| Dynaudio has launched its new, limited-edition Heritage Special passive standmount speakers – handmade from top to bottom, inside and out, at its headquarters in Denmark. Started as an ‘off-the-radar’ project and developed under top-secret conditions at Dynaudio Labs, it’s now ready to be unveiled.
Heritage Special is a tribute to some of Dynaudio’s most legendary speakers – including Crafft, Contour 1, Special Twenty-Five and more. Outwardly it’s affectionately retro; inside, defiantly modern.
Handcrafted cabinets
The speaker, limited to 2500 pairs worldwide, has a 19mm-thick MDF cabinet finished in sustainable American Walnut veneer. It’s internally braced for extra rigidity and lined with heavy bitumen to further minimise unwanted resonance. Each piece of veneer (including the thin list strips surrounding the front baffle) is matched to its companions – and those for each speaker are matched to each other – for complete consistency. The cabinet goes through three meticulous sanding and lacquering processes. It takes just over three days to build each one from start to finish.
Premium tweeter technology
The tweeter plate is from the highly regarded Esotar T330D. Behind it, however,is an up-to-the-minute Esotar3 tweeter unit – as found in the top-of-the-range Confidence family. It’s the finest, most sophisticated tweeter Dynaudio has ever produced – featuring a larger rear chamber, powerful aerodynamic neodymium magnet system, the resonance-defeating Hexis inner dome, and Dynaudio’s characteristic precision-coated soft-dome diaphragm.
Top-level woofer design
Heritage Special’s mid/bass driver is a supercharged version of the one you’d find in the discontinued $85,000 Evidence Platinum series. You might also notice that it overlaps the edges of the baffle and its signature groove, as it did in times gone by. The 18W75 XL Heritage Special MSP Woofer (not every name needs to be snappy) shares the Evidence version’s exponential diaphragm construction, but then takes the original technology to a new level:
The improved voice-coil uses a classic internal-magnet aluminium design, now on a glass-fibre former. A new magnet system uses both neodymium and ferrite magnets to fine-tune flux around the voice-coil’s windings, which reduces second-harmonics and improves clarity. The new asymmetrical Nomex spider, as seen on Confidence and Contour i, gives even greater control over the long-throw diaphragm’s excursion.
Custom crossover
The speaker’s ‘brain’, the crossover, has been designed in-house from the ground-up. It uses classic Dynaudio first-order topology, delivered by high-quality components from German manufacturer Mundorf (including its noted Evo Oil capacitors), plus bespoke parts specified by Dynaudio Labs. The crossover uses local impedance correction and time-alignment technology for each individual driver to ensure a smooth transition between them. Inside there’s Van den Hul’s CS12 12 AWG wiring, plus Swedish-made damping material. And to hook the speakers up, Dynaudio has opted for WBT’s ultra-high-level 710 Cu mC NextGen terminals. |
