John Atkinson wrote about the Dynaudio Contour 20 in May 2017 (Vol.40 No.5):
When Herb Reichert reviewed this elegant, stand-mounted, two-way speaker (footnote 1) in the April 2017 issue, he had a hard time optimizing its low-frequency balance in his room. Using PrimaLuna's ProLogue Premium 35Wpc tube amplifier, he eventually got the Contour 20 to sing, and concluded that "The Dynaudio Contour 20 is the first speaker I've heard that might actually be as neutral (I hate that word) as the best headphones. . . . It leaned a touch more toward the left side of my brain than I prefer, but not too much—just enough that I would never feel guilty recommending it to an objective-type audiophile. . . . I can only imagine what even better amps might do with [it]."
As I'd been impressed by how the Dynaudios performed on my test bench, I hung on to them after the April issue had been shipped to the printer, to spend some time both auditioning them and comparing them with the similarly priced Bowers & Wilkins 805 D3s, which I'd reviewed in March. (The Dynaudios cost $5000/pair–$5750/pair depending on finish, the B&Ws $6000/pair.) My system was an Aurender N10 music server feeding USB data to a Meridian Ultra DAC, this linked to a pair of MBL Corona C15 monoblock amplifiers with AudioQuest Wild Blue balanced interconnects. Speaker cables were Kubala-Sosna Elation!s.
The Contour 20's port can be blocked in two stages with foam inserts, the first stage leaving open a narrow passage, the second sealing the speaker's enclosure and tuning the woofer to 53Hz. Herb had preferred the sound with the ports narrowed but not completely plugged. I began my auditioning with the speakers sitting on 24"-tall Celestion stands and positioned well away from room boundaries, their ports completely blocked. The low-frequency, 1/3-octave warble tones on Editor's Choice (CD, Stereophile STPH016-2) were reproduced at full level from 200Hz down to the 50Hz band, though with the 100Hz tone depressed. The 40 and 32Hz tones were shelved down and the 25 and 20Hz tones were inaudible. With the ports fully open, the 50 and 40Hz tones were powerful, the 32Hz tone boosted. The 20Hz tone was still inaudible, but now the 25Hz tone was cleanly reproduced, if shelved down.
With the ports open, solo acoustic piano had good weight in the left-hand register, without the notes blurring or booming. The low frequencies in an unreleased recording of Robert Silverman playing Schumann's Symphonic Etudes, which I engineered in 2008 in the superbly supportive acoustic of the Sauder Hall in Goshen, Indiana, sounded magnificent with the ports open, and the rest of the audioband was uncolored and dynamic. With well-recorded rock music—I dug out my rip of Here I Am, a superb CD of Ronald Isley singing Burt Bacharach standards (DreamWorks B0001005 02) that was one of my "Records to Die For" for 2005—while the bass guitar sounded rich with the ports open, it was acceptably so. But when the bass had already been goosed, as it is in "Every Day I have the Blues," from the John Mayer Trio's Where the Light Is: John Mayer Live in Los Angeles (16-bit/48kHz ALAC ripped from DVD, Sony 722727), I needed to partially block the ports to keep the lows cleanly defined.
The B&W 805 D3s sound louder—I'd estimated their voltage sensitivity as 88.4dB(B)/2.83V/m compared with the Dynaudio's 84.2dB(B)—and don't go as low in the bass as the open-ported Dynaudios. But bass guitar still had good weight through the B&Ws, and, as I expected from my earlier auditioning, they present more top-octave energy. Though this is too high in frequency to make the balance "bright," it does add a touch of brilliance. In comparison with the Contour 20s, the ride cymbals in Isley's recording of "The Look of Love" sounded "swishier," and the muted trumpet that punctuates the vocal line had a touch more bite. With the Dynaudios, I almost wondered if the instrument was the richer-toned flugelhorn; through the B&Ws, it was definitely a trumpet. With the Dynaudios' ports open, the octave drops in the bass in "The Trader," from the Beach Boys' Holland (24/192 needle drop from LP, Brother/Reprise K54008), were present in full measure, but were only hinted at by the B&Ws.
Listening to the Robert Silverman piano recording, I was hard-pressed to hear any significant difference between the speakers. I could live with either, but what I referred to in my March review of the 805 D3 as a somewhat "tailored" frequency response in the treble will make it a fussy job to match a pair of them to a system and room. Conversely, the Dynaudio's more neutrally balanced top octaves might make this speaker sound too mellow in large or overdamped rooms.
Footnote 1: The Contour 20 costs $5000/pair in finishes of black or white gloss, walnut, or white oak; Rosewood Gloss and Grey Oak Gloss add $750/pair; optional stands cost $500/pair. Footnote 2: I average 20 1/6-octave–smoothed spectra, individually taken for the left and right speakers using an Earthworks QTC-40 microphone, SMUGSoftware's FuzzMeasure 3.0 program, and a 96kHz sample rate, in a rectangular grid 36" wide by 18" high and centered on the positions of my ears. This mostly eliminates the room acoustic's effects.
Fig.1 Dynaudio Contour 20, spatially averaged, 1/6-octave response in JA's listening room (red); and of Bowers & Wilkins 805 D3 (blue).
After the listening comparisons, I measured the Contour 20s' spatially averaged response in my room with their ports left open (footnote 2). You can see, from the red trace in fig.1, that this maximally excited the lowest-frequency mode in the 30Hz region in my room. The Bowers & Wilkinses (blue trace) were in the same positions in the room, and as well as the differences in woofer tuning—the Contour 20's port is tuned to 32Hz, the 805 D3's half an octave higher, to 48Hz—the Dynaudio's port is on the rear of its cabinet, the B&W's on the front, which will also have affected the relationship of each speaker to the room acoustic. The B&W's bass response rolled off sharply below 50Hz and so didn't excite the room resonance nearly as much
Higher in frequency in fig.1, the Danish speaker has a tad more midrange energy than the British, but rolls off smoothly above 4kHz compared with the B&W, whose top octaves are elevated. In this respect, the Dynaudio's top-octave behavior in-room is similar to that of the Aerial Acoustics Model 5T, which I also reviewed in March. I believe that this gentle measured rolloff is actually more neutral in-room behavior, given the increased absorptivity of the room furnishings in the high treble.
I very much enjoyed my time with Dynaudio's Contour 20—it is indeed a high-performance loudspeaker with a transparent sound. But I understand why Herb wrote that "it leaned a touch more toward the left side of my brain than I prefer." The Contour 20 transmits the recorded sound unhindered by any sonic editorializing, but in doing so may not sound sufficiently "glamorous" with some recordings. In that sense, it is a true monitor speaker.—John Atkinson
Footnote 1: The Contour 20 costs $5000/pair in finishes of black or white gloss, walnut, or white oak; Rosewood Gloss and Grey Oak Gloss add $750/pair; optional stands cost $500/pair. Footnote 2: I average 20 1/6-octave–smoothed spectra, individually taken for the left and right speakers using an Earthworks QTC-40 microphone, SMUGSoftware's FuzzMeasure 3.0 program, and a 96kHz sample rate, in a rectangular grid 36" wide by 18" high and centered on the positions of my ears. This mostly eliminates the room acoustic's effects.
