Dynaudio Contour 30i

“Say hello to the new Contour series. Everything Dynaudio knows about speaker design in a compact, clean, great-sounding package.”

Here’s what one of our customers thinks:

Bloody Vikings

 

A nigh-on forty year Naim man; I was converted to the delights of Accuphase electronics a couple of years ago. I wanted to reduce my box count and settled on an integrated E-480 amplifier (since superseded by the 4000).

Courtesy of three friends and fellow Signals customers, I was introduced to the delights of Dynaudio loudspeakers which seem to have great synergy with Accuphase amps. I had a home-dem of the Contour 30i; myself and (Signals) Andy harbouring doubts as to whether they would work in my room.

They did, and I am now the proud owner of a lovely pair in walnut.The model has two rear ports but being widely spaced and tuned to a low frequency, they control the extended bass superbly well. My pair sited only about 10” off the back wall.

All bass frequencies are clean and fast with no overhang or bloat. The mid-band is beautifully expressive without being forward and the top end is sweet and detailed.

Then we come to the jewel in the crown; due perhaps to a relatively narrow baffle, these loudspeakers image better than any other loudspeaker I’ve owned in the past.

It’s a even-handed loudspeaker which does the job. It does not do hi-fi fireworks, but sounds musically engaging and unfatiguing over over long listening sessions. It’s pulling out hitherto unheard detail from my extensive music collection on vinyl and CD.

Dynaudio call it ‘A mid size speaker for a mid size room’. And so it is. The build quality and finish is superb.

Middle of the Road maybe, but not Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep. (one has to be of a certain age to get that reference!)

I love ‘em.

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Description

Dynaudio Contour 30i : Go back to a time when all that mattered was the next track on the album

Dynaudio Contour 30i steps it up a notch from the 20i. Of course, it still treads the same path – one of honesty, transparency and sheer entertainment, but it puts it all in a bigger package.

Like the rest of the new Contour i family, the 30i has the all-new Esotar 2i tweeter – complete with the Hexis inner dome found throughout our flagship Confidence range and also in the Core series of professional studio reference monitors (trickle-down tech is an amazing thing, isn’t it…). Esotar 2i also gets a new, larger rear chamber. This, together with Hexis, helps to reduce unwanted resonances and smooth out the frequency response for even clearer, sweeter high-frequencies.

We’ve endowed Contour 30 with two 18cm MSP drivers, as well as doubling up on the rear ports. Behind the scenes we’ve tweaked the spider suspension (the springy ring that keeps the woofer in the right place when it’s at rest, and controls it in the right way when it’s moving). This one is made from aramid fibres, and retains the ingenious structural properties from before (the ribs are of varying width to give even finer control over the cone’s excursion).

Dynaudio Contour 30i continues to use aluminium voice-coils, too. We can make them extremely light – but also bigger than the old-style copper units you’ll find elsewhere. Lighter weight allows larger diameters with more windings, yet low weight, which means we have more control over the cone movement. And that means more control over the sound – especially at high frequencies and high volumes – exactly what you need in a mid/bass driver. Sure, we experimented with small voice-coils on the new Contour – the size other companies might use. The measurements said they should work for Contour. Our ears said otherwise, so we went big. Our ears were right.

And, as with Contour 20i, the flatter frequency response from the improved tweeter and mid/bass drivers means we’ve been able to simplify the crossover. Not that it wasn’t elegant before – but now… well, we’ll let you judge.

The improved crossover no longer needs impedance correction circuitry to optimise its performance – that’s all now done in the driver itself, simply down to the physical properties of the materials we use. Fewer components, cleaner signal path, better performance.

While our engineers and designers were hunkered down listening to everything from jazz, to classical, to metal, to electronica, the team in our on-site factory were scouring sustainable sources for high-quality materials and finishes. They make sure all Contours are furniture-grade: perfectly built, perfectly finished and perfectly packaged.

 

 

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We could talk for days about Hi-Fi: 01394 672464 / 5 [email protected]
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