Dynaudio Contour 1.1 vs Totem Model 1


I am looking for a pair of small bookshelf speakers to pair with a Cary cad 300 sei and these two are at the top of my list. There is a $1000 price difference in favour of the Dynaudio. But, if that were to be disregarded, which one is the better speaker. I have not heard the Dynaudio so I cannot make a personal judgement.
ssayeed

Showing 2 responses by mapman

I am both a Dynaudio and Totem fan, but I would not look fist to either Dynaudio or Totem for use with a 15W tube amp, but having said that, integrate a good powered subwoofer and offload most of the low end work to that and you might get by if you do not have to go too loud.

I did this running Dyn Contour 1.3 mkII monitors off my vintage 20 W Yamaha SS receiver, in a typical sized family room and the results were actually quite good and much better than I expected. Same true with my Triangle Titus monitors, which are also inherently more efficient and tube friendly than Dynaudio.

Otherwise, Zu seems to have all kinds of things going on with their high efficiency speaker line these days. Maybe their monitors are a good fit.

MErlin VSM monitors are another popular option that seem to thrive on tube amps.
The Proacs seem very nice, but on a cautionary note, assuming the Proacs are tube friendly from a load perspective (most small monitors like these that also show good bass extension, like Dynaudios, tend to not be tube friendly in my experience, but maybe these break the mold somehow), they are only 86db efficient I read, which means that there may be challenges going loud enough to meet expectations, compared to more efficient designs, even with a soft clipping tube amp.