Description
Dynaudio Confidence 50: With great power comes great responsibility. That’s why these large floorstanders are just as adept at shaking the room as they are reproducing the finest of details
The all-new Dynaudio Confidence 50 stands shoulder-to-shoulder (or baffle-to-baffle) in height with the Confidence C4 – the previous flagship of the range.
Like that legendary speaker, it’s a three-way design with twin woofers and twin midrange drivers. It’s stunningly constructed. Stunningly finished. And a stunning performer. It uses DDC (Dynaudio Directivity Control) technology to form a sound ‘beam’ that avoids reflections from floors and ceilings. And it features an Esotar tweeter and MSP woofers.
But it takes all of this – every single component – to a new level of performance.
You might notice that while the previous Confidence floor-standers used two tweeters, the new has just one. That’s because the engineers toiling away in Dynaudio Labs have discovered new ways to optimise crossovers, waveguides and baffles to create a much simpler, better-performing version of the DDC platform. (Peek behind the curtain and see how we decided to go with one tweeter instead of two in our six-part podcast series on Confidence).
It all centres on the new DDC Lens – the stunning precision-machined waveguide around the brand-new Esotar3 tweeter (we think you’ll agree that’s a mouth-watering combination right there). The DDC Lens has been simulated and topology-optimised to vertically focus the tweeter, midrange drivers and woofers on the listening position. That results in dramatically reduced reflections from floors and ceilings – which means you hear exactly what the driver system, and not the room, is doing.
The new 28mm Esotar3 soft-dome tweeter takes over 40 years of Dynaudio expertise, plus plenty of new learnings from the award-winning Esotar Forty unit – and rolls it all into the finest tweeter we’ve ever developed. A powerful neodymium magnet system, innovations in airflow routing, the new resonance-busting Hexis inner dome … it all combines to increase detail, clarity and sensitivity.
The new 18cm NeoTec MSP woofers also have neodymium magnets under the hood, and use glass-fibre in their voice-coil formers for optimum stiffness. The voice-coils themselves are copper (which provides extra moving mass for tighter, more powerful and more controlled bass in this specific driver design). And the entire woofer motor has been designed to harness airflow using an innovative new venting system that’s been machined directly into the magnet.
The Dynaudio Confidence 50’s brand-new MSP midrange drivers are a big departure from previous Dynaudio designs.
They use a radical surround design – the Horizon – that follows the cone’s shape right to the edge of the driver. This reduces the surround’s first resonant mode to effectively increase the whole playing surface area and improve performance. They also sit flush with the baffle to reduce diffractions from the diaphragm and the adjacent tweeter.
Behind the scenes, the basket has been given a new lightweight organic design – one that’s come from extensive topology-optimisation simulations. It increases airflow, maintains its stability and rigidity and reduces weight simultaneously without sacrificing performance.
Everything is held securely in place in the ultra-rigid, super-damped and acoustically inert Compex composite baffle. It echoes the design of previous Confidences – but brings the look up to date in aesthetics and acoustic principles. That’s because it forms an integral part of the DDC Lens system, as well as providing perfect coupling and decoupling of the drivers.
Down below is the bass port . You won’t see it; it sits under the speaker. And because it fires downwards, we’ve been able to design it to perform exactly as we want it to without having to worry about putting a big hole in the beautiful finish.
And, honestly, you have to hear it to believe it…
