Interesting afternoon this week with Bill Livingston from Dynaudio.
Dynaudio’s new Evoke range was supposed to be imminent when we signed up for the brand almost 18 months ago, with the super-successful Special 40 being a celebratory teaser of their latest thinking. Finally, somewhat later than planned, the Evoke range is with us.
To find out if it has been worth the wait, we used the larger of our ‘normal’ listening rooms and the Naim 500 system fed from Naim NDX2 streamer with XPS. Starting point was the diminutive Evoke 10s on the Dynaudio 20 stands.
We are familiar with the Special 40s in this context and I have to say that that these little £1250 speakers genuinely surprised us. Bass is weighty, dynamics unconstrained, midrange open and engaging with a top end that makes words like ‘refined’ somewhat redundant. You simply feel that you are hearing through them.
Playing Massive Attack’s bass heavy Mezzanine at fairly serious levels, there was a hint of port chuffing but definitely no more than is evident from pretty much any other compact ported loudspeaker that we have or have known and less than most.
The sense of scale and freedom certainly was unusual, though, as was the level of insight on offer. That’s £1250, made in Europe, and tiny, making sense of a pretty serious system.
Bill only brought the 10s and the Evoke 30, the smaller of the two floor-standers. The 30’s are quite diminutive too. But, again, they play big.
Loud bass was clearly more easily within their grasp but there were a lot of family similarities too. These are seriously impressive despite the relatively modest £2900 price ticket and physical size but somehow less surprising because they are more obviously a ‘proper’ loudspeaker.
It would be churlish not to stock the whole range, so our order was duly placed. Arrival should be first week of April.
By then, we will have Evoke 10, 20,30 and the proper full three way Evoke 50s. It’ll be interesting! By the look of things, we certainly need to buy lots to help Dynaudio decorate their listening facility 🙂
While moving things around and boxing things up, we had time to chat and it’s evident that some unique technology lies at the heart of these products. Being so firmly in charge of the entire design and manufacturing process gives Dynaudio the opportunity to develop invisible subtleties like the 3D printed waveguides inside the Cerotar Tweeter.
These developments take time and Dynaudio have a strong ethos of taking their time to do things properly.
You can’t really argue with that, certainly now that the fruits of their labour are with us.
29/3/19