pushed our
neodymium rare-earth magnet provides the muscle and flings team to come up with something different to the kind of
flux around with abandon, while a ferrite magnet tempers that thing we’ve done in the past, and they took that to heart.
enthusiasm by gently moving the flux back to exactly where it’s That’s why they’re raw; visceral; striking. We wanted the
needed most. The result? Symmetrical excursion, a reduction in Special Forty to look as authentic and honest as the music
second-harmonics, and an even more accurate, authentic sound. they’re playing sounds. ■
Issue 02 59
Dynaudio Home Contour
Contour
Winning formula
The Contour 20 was selected by a
jury of audio and video magazines
from over 20 European countries
When you get a Dynaudio Contour you’re up in the big leagues.
You can see it from the craftsmanship; you can hear it in the performance.
And everyone else can, too.
It’s been that way since 1989. The Four models. One single-minded obsession with uncovering
performance of the original Contour the truth in your music. (Also, something that’ll make all your
dropped jaws all over the world – and friends jealous.)
each update has done the same over
the past 27 years. The Contour range takes everything we know about speaker
technology – we’re Danes; we know a lot – and puts it in four
Your jaw is about to drop again. clean and great-sounding packages. One for every room size
(or, if you’re in a studio flat, one for every neighbour type).
We’ve moved on since 1989. You’ve
moved on, too. That’s why we’ve They all use the sweet-toned Esotar2 soft-dome tweeter,
applied all our experience, all our which has been a legend in its own right for years. It’s
expertise – and all our passion – to commonly regarded as one of the world’s best-ever drivers
looking at what made the original – and because it’s been such a great friend to so many
so good… and then making it even millions of ears (and a key part of Dynaudios past), we just
better. had to give it another outing.
It’s time for a new legend. This is a Designed from the ground up
speaker re-thought, re-designed, The woofers, though, are brand-new. They’re powered by
re-engineered and re-built for 2017. lightweight aluminium voice-coils and a vented dual-ferrite
magnet system, and were created by driver specialists Danny
This is Contour. Pasfall Christensen and Andreas Eberhardt Sørensen and their
team under acoustic maestro Daniel Emonts. (They can hear
differences between alternative glues. We love those guys.) ►
Issue 02 61
Contour 30
Everything we know about speaker
design in a compact, clean and
great-sounding package
Contour 60
If you have a bigger
room (or if you just like
Contour 25C to play loud) the Contour
The one for movie-lovers. 60, with its greater
It’s the ideal companion to cabinet volume, larger
our stereo Contours – and woofers and dedicated
integrates seamlessly for the midrange driver, is
ultimate in surround-sound your new best friend
The solid aluminium baffle’s
chamfer is included in the
speaker basket. It not only improves
the treble, it looks great too
Their cones are made from MSP – a material we developed We’ve redesigned the internal wiring and crossover, too.
ourselves, and have been using in our drivers since 1985. MSP You won’t see what we’ve done, but you’ll hear the effect:
gives exactly the right combination of stiffness and damping amazingly clear sound, even off to the sides of the speakers.
– which you’ll hear as exactly the right combination of power, We love it – and you will, too.
finesse and control. Just what a Contour should have. But
we’ve taken it further: we’ve varied the diaphragm’s thickness And, of course, they all use high-quality materials and finishes.
between models for even more control over their performance. Our factory technicians make sure all Contours are furniture-
grade: perfectly built, perfectly finished and perfectly packaged. ■
The Contour 60 has a completely new 15cm midrange driver.
Like the rest of our drivers it uses an aluminium voice-coil.
It also uses a neodymium magnet system, and was designed
using Finite Element Method optimisation techniques. We
wanted the Contour 60 to retain that authentic midrange
quality in a large cabinet, without having to repurpose an
existing driver for a job it wasn’t designed to do.
Solid aluminium baffle

At Dynaudio we feel there’s always room for improvement
– and our designers love to stretch their legs (you should
see the number of sketches they produced for just this part).
This baffle is aluminium, and set into the cabinet. Its chamfer
is included in the driver’s basket – which not only looks great,
but also improves the treble and provides a solid foundation
for the drivers to do their work. A solid foundation means
improved high-volume performance at low frequencies,
too (although your neighbours might not thank us for that).
And although we might have changed the cabinet’s shape

(square is out; curves are in), the new design tips a respectful
nod to older Contours. Look at it from the top; you’ll see
the previous baffle design in its shape. But it isn’t just for
show – the new shape marries those aesthetics with The crossover
cutting-edge physics. Its multi-layered construction is Select components,
extremely well-damped, which means the Contour’s sound genius design… and
goes exactly where it’s supposed to: forwards. stellar performance
Issue 02 63
Dynaudio Home Confidence
onfid Confidence
Platinum
Game-changing design.
Cutting-edge acoustic technology.
High-end materials and construction.
And the performance? Wow…
The Confidence series has been raising

eyebrows and dropping jaws since the 1990s
– and the Confidence Platinum takes that
heritage and quality to another level with
new materials, updated components and
even more fanatical attention to detail.
Welcome to the next level. The original Confidence
range established a benchmark for high-end
loudspeakers when it sashayed out of our factory
in the 1990s – and now, with the Platinum edition,
it’s setting another.
Thanks to Dynaudio’s innovative DDC technology, the

legendary Esotar2 tweeters (now with our precision coating),
advanced crossover design, CNC-machined front baffles,
custom MSP driver material (and the list goes on), the
Confidence Platinums bring you unsurpassed quality,
accuracy, finesse and… well, just sheer entertainment.
And then there’s the finish. Oh, the finish! Every speaker
is completely handmade in our Skanderborg factory from
furniture-grade materials. And everything is finished by expert
craftspeople: we apply up to 13 coats of lacquer to each
speaker – and each pair stays together throughout the process,
so we can ensure they match perfectly. We glass-blast the
aluminium tweeter plate to offset it against the satin-finish
baffle. And we can make the Confidence in any finish you
want, if you ask us to.
It’s painstaking and involved… and really, really difficult.

(What can we say? We like to challenge ourselves.) ►
Issue 02 65
onfid Dynaudio Directivity Control

Much like motor-racing technology ends up in your family
car, we’ve taken the expertise we’ve gained from decades
of building professional monitors for major recording studios
and applied it to home audio.
It’s all about compensating for floors and ceilings – which

reflect the sound coming from your loudspeakers and introduce
distortions and time delays. It’s those effects that colour the
sound you hear – and while a splash of colour is lovely on
the wall, you don’t want it in your music.
We utilised Dynaudio Directivity Control (DDC) in the

Confidence Platinum C4 and C2 to minimise those unwanted
distortions. The vertical symmetrical driver array and
sophisticated crossover are designed to reduce the energy
Confidence C2 Platinum
The slimline C2 Platinum adapts our reflection-conquering DDC
tech to a more compact floorstanding design. The drivers
dispersed to floors and ceilings by up to 75 per cent. That comprise two 17cm mid/bass drivers, matched to twin 28mm
means more of it comes directly to you in your seat, and Esotar2 tweeters – all designed to deliver seamless integration,
makes the speakers far less dependent on the room they’re in. unparalleled staging and a real sense of Being There.
It isn’t just a driver arrangement, though: every part of the Like the C4 Platinum, the C2 features adjustable spikes
signal chain is optimised for the technology. Each tweeter hidden in the base for keeping them good, solid and vibration-
complements each woofer in frequency response and phase free on your floor, while concealed speaker-cable connectors
relationship. Each crossover component is precisely selected in the back keep everything neat. After all, your eyes should
for the job. And on the floorstanding speakers in the be on the speakers – not the wiring.
Confidence Platinum range, we make sure each set of
drivers and crossover parts is precisely matched to the Confidence C1 Platinum
other – so they work in tandem. Don’t let their size fool you. After all, you know what they
say about good things and small packages. The remarkable
It also means you needn’t acoustically treat your room. Confidence C1 Platinum speakers take everything that’s
(Egg-boxes on the walls are best left to dingy rehearsal amazing about the C4 and C2 and put it into a pair of
rooms, not state-of-the-art hi-fi paradises…) immaculate, compact standmounters.
Confidence C4 Platinum They use the same precision-coated Esotar2 soft-dome tweeter,
They stand 1.73m tall. They have two 28m Esotar2 tweeters the same MSP mid/bass woofer, seen here in a 17cm version,
with our own precision coating. They use two 15cm midrange and the same Kapton voice-coil former, advanced first-order
drivers and two 20cm woofers – all made from our very own crossover, machined aluminium baffle and glass-blasted
Magnesium Silicate Polymer material. And their ultra- tweeter plate. And they deliver the same smooth tonal balance,
lightweight aluminium voice-coils accompany non-magnetic resolution of detail and the feeling of being in the room with
Kapton formers, high-quality internal wiring and a sophisticated the musicians as their larger siblings.
first-order crossover.
Confidence Center Platinum
The C4s produce utterly captivating sound – from incredibly Watching films is all about being immersed – and that’s what
deep, controlled bass to clear, smooth, detailed highs. the Confidence Center Platinum brings to your system. The
double Esotar2 tweeter and 17cm mid/bass driver arrangement
is optimised for integration into a multichannel Confidence
Platinum (or Evidence Platinum; see p68) system.
The speaker has an adjustable plinth for precise positioning,

and dispersion can be adjusted for placement above or below
a display via a rear switch. ■
67
Issue 02
Dynaudio Home Evidence Platinum
68
Dynaudio Magazine
Evidence
Platinum
No compromises
Years of research have gone into making

Evidence Platinum our finest speaker.
No expense has been spared in its
development; no obscure avenue of
acoustic research left unexplored.
And not a single corner cut.
From its sophisticated design, materials

and construction to the advanced acoustic
expertise that underpins its sound, every
single detail in the Evidence Platinum
is executed to deliver an unparalleled
musical experience.
You don’t listen to music with these

speakers. You hear it.
Issue 02 69
Each Evidence Platinum speaker

is handcrafted to
near-impossible standards
Before we start, we just want to say this: Evidence

isn’t a ‘luxury’ speaker. It doesn’t have gold-plated
screws or endangered wood inlays, and it doesn’t
make boastful (and meaningless) claims about the
ethereal nature of sound.
It’s simply the best way to hear your music.
Evidence Platinum encompasses all the values and ambitions

we had when we started Dynaudio in 1977 – to reproduce
music without colouration, effects or distortion, so you can
hear it unvarnished: the way it was meant to be heard.
Each speaker is handcrafted to near-impossible standards Behind the drivers is an advanced crossover
in our factory in Denmark – overseen by experts in furniture design, uprated wiring and components and
polishing, acoustics, materials science (the people who handle ultra-sophisticated bracing. Even the screws
the proprietary Magnesium Silicate Polymer material we we use are optimised for the concept.
use for our drivers and the precision-coating we put on our
soft-dome tweeters), woodworking, CNC machining and more. The crossover is housed in its own
And it doesn’t leave us until it’s perfect. compartment to isolate it from any unwanted
vibrations and provide an optimised thermal
Dynaudio Directivity Control and mechanical environment for its
Underpinning the sound is advanced Dynaudio Directivity high-grade components. It’s also ventilated
Control (DDC) – which dramatically reduces the effect your at the back to keep its operating temperature
room has on the speakers by up to 75 per cent. It works using within the super-strict tolerances our
precisely positioned dual woofers, midrange drive units engineers have laid out (they like setting
– and, of course, our legendary Esotar2 tweeters – all themselves challenges like that… and then
precision-matched in their arrays, and mirrored up the length beating them).
of the hyper-stable 4cm-thick machined aluminium baffle.
Why use four woofers, housed in two
separate cabinets? Because they deliver
a more even spread of lower frequencies
in the room – something you wouldn’t realise
with a single, large woofer. Not only that,
you still get the power of a larger driver,
but with it comes the control and precision
you can only achieve with smaller units.
Sound foundations
Dynaudio Directivity Control dramatically reduces
the effect floors and ceilings have on your speakers’ sound.
Every single component in Evidence is optimised for its execution
The Esotar2 tweeter

We’ve been perfecting our soft-dome tweeters for the best
part of 40 years – so, as you might imagine, we’ve become
pretty good at it.
The Esotar2 is the culmination of all that research. Its precision

coating means its frequency response can easily top 25,000Hz
without distorting, without delivering unwanted resonances,
and without letting its transient response waver or compress.
And because there’s a lot of airflow in a tweeter (even if it is a

really small piece of equipment), we’ve applied aerodynamic
principles to its design, too. The magnet assembly is shaped
and damped to absorb as much rear energy as possible –
which translates to incredible dynamics and purity.
Evidence Platinum: pure craftsmanship; pure music. ■
Issue 02 71
High-end low end
Dynaudio Home Sub
The new Sub 6 uses intelligent

modelling technology to tailor its
performance to selected speakers
from the Dynaudio range
Sub Dynaudio subwoofers are about much more than

shaking the pictures off your walls and rattling
The compact 300W Sub 3 is designed to deliver size-defying
weight, authority, punch and power for those critical thunderous
the fillings out of your neighbours’ teeth (although movie moments, but remain supple, precise and musical
they can probably give it a good try if you want). enough to bring something extra to stereo music on your hi-fi.
Its Contour-level components and construction, along with a
They’re all about giving your films and music that double front baffle and brand-new 24cm driver, make it the
ideal companion subwoofer for any stereo or multichannel
extra push; the extra punch that really makes
system. It can connect to any AV receiver or stereo preamp,
the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.
and you can fine-tune the satellite speakers’ crossover point
to ensure seamless integration with the rest of your equipment.
Listen to an orchestra at full throttle and it’s really loud.
It’s pure, and musical, and dynamic, and lifting. And there’s Sub 6 uses advanced intelligent DSP technology that tailors
also a lot of bass. The same goes for live gigs. Or a blockbuster its performance to speakers from Contour and upwards in
film in a good cinema. our range. Our engineers painstakingly modelled the acoustic
characteristics of our most popular high-end hi-fi speakers
If you want to give your films and music that little bit extra, and created custom performance maps for each one for the
a Dynaudio subwoofer is the way. subwoofer – so now, two-way set-ups can instantly become
three-way systems. Sub 6’s punch is delivered by two of
our brand-new MSP+ Hybrid Drive units, which combine our
own Magnesium Silicate Polymer material with optimised
Stairway to (home
aluminium and paper construction for two kinds of resonance
cinema) heaven
damping. It’s all powered by a high-quality 500W amplifier.
Want to find out more
about setting up a
full-fat multi-channel
system? Check out
our how-to on p22
A great subwoofer
won’t just thunder bass at you.
It’ll make the hairs on the back
of your neck stand up
Studio engineers require powerful, precise bass

just as much as home users, which is why we’ve
developed two compact subwoofers – the 9S and
18S – specifically for professional use.
The 300W 9S is engineered to withstand the demands of

high-volume-level listening, but still retain all the precision and
musicality you need for even the most demanding projects.
It uses studio-quality components and construction, along with

a double front baffle and brand-new 24cm driver. And not only
does it dig right down to 18Hz, its adjustable low-pass corner
frequencies (from 50–150Hz) and low-power LFE output mean
it’s versatile enough to work in a variety of studio environments.
It even has signal-sensing auto power on/off technology to
save energy when it’s sitting idle.
The 18S uses smart, menu-driven DSP technology to tailor its

roll-off to a variety of speakers from our range of professional
monitors. As with the two home subs, our engineers modelled
the acoustic characteristics of our pro family and created
custom subwoofer-specific performance maps for each.
And the intelligence doesn’t end there: set the distance from
the 18S to the speakers and it does the maths for you, setting
its own time delay. Finally, the full three-filter parametric EQ lets
you defeat room modes with ease. The 18S’s punch is delivered
by two of our brand-new innovative MSP+ Hybrid Drive units,
and a high-quality 500W amp. ■
Issue 02 73
Love
music?
Keep a
LYD specifically for that frequency range
– helps massively in achieving a more
balanced, more natural performance.
As with the Special Forty (see p56), we
on it.
took the less-is-more approach with the
LYD 48. Rather than fixing anything in the
crossover or the three digital amps, we
made sure we got the drivers themselves
absolutely right. That means less tuning,
simpler internal circuitry and an even more
honest portrayal of the original recording.
The new three-way LYD 48 Of course, the LYD 48’s DNA is still
reference monitor is a step forward pure Dynaudio. We’ve used the same The Bass Extension control extends or
for small- to medium-sized studios proprietary MSP (Magnesium Silicate reduces the low-frequency response by
Polymer) for the woofers that we use +10Hz or -10Hz. That means you can
When you’re passionate about music, in all our other speakers, from Emit to have the speaker play either as loudly
you don’t want to question yourself all Evidence. The tweeter still uses the as possible, or as deep as possible
the time. And with LYD 48, you get a same soft-dome construction that has (or a point in between). None of the
precision tool you can trust. made our hi-fi range so celebrated over three settings affects the linearity of the
the past 40 years. And all the drivers frequency response, either. It means you
You can read about our range of nearfield use our classic aluminium voice-coils can mix at a lower volume – perfect if
monitors on p76 (and the awesome M5P for increased efficiency, better power you have neighbours and it’s getting late.
Evidence farfield mastering maestros handling and less thermal distortion.
on p78), but here we wanted to shine The Position switch tells the speaker
a spotlight on the newest member DSP done right whether it’s within 50cm of a rear wall
of the LYD family. If you do it properly, digital signal or standing in free space. The LYD 48
processing makes the good great. will adjust its tuning to provide a more
Why we went big(ger) We make sure we do it properly. balanced response at the listening
Simply put, there’s less compromise. In a The LYD 48 doesn’t use DSP to fix position.
two-way design, the woofer has to cover anything we should’ve paid more
a huge frequency range, which means attention to in the drivers or crossovers. The Sound Balance option is a ‘tilt’
inevitable sacrifices in other areas. It uses it to help you get the best filter. It lifts one end of the frequency
That’s just physics. Having a dedicated possible sound for your room and spectrum while lowering the other end by
midrange driver – one designed the speakers’ position in it. the same amount. In the LYD 48, you can
Dynaudio Pro LYD 48
You can set the LYD 48 to play either as loudly as
possible, or as deep as possible (or a point in between)
without affecting the linearity of the frequency response.
Perfect for late-night mixing without waking the dog.
38%
lift 20kHz by 1.5dB while lowering 20Hz

by 1.5dB (the ‘Bright’ setting), or
vice-versa (‘Dark’). Why? Because then
you can tune your speakers’
performance to
the level of acoustic treatment in the
room. A dead-sounding room might 62%
need the ‘Bright’ setting, for example.
State-of-the-art amplification
The LYD 48 uses the same Class-D
amplifier as the rest of the LYD family.
It’s tri-amped with 50W channels for Unlike the rest of the LYD range, the LYD 48 is designed to be used horizontally.
the tweeter and midrange, and 80W for It’s wise to make sure you put them as far away as you can from any room
the woofer. There’s a 24-bit/96kHz signal boundaries to avoid affecting their low-frequency response (the Position control
path, and the crossover is handled by can help you here). But don’t put them exactly halfway between walls, either
an Analog Devices DSP – which also – this can excite standing waves and, again affect bass response. A good rule
facilitates the Bass Extension, Position of thumb is to put speakers somewhere between one quarter and one third of
and Sound Balance options. And, the distance between walls.
because we know studio equipment
combinations are as endless as the snow Ideally, you should sit between 1.5m and 2.5m away from your speakers at
we get in Skanderborg every year, there’s one corner of an equilateral triangle, with the monitors pointed directly at you.
also an input sensitivity control for If they’re on a desk or console, you can tilt them up to aim at ear level.
different types of equipment and players. ■
Issue 02 75
LYD Day and night
All the monitors in the LYD
range are specifically
engineered to maintain their
composure and precision at
low volumes – so you can keep
working into the night without
disturbing the neighbours.
What if you could use the same technology

in your own studio as the major players use in
theirs?
You can. LYD uses all the knowhow we’ve gained

through supplying some of the world’s biggest
recording studios with full-on reference monitor
systems – and fits it into a pair of compact
Active nearfield studio monitors need to present the
nearfield speakers.
unvarnished truth: no colouration, no distortion, no
flattery of the music running through them. You need
And it isn’t a poor cousin of our big systems,
to be able to hear exactly what each thread of the music
either. It’s a complete redefinition of our own is doing – so, when it comes to mixing and mastering,
products – we went back to the drawing board you know you can deliver exactly what the artist wants.
to find out exactly how much further we could
take those concepts. LYD combines decades of experience in producing no-
compromise reference systems for major studios all over
As it turns out, the answer was the world, with expertise in home and car audio, digital
‘quite a lot’. processing technology and materials science. And that
combination means you’ll hear nothing but the truth.
But we don’t believe personal monitors need to look like

standard pro boxes. You’ve taken great pride in building your
studio; you want artists to feel invited, inspired, immersed
in the music. So we’ve applied the same creativity to LYD
You’ve taken pride in your studio. as we do with our home hi-fi speakers – and we’re glad
We’ve taken pride in designing the people in the design department insisted on it, because
they’ve created something beautiful. ■
monitors that look just as
good as they sound
Dynaudio Pro LYD Series
LYD SERIES: LYD 5 LYD 5, with its low-volume precision, is the ideal complement for
any small studio set-up. It uses the same lightweight aluminium voice-coils
in its handmade 5in MSP drive-units as our high-end hi-fi speakers, and pairs
them with cutting-edge Class-D amplification as well as a 24-bit/96kHz signal
LYD is designed to be a monitor anyone path with advanced DSP.
can use without a manual. Just getting
started in your engineering or producing LYD 7 This monitor uses sophisticated DSP to extend or curtail its low-
career? That’s daunting enough as it is frequency response by 10Hz, while Position and Sound Balance controls let
without needing to decipher another you fine-tune for total neutrality in your environment. Its larger 7in woofer helps
complicated set of switches and dials extend bass, while the low-mass aluminium voice-coil, vented ferrite magnet
on the back of your speakers. Seasoned and MSP driver take care of precision.
pro? Then why should you have to learn
a new set of controls? You shouldn’t. LYD 8 With its 8in MSP woofer and state-of-the-art DSP, LYD 8 provides the
kind of performance, precision and bass heft that dreams (and maybe hit albums)
Just tweak the wall-position or Sound are made of. Like the rest of the range, these nearfield monitors let you tune
Balance tilt-filter (for a brighter or darker their sound for their position in the room, feature handmade drivers, and contain
sound) and you’re done. Best of all, you advanced Class-D amps.
don’t have to crank them up to hear them
at their best – something that’s hard to LYD 48 This three-way near- to midfield monitor reaches eyebrow-raising levels
do if you’re in a smaller or home studio. of accuracy thanks to a new soft-dome tweeter and Dynaudio’s proprietary
LYD is designed to sound the same MSP midrange driver and woofer. Each driver is fuelled by a powerful, state-of-the-
however loud you turn up the music. art Class-D amplifier and a full 24-bit/96kHz signal path. And, like the rest of the
LYD range, it lets you fine-tune low frequency response, position and sound-
Now it’s time to create… balance using cutting-edge DSP. For more information on LYD 48, turn to p74.
Issue 02 77
M5P
Evidence
Mastering: mastered. For years, our M-range of speakers has been
a fixture in professional recording studios all
over the world. It’s used for main monitoring
and loved for its neutral, no-compromise sound.
The M5P sets out to do the same for the

mastering world. It’s custom-built in our factory
in Denmark, and it’s the first studio monitor
to feature Dynaudio Directivity Control.
That makes it easier to integrate into any room

– so you can spend less time tweaking your
set-up and more time making your music
sound the just way you want it.
Knowing which things to adjust and which to simply leave alone

is paramount in the mastering stage of any recording. And you
can’t do that if you can’t hear every part in crystal clarity.
The M5P Evidence farfield monitors deploy some unique

technologies to ensure that you hear nothing except exactly
what the artists were performing – in every track.
The key is Dynaudio Directivity Control: a vertical, symmetrical

drive-unit array backed by sophisticated crossover technology
and advanced cabinet design. Every part of the system is
designed and engineered for maximum sound quality… right
down to the way the baffle is shaped, and even the screws
that hold it all together.
It uses two tweeters, two midrange drivers and four woofers

per speaker. Each driver is phase- and frequency-matched to
its counterpart to produce incredibly accurate sound-radiation
Dynaudio Pro M5P Evidence
characteristics. That means up to 75 per cent less energy Attention to detail
radiated to your floor and ceiling – so the M5Ps are far less Every part of the M5P
reliant on your room’s own characteristics, or their position, Evidence is engineered
than other studio monitors. for performance. Even
the screws that hold it
The woofers are placed above and below the tweeters and all together are specially
midrange drivers. This serves up a more even spread of chosen for the purpose
low frequencies into the room, but it also combines the
diaphragm surface-area of a large single-woofer design
with the precision and speed of smaller single voice-coil-
magnet units. In practice, that means a controlled, even,
accurate (and hair-raisingly revealing) sound.
We’ve used unique techniques

to ensure you hear nothing but what
the artist intended
Of course, since we’ve been making loudspeakers of every

type for the past 40 years, we’ve learned a thing or two about
driver development. That why the M5P Evidence is fitted with
the very best components we have to offer; the culmination
of decades of acoustic research.
You get our legendary Esotar2 soft-dome tweeters, complete

with precision coating, for ultra-high-quality high-frequency
performance. They’re suspended in magnetic ferrofluid to
increase power-handling, improve the dome’s excursion and
absorb unwanted heat and excess energy.
The CNC-machined middle-section has carefully rounded

sides to minimise sonic diffraction and maximise uniformity.
It’s completely isolated from acoustic vibrations, too – making
for even more precise reproduction.
The midrange drivers and woofers, meanwhile, are made from

our own Magnesium Silicate Polymer (MSP) material, optimised
for exactly the right balance of rigidity, stiffness and damping
– which you’ll hear as exactly the right combination of power,
finesse and control.
All the crossover components are isolated in a separate

compartment that provides the ideal mechanical and thermal
environment for them to operate at their best. Passive
ventilation makes sure they don’t overheat, even when you’re
driving the speakers hard (and believe us, you can), while
glass-fibre-reinforced circuitboards, select oxygen-free copper
wiring and precision construction all go to serve up the sound
quality your ears – and your audience – demand. ■
Issue 02 79
Dynaudio Car Audio
Car
audio It’s sound that drives you.
Chances are you spend a lot of time
sitting in your car, and chances are
you listen to music while you do it.
We don’t believe you should have
to compromise on sound quality
– especially when you might spend
more time listening to music on
the road than you do at home.
We’ve built a dedicated automotive

research-and-development centre to
explore new technologies (and adapt
our tried-and-tested ones) specifically
for use in cars. Our long-standing
relationship with Volkswagen means
you can experience top-quality
Dynaudio sound wherever you go.
Dynaudio Car Audio
It’s easy to make a car sound
simply decent. It’s a different story
to make it sound truly outstanding.
We don’t settle for ‘simply decent’
Dynaudio Car Audio
We want you to feel more relaxed

when you get out of your car
than you were when you got in it Performance across the board
We have a dedicated R&D team
working exclusively on VW car audio
It’s easy to make car audio sound simply decent. It’s a different
story if you want to make it sound outstanding.
That’s why we have our own R&D team dedicated to making

‘outstanding’ the norm when it comes to our in-car systems.
It couldn’t be anything less: our partner is Volkswagen and,
like us, they’ll never just settle for ‘simply decent’.
We want you to feel more relaxed when you get out of your
car than you were when you got in.
We’ve combined the knowledge we’ve gained from designing

No compromises
and producing nearfield reference systems for recording
All Dynaudio in-car systems follow
studios (where the engineer sits really close to the speakers),
the same philosophy as our pro
with our expertise in building award-winning home hi-fi
studio and high-end home products
speakers. Why those two areas? Because you sit close
to your speakers in the car… and you want the same music
experience you get in your living room.
Variables are predictable

A car’s interior is a variable but controlled space. One day
it might be just you, wearing a T-shirt and jeans. The next,
there could be four or five people – all in coats and scarves
(Danish weather isn’t exactly predictable). More people (and
more clothes) means the character of the sound will change.
Dynaudio Car Audio
You might think that would present a nightmare for our
engineers – but it actually helps. That’s because they
know there’s only a certain amount of variables to take
into account. The size of the space never changes; the
hard surfaces are always hard, and the soft ones always
soft; the position of the speakers never changes; the
sources are always the same. They know the kinds of
temperature variations they’ll be dealing with, the level
of noise outside the car as it moves, the type of vibrations
it’ll be subjected to, even which parts are likely to get
wet if you open the doors when it’s raining.
And if they can take into account the variable human aspect,
and make every situation sound equally precise, controlled
– and entertaining – they’ve done the difficult bit.
So, we developed a new range of speaker drivers especially

for the automotive market. They’re still made from our
proprietary MSP (Magnesium Silicate Polymer) material,
Every millimetre
but they’re optimised for in-car use rather than for the home
or studio. They, the baskets they sit in and the electronics
of our in-car
that power them have all been developed for use in
cramped, hostile environments such as car doors, systems is
meticulously
pillars, rear compartments, wheel arches and the like.
Our engineers have become really rather good at it, too.

We’ve developed sophisticated DSP (digital signal-processing)
technology to help: it has settings for you to tune your system built, optimised
and researched
to your preference: Authentic (for the unaltered experience);
Dynamic (for recreating the power and punch of driving rock
or pop); Soft (for low-resolution broadcasts or recordings);
and Speech (designed for voices – whether that’s the news,
audiobooks or hands-free phone calls). to produce
And, crucially, it takes into account the fact that you aren’t
sitting in an ideal position, like you might be at home. We map
the very best.
how every curve and surface inside the car reflects sound,
and then delay the signal to each speaker to match the It’s sound that
drives you.
distance to their position. That means you’ll hear them as
you would if you were in the ideal central position at home.
Every millimetre – every fraction of a millimetre – of our in-car

systems is meticulously built, optimised and researched to
produce the very best. It’s sound that drives you. ■
Issue 02 83
Dynaudio Custom
Custom Engineered to entertain:

custom audio, tailored for you
Have it your way
You can paint our
grilles to fit with
what’s on your walls
and ceilings – even
patterned designs
They’re all but invisible, but you’ll

know they’re there. Dynaudio
Custom takes everything we
know about speaker design…
and tailors it just for you
It shouldn’t be hard to get great sound. When we set out to

design our custom-install architectural speakers, we knew they
had to be simple to understand, neat and easy to install, and
flexible enough to work in even the most challenging listening
environments.
Most importantly, our range of in-ceiling and in-wall speakers

had to sound every bit as good as our acclaimed free-standing
hi-fi and pro-audio kit. There was no room for compromise –
and we didn’t stop until we’d nailed it.
The whole Dynaudio Custom range harnesses the same core

technology, expertise and fanatical attention to detail that’s
made our hi-fi range so celebrated over the past 40 years.
It’s the same stuff – it’s just inside the walls instead of in front
of them.
It’s a system that works around you, too. Pick between our
in-wall or in-ceiling speakers, or even combine the two.
Stick around The frames can then be pre-installed during renovation and
Our round and rectangular decorating, or retrofitted into existing cavities. You can even
grilles are all magnetic, paint their magnetic grilles to suit your decor. And then, when
and sit flush to the surface it’s time, an expert installer comes to fit and fine-tune the
– no tools necessary, speakers themselves – so it’s exactly right, first time.
and they’ll blend right in
When you hear Dynaudio Custom, you’re hearing decades of
research, care and pride. Only this time, it’s tailored for you. ►
Issue 02 85
Dynaudio Custom
Hip to be square?
Dynaudio Custom systems
can evolve with your needs and
tastes. Don’t want round grilles
in the room? No problem – you
can fit a square one onto your
round speaker. Changed your
mind? Just pop it off (it’s
magnetic) and fit a circular one
S4-C65
The S4-C65 might be the smallest in-ceiling speaker in
Dynaudio’s Custom Architectural Studio range, but you’d never
know from its performance. The 17cm mid/bass driver takes
some cues from Dynaudio’s high-end speakers – such as
positioning its magnet system inside the voice coil, to keep
things sounding as they should… even when it’s turned up to 11.
This complements the 28mm precision-coated soft dome

tweeter, which can pivot to direct sound exactly where it’s
needed in the room.
Like the rest of the Studio range, the S4-C65 couldn’t be simpler
to install and, once it’s in place, can be cleverly re-positioned
through 360 degrees should you decide to have a furniture
reshuffle. Not just that, but paintable grilles, in round or square
variants, mean you can customise their design to suit you.
S4-C80
Bigger rooms need bigger sound to fill them, and the Dynaudio
Custom S4-C80 in-ceiling speaker certainly won’t leave larger
spaces wanting. While it shares lots of what’s great about the
smaller S4-C65 in its design – including its ability to rotate
through 360 degrees to suit your room – it boasts a larger 20cm
mid/bass driver for a more powerful sound that’ll go deeper
Tailored for you and louder when it really counts.
Home cinema, distributed
audio, or even just a hidden The higher frequencies are handled by the same excellent
hi-fi. You can configure your 28mm soft-dome tweeter as its smaller sibling too, which can
speakers however you want also be pivoted to tailor the sound perfectly to your room.
The bigger size of this speaker will require a little more room
in your ceiling, but don’t worry. With a choice of round or
square paintable grilles, the S4-C80 can stand out or blend
in as much as you want it to.
Dynaudio Custom
Tool-free installation means just
that. Slide the frame in the cavity,
slide the speaker in the frame…
then just add music
Plug and play

And we mean that literally. Plug the wires in,
slide the speaker into its frame, listen for the
clicks and you’re ready to go. It’s that simple
S4-W65 S4-W80
No visible wires, no fuss – just great sound. The S4-W65 Just add music. Or movies, for that matter. Whatever you’re
from the Dynaudio Custom Architectural Studio range is listening to, the S4-W80 in-wall speaker delivers all the
an in-wall speaker with no compromises. The smaller of accuracy and refinement of the smaller S4-W65, and turns
the two in-wall options, it makes the perfect companion it up a notch.
for small to medium-sized rooms, offering a 17cm mid/bass
driver to support its 28mm precision-coated soft-dome Offering a bolder, even more authoritative sound, the S4-W80
tweeter. makes easy work of bigger rooms. That’s thanks to its larger
20cm mid/bass driver, which – like the rest of the Custom
Like our in-ceiling options, the S4-W65 fixes on to a pre- Studio range – is mated to Dynaudio’s iconic 28mm soft-dome
installed frame, which can be fitted either way up for total tweeter for treble that sings.
flexibility. The patent-pending baffle latch makes mounting
the speakers a breeze, and the frames even retrofit into Getting custom audio into your home shouldn’t be hard, and
many existing popular-sized cavities, so you don’t have our specially designed easy-mount frames can be installed
to start from scratch if you don’t want to. quickly and simply during any building or renovation process.
You don’t even need tools once you’ve cut the hole.
Changing your décor? No problem. The Dynaudio Custom
Studio range can adapt as your room does, with paintable Not planning on tearing down your walls any time soon?
magnetic grilles that can be swapped out as quickly as The frames can also be retrofitted into the majority of existing
your colour scheme changes. wall cavities for fuss-free installation. ■
Issue 02 87
Finishes
Finishes
Finishes
What do you do when you find high-end furniture-polishing too easy?
You come to Skanderborg and see what you’re really made of.
Every speaker that comes out of our factory is painstakingly 51 hours is too long. If we go over time, we have to start all
finished, polished and inspected by experts. Every screw is over again). We only use materials from sustainable sources.
tightened; every connection checked. Just as it should be. And we never let anything leave us unless it’s perfect.
Some of our range receives up to 13 coats of lacquer – all After all, hi-fi speakers should be just as great to look at as
finished within a 50-hour window (and we really mean 50; they are to listen to. ■
Consequence
Special Confidence Ultimate Evidence
Emit Excite Xeo Focus XD Contour Forty Platinum Edition Platinum Sub 3 Sub 6
Black Piano Lacquer
Black Satin
Bordeaux High Gloss
Grey Birch High Gloss
Grey Oak High Gloss
Ivory Oak Satin
Mocca High Gloss
Red Birch High Gloss
Rosewood Dark High Gloss
Rosewood Dark Satin
Rosewood High Gloss
Rosewood Satin
Walnut High Gloss
Walnut Light Satin
Walnut Satin
Wengé Satin
White Piano Lacquer
White Satin
Issue 02 89
Meet the range
Meet the
family
Emit
Excite Emit M10
Emit M20
Emit M30
Excite X14
Emit M15C
Excite X14A
Excite X18
Excite X34
Excite X38
Excite X44
Excite X24 C
Excite X28 C
Xeo
Xeo 2
Xeo 4
Xeo 6
Meet the range
Contour
Focus XD Contour 20
Contour 30
Contour 60
Focus 20 XD
Contour 25C
Focus 30 XD
Focus 60 XD
Subs
Sub 3
Sub 6
Special Forty
Issue 02 91
Meet the range
Consequence
Ultimate
Edition
Consequence UE
Confidence
Platinum
Confidence Center Platinum
Evidence
Evidence Master
Evidence Platinum
Evidence Temptation
Evidence Center
Meet the range
PRO
Personal reference monitors
LYD 5
LYD 7
LYD 8
LYD 48
Classic monitors
BM6A
BM15A
BM5 mkIII
Studio main systems

M3VE
M3XE
M5P
Subwoofers
9S
18S
Custom
Install
S4-C65
S4-C80
S4-W65
S4-W80
Issue 02 93
About Dynaudio
Made in
Denmark
A company like Dynaudio doesn’t emerge fully-formed.
It takes a clear philosophy – an enduring one – to guide it
Back in 1977 Dynaudio’s founder, Wilfried Ehrenholz, That meant total transparency: simply and faithfully reproducing
decided that the off-the-shelf speakers available at the music of the original performance that was fed to them.
the time weren’t telling the whole truth.
The drivers available at the time just weren’t good enough, so
Dynaudio started out by putting drivers made by other they built their own – but it wasn’t just a test-the-water-and-
companies into tweaked off-the-shelf cabinets, with crossovers dive-in job. They did their homework.
designed and built in-house. But they still weren’t right:
it wasn’t all made in-house. And we all know there’s only Dynaudio was always striving to reach the next level; a level
one way to get something right if no one else can do it… its established competitors – some of whom were leviathans
of the hi-fi industry – either couldn’t get to, or hadn’t even
“Whatever I do, I want to make a perfect thing. I talked to a realised existed.
lot of other engineers at the time, and I could see how limited
their understanding of speaker technology was,” says Wilfried. The goal? To stop picking apart frequencies and just… sit.
“So we did everything ourselves.” Listen. Enjoy. “If a musician expresses what’s in the music,
when you listen to it you aren’t analysing it, it’s just emotion,”
That obsession with The Truth set them on the path to right-ness. Wilfried says.
They began in Skanderborg, Denmark. It’s a small town by a That philosophy – that pursuit of truth through emotion –
lake; you’d like it, it’s lovely. permeates the entire company. There’s always another level
to hit. VP of Innovation Mark Thorup and Wilfried have been
And because there isn’t a lot to do in Skanderborg, they turned working side by side for decades – and they still agree on one
their attention to making the most honest speakers possible. thing: they’re living their passion and making a business of it.
About Dynaudio
“We’re not doing it because we must. We’re doing it because Founding father
we can,” says Mark. Wilfried Ehrenholz
started Dynaudio
“I’m very proud that we kept all our principles from the so he could make
beginning; we didn’t have to change anything. Most concepts speakers his way…
we started are still valid after 40 years, and I think this is the right way
very impressive,” Wilfried says.
Dynaudio Labs
“When I think back, I can’t understand how I have been so Forty years later, we
brave! When we started, I was only 22 years old, no have a dedicated
experience, no background, just finished my studies – but R&D facility
I never had any doubt that we would be successful. We never containing over
did anything just for the money. Ever. I thought we might build 40 engineers
a company with 30, 40 people or so, but it went better than
I thought!” It’s always been this way, ever since we started in
one building in 1977, with a handful of employees. Now we
have around 300… and they’re all fussy. Just as it should be.
Our people are the key to everything we do: they know exactly
how to create quality. They test, and listen, and test, and
refine, and listen. They’re experts. It means if something isn’t
right, we can fix it – not just change something else further
down the line and hope it solves the problem. We do it at the
beginning.
Magnets and wires and robots

The driver sits at the heart of it all. We develop and
manufacture them all ourselves – right down to magnetising
the magnets and winding the voice-coils. Winding is an
automated process these days (although even the robots
we built can’t escape the eagle eyes or ears of our quality-
control people), but at one point even this was done by
expert pairs of hands.
We use aluminium wire instead of conventional copper. It’s

lighter, which lets us double the coil diameter for any given
weight. It also lets us use longer windings – which gives the
driver longer excursion and better heat dissipation. (And that,
in English, means we have tighter control over the sound.)
We make our drivers in house too, from our own version
of a material called MSP. The whole thing is made in one ►
Issue 02 95
About Dynaudio
piece – including the integrated dust-cap – so there’s no need Designed and assembled in-house
for glue. (Although our engineers can tell the difference between The MSP cone is formed in one piece
different glues just by listening; never let it be said we don’t – even the integrated dust-cap
know how to have a good time.)
Building the motors

You might notice our cones are shallower than those of our
competitors. That isn’t an accident, and it isn’t just because
we want to be different. It’s to improve our speakers’ off-axis
performance – so the sound you get off to the side is far
closer to what you hear out in front… perfect if you have
friends over and don’t want to give up the good seat.
There are other, less obvious details, too. Some you won’t
even see – like the spider. That’s the springy piece of material
that acts as the voice-coil’s suspension. It’s springy because
it needs to control how much the voice-coil moves back and
forth, and how much air there is behind the speaker cone.
We’ve improved its symmetry by taking measurements and
performing simulations – which improves the sound you hear.
It all sits in the basket. That’s the physical housing for the
whole driver motor. The car around its engine (or, if you prefer,
the Fort Knox around that precious gold). It’s just as important
– so even though you can’t see it, we’ve spent just as much
time refining its design as we have every other part of our
speakers. Ventilation is crucial: it’s made to reduce turbulence
behind the driver, which, again, helps them sound their best.
High-quality high frequency
Then there’s our signature soft-dome tweeters. We don’t
It’s all in the detail let anyone else near them (apart from our talented team,
Our high-end Esotar soft-dome
2 of course). We’ve been refining our tweeter designs ever
tweeters are precision-coated since we started out: geometry, shape, materials, stiffness…
for the highest quality treble even the coating. We use the right amount, in the right
performance places, at the right density, to control roll-off and keep
a steady hand on the treble response. Because Dynaudio
tweeters aren’t made of metal, they have a flatter, more linear
frequency response – which means more honest performance.
But, in the end, it all comes down to our people. They’re

fanatical about what they do (you really should check out
one of our glue-listening sessions; they’re enlightening),
and they’re incredibly proud of what they produce.
And, with our brand-new R&D facility that opened at the end
of 2016, they’re even more excited about what new stuff
they’ll come up with next… ■
About Dynaudio
We are Dynaudio
– and we’ve been making quality
loudspeakers since 1977.
Our favourite kind of paper

is the blank kind.
Our favourite type of question

is the one that starts with
“I know this is probably impossible, but what if we…”
Our favourite type of listening room

is one full of speakers and cables.
And a soldering iron.
And our favourite type of music

to listen to is… well, all of it.
We’ll never stop innovating.

We’ll never stop learning.
We’ll never stop striving to bring you total truth in sound.
And we’ll never stop loving music.
We are Dynaudio
– and we can’t wait to show you
what we’ve got up our sleeve.
Issue 02 97
Next issue
Next issue
High-end
heaven
Find out how we produce our most coveted loudspeakers, from design
and construction to finishing and polishing. Plus, get the inside story
on our in-car DSP wizardry, a primer on vinyl… and much more.
Learn more, get the latest tips and tricks, and read our reviews
on www.dynaudio.com and www.facebook.com/dynaudiogroup
Issue 01 99
Dynaudio A/S
8660 Skanderborg
Denmark
dynaudio.com
Item no. 46687202
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Magazine

Twice a year we bring you everything you need to know

In this issue we lift the lid on Music, our new intelligent

Plus lots more. Enjoy!

Behind the Music:

Contents 06 Music: intelligent wireless audio

You love music. We get it. We love music, too.

Dynaudio Music provides one-touch simplicity. It

Dynaudio Home Music

All-in-one The system that adapts to your lifestyle

Dynaudio Home Music

Nowadays, we’re betting you spend a few minutes trawling

Up to six speakers can be connected at a time, and arranged

Each model is available in Light Grey, Dark Grey, Red

Malte Köhn, our Design Director, spends a lot of his

They’ll be great, of course – that almost goes without

Beauty from any angle

The design team worked closely with the acoustics team,

“We sent the design file to our local 3D-printing suppliers,

That 3D printing approach made prototyping quick and easy,

And lurking in its lair at the very

We’re going to let you in on a big secret: one of the

“All I can hear is the problems,” says Stephen Entwistle,

But make no mistake: this isn’t false modesty, despondency

The biggest mistake an engineer can make

Why’s it so big? Because we want to measure complete

Keep your distance

Stephen explains: “If you have multiple drivers in a real cabinet,

“We measure all 31 microphones simultaneously. We start

The old-school way of doing that would’ve been to use

Jupiter was the king of the Roman gods.

The problem is, anechoic chambers don’t tend to work so

Instead, we’re able to simulate the good effects of an anechoic

You’re almost ready to rip the cellophane wrappers off

A general rule of thumb: the front speakers’ tweeters should

Bad vibes? You might be as compelled to put your surround speakers

De-cluttering cables Fine tuning

The thrum of tyres on hot tarmac. The wind in your hair.

That, or perhaps you’re stuck next to a truck in a traffic jam in

The quest for better

In 1954, inspiration would

In 1962, and not a moment too soon, characterful American

Stereo-Pak was worn out by 1969, and while 8-track

The DIY comeback

The Dynaudio/Volvo partnership lasted for more than ten years,

But one piece of the puzzle was still missing. Because of

You’ve spent good money on your speakers,

But spraying them down with the old furniture

Here’s how to do the job properly (and deal with

Leave the buffing tools in the shed

Two essentials… and one no-no

Compressed Soft Jewellery

“But my cloth is really soft. What if I just…”

“Tweeters change over time, so there’s no guarantee that a

How to clean your woofers

“You can safely use a dry microfibre cloth,” says Otto.

Historically, speaker surrounds have been prone to degradation How to clean

Who would’ve thought ‘entry-level’

Instead, we’ve gone above and beyond to make sure

And they’ve been designed, engineered and