Old vs New, an experience with Dynaudio.
Hi, two years ago I bought a pair of used Dynaudio Contour 3.3, a Phase Linear 3300 pre, two Linn LK240 monoblocks and an M8A smsl dac. All together they cost me less than 2,500 Euros. The entire purchase was made without the previous hearing of any of its components, just by reading a few reviews. The only modern component was the SMSL M8A DAC, everything else was quite old. Linear phase 3300, year 1980, 300 Euro Linn LK240, year 1997, 2x300 Euro Dynaudio Contour 3.3, year 1998, 1,200 Euro. My space is about 72 square meters (6x12), with carpets, 6 sofas, 6 meters of books.
The great thing is, after the initial speaker placement, try and error, wow, bingo! This was simply the best sound system I have ever heard. Wide, deep and crystal clear soundstage Let’s say 20m wide and 15m deep wen listening tp modern music recordings such as Luigi Nono, Kurtag, Xenakis and others. Natural timbre of all instruments. Perfect brass, beautiful crisp metallic jazz cymbals, clear, vibrant and airy voices, punchy jazz drums, deep and realistic bass drum in orchestral recordings, airy violins, great piano although I think this is the hardest instrument of all. The only timbre I lacked was the fast, detailed texture of the cellos in chamber music. In general, a more precise bass was missing.
Everything else was tonally so perfect and the soundstage so inviting that for the first time in my life I enjoyed listening to all my favorite recordings again. Sun Ra recordings from the 60s and 70s !!! All these madmen in front of me, all crisp and fluid at the same time. Incredible. Friends who visited me began to admit that this was the first time they found "sense" in a decent hi-fi system. Okay, if it sounds like that it makes sense to spend some money on it. I have many musicians in my circle of friends. One of them is a famous harpsichord builder and another has been synthesizing sounds at Ircam for 10 years, another is a conductor in Lausanne. Just to say it’s not people who have no idea of the sound. All of them were deeply surprised by this old and cheap sound system. I have never asked for an opinion, they only give their opinion because they deem it necessary. I personally haven’t listened to many audiophile sound systems exhaustively, so I’m by no means an audiophile expert. But I go very often to concerts, chamber or orchestral music and sometimes Jazz; however I have to say that I cannot tolerate contemporary jazz after coming into contact with giants like Monk, Rollins, Coleman, Eric Dolphy, Shepp, Davis and Coltrane. So the sound system starts to really matter because that’s the only way I have to hear Monk. If I had lived in the 60s my only concern would probably have been to go to all the boys’ live concerts listed above. I think I have a decent idea of how certain instruments should sound. Also I have a Bluthner grand piano at home, a Selmer Sax, two violins, many minor instruments. I also have about 2TB of flacs. I am a software architect but I love music. Six months after purchasing my sound system, I had the opportunity to visit the Audiophile District in Guangzhou, China. There are about 4/5 buildings filled from top to bottom with Hi-Fi equipment. Rather surprising. I’ve listened to Focal, B&W, Vivid, Magico and many others. To find something better like my system I had to pay quite a high price, at least 30K just for the speakers. I asked how my 2.5k system could sound as good as their 60K system ... They explained that probably the acoustics they have in their showroom are not ideal. I then had the opportunity to accurately listen to a professional set-up of an Adam 30K studio. Again, nothing special compared to my budget setup. My dual speaker setup offered a bigger and more precise soundstage as the Adam 5 speaker system! Tonally my system was much more natural. For some inexplicable reason, perhaps because of the dream of a more structured bass, I decided to buy a pair of Contour 60s. Without listening to them first because I live very isolated in the Italian countryside and there is simply no way to hear audiophile gear here. So I just bought them, expecting Dynaudio to be following the same path I know from outline 3.3. In the end, the 3.3 sounded so good that it was clear that there are people who know what they are doing.
Also, people later told me that even if I listen to a speaker in a demo room, when I listen to it again from home, I will hear something completely different. However this is not true. For example I have another couple of Dynaudios, the small 1.3mkII; I moved to many different houses with them and they always sounded good. I never feel anything wired or weird moving them from space to space. Certainly something changes but there is never a day / night difference. For sure if I put them in an empty Romanesque church the sound will change profoundly. But is not so. In mid-2019 I got the Contour 60. Plugged in, put them in the same position as the Contour 3.3, play. Everything out of focus, everything booms. The dealer told me it was a problem to run them in. I should break them for 400 hours. After 6 days I asked the dealer to take back the speakers because I don’t believe in miracles, but unfortunately I refused.
Then something else happened, but now it doesn’t matter.
Finally after 8 months I have reached the 500 hours of running in. I changed the DAC from SMSL to Chord, the amplification from Linn to Krell 400w, expensive audiophile cables, current stabilization. All things that weren’t needed in my previous setup. Funny. Today they sound better than the day they arrived but every time I listen to them I think of my old Contour 3.3. Tonally completely wrong, veiled, unnatural. The sound is colored by the boxes themselves. I can hear the reverberation of sound inside wooden boxes. Brass and cymbals never sound metallic as they should. Voices are sent in the background. Bass is now more controlled as with the new boxes, but there are no additional textures compared to contour 3.3. The soundstage is always either congested in the center or immediately separated by the distance from the speakers. No stage magic. Blur, something like a nasal sound. All my friends also miss the Contour 3.3 without a single exception. In the meantime I have written to many forums, to Dynaudio, to my dealer. The missing test was listening to them in a different space. So I put them in my car, I did 20 km in the studio of my friend, the harpsichord maker. Hi has a space of 12x10 meters, filled with wood on all walls and floors. Hi uses this room to build and tune his harpsichord. I hooked up the Contour 60 to its Naim 20K system which he uses to drive is the Vivid Gyiga3. We played around with the placement of the speakers a bit but it quickly became clear that no miracle was going to happen. In the end we at least replicated the congested soundstage. Tonally they behaved exactly like in my house. Voices unnatural, veiled, woody, rumbling, sent in the background. No magic, no revelation, no fun. I just haven’t been able to explain to myself how a company can accomplish something like Contour 3.3. and then something like the Contour 60. One thing was clear. The Contour 3.3 sounded like an expensive speaker and the Contour 60 looks like an expensive speaker. But isn’t this the general trend in so many areas? Manufacturers more concerned with appearances than with substance? But how does a company like Dynaudio change its philosophy so drastically? Then I remembered that in Italy the same happened to all the companies that changed their old and experienced CEO into young and "fresh" people. In Italy this means trendy design, tons of marketing, reduced production costs, less quality and nothing else.
Then I searched for "Dynaudio CEO" on Google. Exactly that happened to Dynaudio in 2016! My speakers are from 2017.
Now everything is clear.
