Hot Product Archives

Published August 15, 2001

• Back

Dynaudio Contour 1.3 Mk II Loudspeakers

"What the hell was that?" my wife came running out of the kitchen in full fight-or-flight mode, only to stop and stare at the hi-fi which was playing a CDR of John Atkinson's recording of the male chorus Cantus.

Every mail day (CLANK!)
Mail day I get a letter (THOOM!)
Momma say come home (CLANK!)
My Lord, son come home (THOOM!)

"That's scary," she said -- "that" meaning the clank/thoom of about fifty pounds of chain hitting the stage floor, punctuating the spiritual. "I thought somebody'd driven off the parking garage again."

"Yesss," I grinned, gazing fondly at the compact Dynaudio Contour 1.3 Mk IIs on my speaker stands. "Cool, ain't it?"

Don't get me wrong -- it wasn't just the sheer SPLs of the "special effects" that were impressive, although they would not have shamed the Thiel CS7.2s I auditioned last winter. I was enthralled by the sense of space surrounding the voices; entranced by the precise placement of each tenor, baritone, and bass. I was reveling in the phenomenal transparency of the recording. And I was stupid proud of the seemingly limitless dynamic potential of the small two-way monitors -- a property that Atkinson's hi-rez recording exploited to the max.

The art of balance

I should know better by now. I've reviewed Dynaudio speakers before -- I even own a pair of Microns. It's almost always the same. I take 'em out of the box and my initial reaction is they cost what? It's not that Dynaudios don't look well-made -- in fact, they are extraordinarily well-made -- they just aren't flashy. Must be that Scandinavian self-abnegation.

Take the Contour 1.3 Mk IIs, for instance. At 15" by 8" by 11.5", they aren't that much bigger than my reference Proac Response One Ses, at $2399, they cost only $200 more. The deep red tint and vivid grain of the Rosewood Proac somehow seems to say "luxe," in a way the Dynaudios do not, despite the fact that the Dynaudios, actually, exhibit a higher quality wood finish.

Most of what makes the Dynaudios different lies under that furniture-grade veneer, however. The cabinet is constructed using Dynaudio's box-within-a-box design, with bitumen damping compound between the sandwich layers, and the baffle itself is some sort of resonance damping material.

The Mk II Contour 1.3 employs a newly developed version of Dynaudio's 28mm soft-dome Esotec D-260 tweeter -- a dual-magnet driver that Dynaudio encloses in its own chamber within the cabinet. The aluminum voice coil is cooled by "Magna-Flux" liquid, which gives the driver awesome power handling capacity (just ask my neighbors).

The 6.5" woofer is a shallow design with a molded large-dome dustcap. It also is a dual-magnet design and its 75mm aluminum voice coil is said to be faster and have greater power handling than a similar copper coil.

The speaker's crossover is impedance-corrected -- to remain a constant four ohms. It's specified as a first-order (6dB/octave) design and its crossover point is 2600Hz. The Mk II version extends the bass response of the Contour 1.3 to 40Hz (the Mk I was 3dB down at 45Hz).

The cabinets are finished on all sides, which means they're quite handsome with the grilles off, which is how I listened to them. One pair of WBT CE approved binding posts takes care of just about any speaker cable termination. These binding posts are ungodly expensive, but I have grown to prefer them over just about any other connector. They are easy to tighten without resorting to tools.

I found stand height critical with the Contour 1.3 Mk IIs. With my 21" Target stands, they sounded hard and almost gritty in the upper midrange. My 24" Foundation stands put the tweeters more or less at my ear height and proved extremely satisfactory. I urge you to measure the height of your ears from the floor when you are seated in your favorite listening chair -- the speaker stand that gets the 1.3 Mk II's tweeter closest to that height is the right stand for the job.

One last placement tip. These speakers like lots of room to breathe. I brought 'em 50" into the room from the front wall and had 'em 32" from the sidewalls and they sounded fantastic -- with powerful bass and tons of air. Dynaudio supplies foam port plugs, if you must place the speakers closer to a boundary, but don't mistake these stand-mounted monitors for a "bookshelf" speaker.

And play these guys a lot. Hard. I know that a lot of people don't believe in loudspeaker "break-in," but these speakers changed a lot over the first hundred or so hours I played 'em. At first they sounded hard in a specific band of the lower mids, then the hardness moved up in frequency and, eventually, it disappeared. And the frequency extremes start out a lot closer together than they are at the end of a week or so of heavy listening.

The point of balance

Back to that Cantus recording of JA's. He'd dropped it by my house so I could listen for a few problems he was attempting to correct in the mix. While the Contour 1.3 Mk IIs would seem to be perfect speakers for this -- they are exceptionally uncolored and have a transient jump factor that'd put a flea to shame -- they aren't ideal "studio monitors."

Studio monitors need to tell you everything that's wrong with a recording. And the Dynaudio did allow me to hear all of the recording problems John was attempting to engineer around. But here's the thing -- I kept getting lost in the musical experience. I'd be listening critically, trying to separate environmental noises from hall acoustic deep in the mix, and I'd find myself four or five songs later, humming or tapping my foot to the music. Dang -- I hate when that happens!

In song after song, I'd get caught up in the vocal interplay between sections or in the direct/reflected sound blend, which was warmly supportive, or -- overwhelmingly -- in the emotional gestalt of the work.

If you want to laugh or cry -- or dance -- along with your music, these are the speakers for you.

Fair enough, you expect a stand-mounted monitor to ably portray unaccompanied vocals. What about big, I mean BIG, orchestral works? As it so happens, Erato has just released a new "live" recording of the Turangalīla Symphony, featuring Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Dominique Kim and the Berlin Philharmonic under Kent Nagano [Erato 8573-82043-2]. The Contours responded like a much bigger loudspeaker. In my 25' by 13' by 10' room, their bass was deep and powerful -- extending, to a very usable degree, into the low 30Hz region when driven by the Krell FPB-300 or my Nu-Vista 300.

The speakers threw a huge soundstage, beautifully illuminating the BPO's Philharmonie venue. Within this large, supportive acoustic, the Contour 1.3 Mk IIs populated the stage with specific and almost physical players, giving particular weight to the birdsongs of the piano and the ethereal shimmer of the ondes martinot. The warmth and breath of the winds seemed particularly vivid, given the chilly harmonies of the strings -- and the dynamic swings were staggering.

Other than their size, there is nothing small about the Contour 1.3 Mk IIs. They deliver as much sound as you can take -- well, as I can take -- without breaking up or distorting. Ummmm, well, that is if you give 'em the juice for it. I tried the Contours with just about every system I've had in the house over the last year -- they like to be kicked and kicked hard.

I keep getting letters from folks who've spotted the 1.3 Mk IIs in my "Associated Equipment" listings and who want to know if a 20Wpc tube amp is going to drive 'em. This is really hard to say because room size and listening preferences come into play. That said, I wouldn't pair 'em with less than about 50W of good high-current power per channel. YMMV, of course.

My current set-up, pairing the Dynaudios with a full CAST system from Krell, may be the very best I've heard from them, so do not be afraid to connect these loudspeakers to the very finest gear you can get your hands on. They'll keep up.

The balance of power

My longtime reference, when it comes to stand-mounted monitors, is the Proac Response One S -- a speaker I have relied upon since 1993, which in reviewing circles is at least a geologic period, if not an era. And, indeed, Proac has upgraded the Response One S to SC status, and the newer version is considerably improved over my older model.

Despite the scant inches of difference in size, the Contours seemed to dwarf the diminutive (12" by 7" by 9.25") Response Ones, but the two speakers sounded remarkably similar. Both are open and almost impossibly uncolored, but the Dynaudios were far and away more dynamic -- the Proacs are almost as good as any speaker I've heard at portraying the swing from near silence to full-out roar, but they eventually have to surrender. It's nearly impossible to overload the Dynaudios -- at least if you're in the same room with 'em.

There's also a slight difference in tonal presentation between the two. The Proacs are warm and a tad "wet," like a tongue thrust in your ear (and the sound is about that startling and arousing, too). The Contour 1.3 Mk II is slightly "cooler" and drier -- it's the aural equivalent of that physical lift you get when you step into a walk-in humidor. I like 'em both, but I think I trust the Dynaudio's coloration slightly more than the Proac's.

When it comes to throwing an image or reproducing a soundstage, the Proac is awfully impressive, but the Contour does it bigger. And does it louder. And takes it deeper -- it may have the tightest, deepest bottom end of any small speaker I've heard.

But if you have a tube amp or low-powered SS amp that you love, the Proacs will sound just fine with it. They are just about as accurate and darn near as dynamic as the Dynaudios, but they're a whole lot less picky about what's in front of them.

On the Krell system, I'd take the Dynaudios in a heartbeat -- but if I had, say, a 45W tube amp, it would be the Proacs. Context, as they say, is all.

The balance between order and aspiration

And that's the true key to sorting out the Dynaudio conundrum. Context.

At a little over two grand, you ought to be able to buy an awfully good loudspeaker. You can -- in fact, you can take your pick of them. That includes some floor-standing loudspeakers. So, why buy a pair of stand-mounted two-way monitors?

The Dynaudio Contour 1.3 Mk IIs are exquisitely constructed. Their fit'n'finish is second to none. Their custom-built drivers cannot be bettered in terms of construction or function. Their crossovers are stuffed with high quality components.

Then there's the sound -- for certain sized rooms, it would be difficult to do better than the Contour 1.3s. In my room, they have proved to be first among a long list of contenders for best sound -- they couple with its dimensions to produce sounds as real as any I've ever heard, one reason I keep returning to the 1.3s even more than to my putative references.

But they want quite a bit of power. They also need to be very carefully set up -- especially in terms of tweeter height. Fudge in either of these -- or try to stuff 'em too close to a boundary -- and you'll never suspect just how good they are.

But if you feed 'em right and give 'em plenty of air, they'll reward you with the same quality of sound that spoils the very rich. Believe me, it's easy to get used to.

...Wes Phillips
wes@onhifi.com

Dynaudio Contour 1.3 Mk II
Price: $2399 USD per pair
Warranty: Five years parts and labor

Export Sales and Marketing:
Dynaudio Vertriebs GmbH
Ohepark 2
D-21224 Rosengarten
Germany
Phone:: + 49 4108 - 41 80 0
Fax: + 49 4108 - 41 80 10

Production (Headquarters):
Dynaudio A/S
Sverigesvij 15
DK-8660 Skanderborg
Denmark
Phone: + 45 86 52 34 11
Fax: + 45 86 52 31 16

North American Distributor:
Dynaudio North America
1144 Tower Lane
Bensenville, Illinois 60106
USA
Phone: (630) 238-4200
Fax: (630) 238-0112

E-mail: sales@dynaudiousa
Website: www.dynaudiousa.com

• Back
  
  

All Contents Copyright © 2001
Schneider Publishing Inc., All Rights Reserved.
Any reproduction of content on
this site without permission is strictly forbidden.