About Dynaudio Contour 60

"Unfading Values" is about the Contour series of speakers from Dynaudio. In the 1990s, this series of speakers was the dream of many audiophiles who had just discovered the world of High Fidelity. We will tell you a little about them.
Before purchasing the speakers of their dreams, every audiophile must experience an affair with Dynaudio. For some, it becomes a point of support for further searches, but a large part of music lovers stop at the exclusive sound of Danish acoustics. And the most interesting thing in this whole situation is that Dynaudio speakers do not have a clearly defined style. There is only a defined philosophy that the company's engineers have adhered to for many years. The famous slogan "Danes don't lie" means that when creating acoustic systems, engineers consider the main task to be that the sound is as close as possible to a natural-sounding musical instrument, without introducing any distortions or "improvements".

Yes, we can see that many manufacturers declare that they are trying to create this. But only Dynaudio has managed to achieve actual recognition of its success, both among specialists and among ordinary lovers of good sound. For many years, the signature design of Danish speakers has been considered a benchmark for neutral sound and its traditional understanding - close to ideal amplitude-frequency characteristics, minimal nonlinear, phase and intermodulation distortions, high level of overload tolerance.

The Contour speaker series from Dynaudio appeared on the market several decades ago and since then, it has not ceased to amaze a large audience of quality sound lovers with its capabilities. Over the years, I have not met anyone who would not like the sound of the current Contour generation speakers. We are sure that with the advent of the new series, there will be none left. This article will focus on the flagship of the series - Dynaudio's Contour 60. This is a powerful, three-way acoustic system made according to the classic "recipe". Two 24-centimeter speakers with a large diffuser travel are responsible for deep and fast bass. This is a successfully reworked and improved version of the classic, old 18-centimeter speakers that were used in the Contour 20 and 30 speakers. As usual, all the coils are wrapped in a variegated aluminum wire. An asymmetrical, centering, new design bushing is also used.

However, the real “stars” of the Contour 60 are the midrange and tweeters. And if the excellent Esotar 2 tweeter is well known to us thanks to the expensive Confidence series, then the 15-centimeter midrange driver has been created specifically for this model. Like all Dynaudio speakers, the speakers of this series are made of the polymer material MSP (magnesium silicate polymer), but here a neodymium magnet system has been used. When developing and optimizing the speaker, a computationally demanding finite element analysis method was used.

The next important element of the acoustic system is the crossover filter. A second-order crossover is used here, which determines a rapid 12dB octave drop. But the most important moment is the midrange speaker, which independently reproduces perhaps the most important part of the range from 220 to 4500 Hz, and the high and low frequencies are activated only when necessary. No less important are the high-quality components of the filters. They use polypropylene strip capacitors from the Mundorf company and inductive coils from the same manufacturer. The necessary measures have also been taken to mechanically separate the filter mounting plate from the surface of the inner walls.

The speaker cabinets are made primarily of high-density fiberboard covered with natural wood veneer. Several finishes are available. The photos in this article show the natural walnut finish (called Walnut Light Satin in the catalog).

The most noticeable element is the front panel, to which all four speakers are attached. It is made of a solid piece of aluminum, and is attached to the walls with screws and special glue. In the Dynaudio “Contour 60”, additional measures were taken to combat standing waves inside the speaker housing. Thanks to the calculations of engineers, a suitable housing shape was made, and the inside was covered with sound-absorbing material. For the acoustic solution, a phase inverter was traditionally chosen, especially since both ports are output to the back of the speakers: one at the top, the other at the bottom of the housing. To ensure stability and mechanical contact with the floor, four legs with height-adjustable special needles are attached to the bottom of the speaker. As always with Dynaudio, only one pair of connectors is provided for connecting the speaker cables. The company’s engineers do not believe in “bi-directional” and passive “bi-amping”. The plastic clamping heads have a comfortable profile and are of such a size that it is not necessary to struggle much to tighten the ends of the wires tightly. It is understood that each pair of speakers has protective, magnetically attached dust-retaining meshes to the front panel.