Friday 28th + Saturday 29th November 2025
What an interesting time we had!
Thanks to all who joined us for the recent open days. Thanks too, to Otto Jorgensen and Bill Livingston for their knowledge and good-humoured presentation skills.
I now understand better that Otto, as Project Manager, is one of the close-knit team behind the development of the Confidence series. It was fantastic to spend time with him. We’re all in perpetual admiration of Bill’s ability to put together an engaging musical story to illustrate Dynaudio product’s strengths. For us, the two days were a joy, if an exhausting one!
It turned out that, with the Innuos, Bill, Otto and ourselves were on something of a journey of discovery. We’ve played with the 20A’s before and have used them in both our ‘normal’ rooms and the larger, 7m tall, central ‘hall’. Despite their diminutive size, we certainly knew they would work for a presentation in there. Quite impressive for a pair of very compact, albeit £17000, active stand-mounts.
When we last experimented, we found them to be more synergistic with Naim Electronics than Linn. I had certainly preferred our Naim 333 / 332 rig (with NPX 300s power supplies) to the Linn Klimax DSM all-in-one streamer / preamp.
Bill delivered the speakers on the Thursday evening so that they could be warm for the big days. We were aching to try them with a wholly digital source and our new demo Stream3 was retrieved on Thursday evening from a customer who was holding onto it whilst he awaits the arrival of his new one On Friday morning we set about selecting which source to use. The Linn KDSM was on first and, good as it was, no coconuts were being offered by the listening panel.
Next, we went fully OTT and used Naim ND 555 with twin 555 power supplies (natch) into the Statement preamp. It’s not a fair comparison but this expensive combo sounded positively majestic. It’s also an utterly ridiculous expense ratio with the loudspeakers.
Finally came the Innuos Stream3 with AES/EBU digital output board. The Confidence 20A’s are equipped with a digital input and a single XLR equipped cable links to one loudspeaker and then another similar cable goes between them. Priced at around £6000, this was far more likely to make a system that logical people might actually buy, so hopes were high.
Thankfully, it sounded genuinely stunning. At worst, it ran the Naim combo close, but the more we played it, the more we wondered if it was simply a purer, cleaner and more ‘right’ way to feed the speakers. We gather that the 20A’s will always default to the analogue input but, if a digital one is detected, it will switch to that. Simply turning off or setting the digital one to standby should automatically enable the analogue input.
Stream 1 and 3 can both take the digital output boards and they can be fitted with an SSD hard drive, if required, for music storage.
In his instance, we were using Bill’s trusty Naim Uniti Core SSD and Qobuz for the music. The Innuos was hooked up via the new and quite possibly very relevant DELA S5 data switch. With the Innuos having a digital volume control, all Bill had to master was the rather alien (to him) control interface.
I don’t think we’ve ever been quite so excited to play a Giant Killer system to customers!
The Confidence 20’s are very familiar to us, indeed a pair of passive ones have graced our front page for some years. The changes to make them active turn out to be substantial, however, with only the Esotar 3 tweeters remaining the same. Bass drivers are substantially reworked, cabinets are slightly different and all the electronics are removed and packaged into the stands. Even the finish options are different, being restricted to Snow (white) and Space (black).
Despite the class D Pascal amplification being digitally driven, it works on an analogue signal. The digital input is arguably ‘purer’, though, because all of the digital DSP for driver management and crossover takes place before being unpacked into analogue for final amplification. With 400 watts to the bass / mid driver and 150 watts to the treble, the 20A’s are not lacking in power output. In fact, their maximum output level with full frequency bandwidth taken into account is second only to our beloved and much larger Confidence 60’s that normally grace the same space.
For us, the compatibility with the Innuos was an imperative and, now we know how well they work together, we have ordered our own (black) set.
I will have more to say about the DELA S5 , and S50, shortly.
Exciting times!
Oh, and there were some pictures :
