Many moons ago I was lucky enough to drive a Mercedes SL65 AMG Black Edition (later called black series) the 6.0-litre twin-turbocharged V12 engine produced 670 bhp with a staggering 0-60 time of 3.8 seconds, it had a “limited” top speed of 199 mph!, only 350 of these were made. it remains, by some margin the most powerful car I’ve ever had the pleasure of driving.
Why am I mentioning this? Well Mercedes clearly felt they needed a special “Black Edition” ironically some weren’t actually black! but Dynaudio felt they needed a special edition added to their already stellar line up: enter the Dynaudio Contour 20 Black Edition.
The Danish loudspeaker company have often added special versions as a branch off from their passive range of loudspeakers, consisting of Emit, Evoke, Contour and the flagship Confidence. Presently the available off shoot special editions consist of the Special 40, which celebrated Dyn’s 40th birthday (now 7 years ago) and the ultra special Contour Legacy which is limited to only 50 pairs in the UK, 1000 worldwide.
So why the need for the Contour 20 Black Edition? Let me explain…
Dynaudio felt they had a performance/price gap between the Contour 20i and the top of the line Confidence 20, how could they bridge that gap in their stand mount speaker lineup?
Easy, just improve the Contour 20i further.
Quick history.
The i in 20i stands for improved, the original Contour range was upgraded or Improved about 5 years ago. The 20i had an upgraded suspension for the 18cm MSP (Magnesium Silicon Polypropylene) mid/bass with a simpler crossover network plus a revised Esotar 2i tweeter featuring a larger chamber for the 28mm soft dome’s rear-firing sound to be more effectively absorbed.. basically an all round improvement on the Contour 20 becomes the 20i.
All in agreement say aye.
To improve the 20i even further took some quite radical changes, luckily Dynaudio have many things and lots of stuff to play around with in their R&D department.
First up, the Tweeters.
The Esotar 2i is a fine tweeter and performs very well in the Contour series and the 20i is no slouch, I’ve installed several pairs and always found them to be very good, a tad on the warmer side but have fantastic imaging and excellent bass response with low cabinet colouration thanks to the aluminium front baffle.
However the Esotar 2i isn’t Dyn’s best tweeter, what you’ll find fitted in the Contour 20 Black Edition is a 650 bhp v12.. what? Sorry, what you’ll find is a full top of the range Esotar 3, just like a Confidence 20 and the rest of the series has (the gap is closing) moving down to the bass driver.
The outward appearance apart from colour of the chassis remains the same but now hiding inside it has a neodymium magnet that despite being smaller than the 20i motor is more powerful and the reduced size helps air flow behind the bass driver, again very similar to Confidence 20’s bass driver (closing the gap)
Also, extending the voice coil winding by 3mm improves excursion linearity over the contour 20i bass units.
The rear firing port has been enlarged and features double flares which reduces turbulence and improves LF response.
The Crossovers now feature Mundorf caps and resistors, with huge air core inductor coils and Van den Hul cables.
Second order filter for both drivers -crossover point: 3.6kHz, note the crossover point has changed quite considerably, contour 20i’s fairly typical two way 2.2khz crossover point vs Black Edition’s 3.6khz.
Aesthetics..
All the cabinets feature high gloss black finish which makes the black aluminium baffles blend in wonderfully, the driver faceplates and chassis have also been painted black. At a distance these look very different from the Walnut or Nordic Silver Contour 20i’s..
I’m not usually a fan of black speaker cabinets and I would strongly recommend cloth gloves when mounting and bolting to thier dedicated stands with special top plates. But boy I think they look classy.
So we’ve talked about the tech and the look etc but how do they sound? Do they bridge the gap between the Contour 20i and the Confidence 20’s?
100% yes.
Dynaudio speakers can take time to run in, this is something we expect and we try to accelerate the process. We often leave them running over a couple of weekends.
The reason is sometimes they sound good right out of the crates and then after a while they go all moody and sound off..
The reason is each driver moves at a different dedicated frequency. Bass low frequency or slow moving, HF high frequency or fast moving. My suspicion for this moody off sound is the drivers are running in at different rates. Which leads for a time to an unbalanced sound or poor driver integration, eventually it balances out and everything is right.
The reason I’m mentioning this is our founder and illustrious leader liked and then hated the Black Editions when he tried them in the old Sigs demo room at his home.
I think they just went moody on him or he was secretly lusting after a pair of Conference 20’s!! Guess who now has a Blonde pair??
Yes indeed our very own Ali G.. confidently made the right choice.
Oh and the car, the AMG. Twas thirsty, noisy and absolutely terrific.
Kevin @ Signals