Dynaudio or B&W




I have a pair of B&W 703s and am thinking about going to a pair of Dynaudios. I purchased a pair of Focus 140s for my other system and just love them. I have been tossing around the idea of the 220s or the X36s. I may go Contour as well but the hang-up is cash. It could happen though. I am using a Jolida JD-1000RC which is plenty for the 703s and I would suspect plenty for the Dyns as well. I listen to everything from classical to metal. Any opinions welcome.

Thanks.
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Showing 2 responses by adamg

I recently owned a pair of B&W CDM 9 NTs (the predecessor of the 703s) and just purchased a pair of Dynaudio Contour S 3.4s. I should point out at that I have always been fairly displeased with the very lively metal dome tweeter in the CDM series. Having said that, the Dynaudio is superior in every way to my CDMs and I cannot imagine someone being anything but enamoured with these speakers. I also listen to a very wide range of music and have been re-discovering my collection since acquring the Dyns.
The one thing that may concern me is your amp. To my understanding, the Jolida is rated at 100 wpc. I found that with the lower sensitivity and 4 ohm load, the Countours require a lot of power to play loudly. I find i am pushing my 400w Mac MC402 to higher levels than usual to reach satisfying SPLs. That being said, 100 watts of high quality tube power should suffice.
Since you can probably get around $2500 for the 703 if you choose to sell them, the financial loss for a used pair of Contour 3.4 is almost nil (there is one for sale here for $2300).
I found the Dyns to be more tolerable with bright, poorly recorded material than the B&Ws. Although the esotar and esotec soft dome tweeter is very revealing, it has a much more natural sound that the B&Ws metal dome tweeter.