Imagine a big speaker that doesn’t behave like a big speaker.
The Dynaudio Confidence 60 floor standing loudspeakers are the top of the company’s flagship Confidence line and they stand over 5 ft tall and weigh 146 lbs a piece. A big speaker yet they’re designed to behave with the manners of a smaller speaker when it comes to how they interact with the room they’re in.
The related trick the Confidence 60 have up their Compex front baffle, Compex is a very rigid hardened foam, is controlled dispersion or what Dynaudio’s calls DDC (Dynaudio Directivity Control).
I’ll let Dynaudio explain:
This [DDC] focuses the sound waves radiating from the speakers into a tight vertical ‘beam’ that avoids reflections from floors and ceilings while maintaining a wide horizontal image. That means a bigger sweet-spot on the couch, a happier audience, and the knowledge that you’re only hearing what the drivers are producing – and not what the room itself is bringing to the party.
The star of the show is the DDC Lens – a machined aluminium waveguide integrated into the precision Compex composite baffle. This ingenious part (the result of hundreds of hours of simulations, prototyping and listening tests) works in conjunction with the baffle shape, the tweeter and the midrange drivers (notice their Horizon Surround, also part of the system) and the woofers to focus sound waves where they need to go: you.
The Confidence 60 is filled with the company’s own drivers which are made at their Skanderborg, Denmark facility and include the latest iteration of the legendary Esotar tweeter joined by pairs of their Magnesium Silicate Polymer (MSP) mid-range and bass drivers, 15mm and 23mm respectively. A gasket decouples the baffle from the cabinet proper which is tapered to reduce internal reflections and sits on a sturdy metal plate with four easily adjustable outrigger spiked feet. The ports for the down-firing woofers sit at the bottom of the cabinet on either side. Frequency response for the Confidence 60 is rated at 29Hz – 22Khz (± 3dB) with an 87 dB sensitivity (@ 2.83V/1m) and a 4 Ohms nominal impedance (minimum impedance: 3.7 Ohms @ 71 Hz).
I’ve encountered that Esotar 3 tweeter before, most recently in Dynaudio’s limited edition Contour Legacy speakers (review) which won me over in heart and mind. From that review:
Dynaudio’s Heritage line is meant to honor history and legacy while embodying the best the 47-year-old company has to offer. I hope I’ve been able to convey in words and listening impressions that my heart, body, and mind believe they’ve achieved their goal with the endlessly engrossing Contour Legacy.
In total I’ve reviewed five pairs of Dynaudio speakers over the years, both passive and active, and if you consider the company’s near 50-year history, I’ve barely scratched the surface.
Around back we find a single pair of WBT binding posts that thankfully sit high enough off the floor to allow for easy access—I’ve encountered speakers that place the binding posts so close to the floor it makes the use of spade-terminated cables pretty much impossible. The review pair came in the Smoke High Gloss finish (which is not too high gloss) but the big Confidence also come in other flavors including Blonde Wood, a high gloss Ruby wood finish, and Midnight High Gloss. Magnetic grills are included (but I didn’t use ’em). Even though they are a large speaker, their looks did not overwhelm the Barn or me and I enjoyed their shapely shape and reflective surfaces from every angle.
I want to pause briefly to highlight how all of these technical design elements must also come together in a finished product that becomes part of our home on a visual/aesthetic level as well, something that is of equal importance to many a buyer (and rightfully so, imo). And I’ll focus on that complex Compex baffle and its unusual and to my eyes appealing shape which was made possible largely due to Jupiter which the company describes as a “colossal room and a giant robot”—which resides in the Dynaudio Labs building—and clay.
On Jupiter from the Dynaudio website:
Jupiter is big. Very big. It’s a giant, hollow cube, measuring 13 metres in every dimension, that forms the core of the dedicated Dynaudio Labs building. Jupiter is packed with technology that allows the room to provide infinitesimally small measurements of every Dynaudio product we put in there. The monolithic new Confidence 60, the Core family, Evoke, even the bijou Music 1… it’s all been in there.
The way the room works is fascinating. A speaker can be measured individually or, given the room’s size, engineers can install several speakers at once to simulate the typical home audio setup (not many high-end hi-fi owners have just one speaker). Then, the robot arm – with its 31 microphones – takes a 360° measurement. So we end up knowing how a speaker sounds not only in the sweet-spot, but from everywhere else too.
If you tune into Dynaudio’s podcasts on the Confidence series you’ll learn a lot more including how Dynaudio’s design team used clay to work through the shape and layout of the DDC to marry looks with engineering and how each design iteration was modeled then measured by Jupiter to see how well it performed. Think rapid prototyping and I think they succeeded in that marriage from an aesthetic perspective. But what about sound?
As I mentioned in the In Barn post, John Quick of Dynaudio North America and Richard Henthorne of Indy Audio Labs came to the Barn to help uncrate and set up the Confidence 60, a service I’ve come to appreciate more the more a speaker weighs. Set up took some time but as always it was a fascinating and informative process to listen through as the Confidence 60 sounded like a different speaker once they were locked into the space on the B-Side. I know I’ve said this before and before that but speaker set up is critical and can impact overall performance more than associated gear even with a pair that are designed to be room friendly.
The Confidence 60 got to play with the recently reviewed Devialet Astra integrated amplifier (review), the recently reviewed Musical Fidelity M8xi Integrated Amplifier (review), as well as the Aragon pre/power stack that are in for review (more info). I used the Astra’s own streaming DAC and the Aragon preamp’s DAC as source along with the review Technics SL-1500CS Direct Drive Turntable (more info) with my trusty Zu/DL-103 cartridge.
And I will say right here and now and in no uncertain terms—the Aragon Tungsten Preamp / Iridium Monoblock stack made the Dynaudio’s sing with a more refined voice than the M8xi and with more authority and overall grip than the Astra. This is no knock on the Musical Fidelity or the Devialet by any means and it’s not fair or even sensible to compare an $8k or $20k integrated with nearly $46k worth of separates. That said, the Aragon gear made the Confidence 60 sound more fully alive.
As far as I’m concerned, there’s no such thing as too much Lee “Scratch” Perry and his posthumous album with Mouse on Mars, Spatial, No Problem released on Domino earlier this month, is living proof of that concept. This music jumped out of the Confidence 60 and into the barn with live-like energy easily filling this space with its infectious rhythms where all manner of sounds were blipping and gurgling from all over the place as if originating from their own well-defined place completely separate and apart from the speakers.
This is also richly layered music with plenty of throbbing bass, screaming guitars, synths, a badass horn section on “Spatialee” with Perry’s distinct vocalizing over the top and one thing I found to be the case as I spent more and more time with the big Dynaudios is I tended to pump up the volume more than usual. And I attribute this comfort in louder than normal levels in part to the Confidence 60s room friendly dispersion that saw music keep its cool with no sense of the room objecting well into 90dB peak territory. Nice.
Beyond the big speakers that don’t behave like big speakers surprise, the Confidence 60 have another trick—they sound good at lower levels too. It’s been my experience that this isn’t always the case as speakers grow in size and complexity and become increasingly demanding on the accompanying amplifier(s). While I wouldn’t classify the Confidence 60 as a particularly difficult load, they are far from high efficiency which can translate into a kinda dull sound at lower levels but as I said, that’s not the case here and I will tip my hat, once again, to the Aragon Iridium Monoblocks that delivered seamless effortless power and control no matter the level.
Let’s travel back to 2017 and visit with Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile and Lotta Sea Lice. This is lovely jaunty loose music with expert help from a Bad Seed (Mick Harvey) and two of the Dirty Three (Mick Turner, Jim White) along with a host of other fine musicians in support of some tasty laid back vocalizing from Barnett and Vile (not the law firm). Barnett’s a little bit of rock and roll and Vile’s a little bit of country add up to a wonderful mix that was expertly unraveled in Barn by the Confidence 60. Kurt Vile has a real knack for looping hooks which show up here and I really enjoy Barnett’s harmonizing along creating a swirling world to get lost within.
The sound here reminds me at times of Neil Young and Crazy Horse which is fine by me with overdriven skeletal guitar singing its own melodies on “Fear Is Like A Forest”. With this relatively simple song structure and vocals/guitar/bass/drums setting I really focused in on the Confidence 60’s overall balance that doesn’t emphasize one aspect of reproduction over another and instead offers up a seamless sound that emphasizes the music. The Confidence 60 never had me focusing on things like dynamics, bass response, or silky highs because they did such a fine job of presenting a well balanced whole, recreating the act of music-making as opposed to reproducing a collection of sounds. A big picture kinda deal as opposed to a sonic autopsy.
Simplifying the input further, I gave Marissa Anderson and Tara Jane O’Neil’s reworking of the Cole Porter classic “You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To” a spin that features Anderson on acoustic guitar for the long and lovely intro after which she’s joined by O’Neill on electric guitar and vocals. Here the Confidence 60’s way with timbre came into sharper focus and while everything was there for the taking, I felt ever so slightly removed from this music’s simple rich sounds with O’Neil’s vocals and the wooden reverberate body of Anderson’s acoustic guitar feeling a bit less rich, a bit more processed as opposed to the kind of immediacy and naturalness I’ve heard from other speakers and I will point to the DeVore O/Bronze (review) as champions in this regard for my tastes and preferences.
Admittedly I’m really digging into nit picking levels here but after spending two months with the Confidence 60 and listening through lots of music, all kinds, I feel I got to know them really well, well enough to point out that I’ve yet to meet a speaker that is perfect in every regard. To the Confidence 60’s credit, they have a very well balanced sound, full range reach, and the ability to dissolve into the music and present a clean, clear, and rock solid sound image even at high volume levels without the room interfering in the works which certainly made for a very convincing and engaging experience day after day and week after week no matter the music in play.
At $50k a pair, the Confidence 60 finds itself surrounded by a number of my Favorite Speakers including the Gauder Akustik Elargo 200 (review) and Wilson Benesch A.C.T. 3Zero (review), fine company indeed. And what makes hifi fun and exciting, at least for me, is each of these fine speakers have their own standout qualities while sharing some commonality. Lets start with the last point from a bird’s eye view—like Dynaudio, Gauder Akustik and Wilson Benesch also manufacture their drivers in house. What’s more, every pair of Gauder speakers are hand made in their Renningen, Germany factory while Wilson Benesch makes “95% of our vast inventory of components that create our loudspeakers, turntables, tonearms and hifi furniture” in house in their Sheffield, England facility.
In terms of standout qualities, The Gauder Elargo 200, as well as the smaller Capello 100 I reviewed last year (review), have a liveliness, or jump factor, that is both addictive and highly engaging while making music feel stunningly alive, rich, and full bodied. The A.C.T. 3Zero place more emphasis on clarity and resolution and their bottom-ported isobaric bass has a distinctive sound that makes bass feel exceptionally tight and very well controlled if lacking the kind of visceral impact of a front facing woofer. The Confidence 60’s stand out from this small crowd in their ability to disappear, leaving a solid and highly resolved sound image that feels as real as the speakers themselves.
Perhaps of even great importance from a personal preference perspective is the Dynaudios place music out in front of the listener as if the musicians are performing on a stage. The Gauders have a similar you-are-there feel but their pure music energy reaches out and into the listener a bit more while the Wilson Benesch with their nearly uncannily refined resolving powers reach right inside nearly dissolving the space between listener and music.
To put it in simpler terms, the Gauders offer more visceral impact, the Wilson Benesch dig deeper into the mix, while the Dynaudios create a more believable sound image in space. Of course I see these differences as three wins as opposed to winners and losers because voicing a speaker speaks to personal preference and each of these speakers offer a flawless execution of their own unique approach to music-making. The right speaker is the one you like best.
Of all the fasten your seat belt tracks that reside on my “Fun” test track playlist, Party Intellectuals by Marc Ribot’s Ceramic Dog contains a favorite in the form of “Midost” a 10-minute excursion into barely contained pure sonic mayhem. Featuring Ribot on manic guitar—he’s among my favorite guitar players and I had the great pleasure of seeing him perform this entire album as well as backing Tom Waits and as part of the Lounge Lizards back in the day—Ches Smith on drums and percussion, and Shahzad Ismaily on bass “Midost” plays out like a revenge flick moving from a cool jazzy interplay intro to outright sonic onslaught that builds and builds again and then goes over the top with pure over-driven Sergio Leone on steroids.
You have to play this music loud, loud enough to overwhelm and here’s where the big Dynaudio’s got to brag with their ability to stop and start on a dime while offering as big and bold and controlled a rendition of this madness as I’ve experienced in the Barn and I’ve been using “Midost” as a test track since its release in 2008. If I had a lighter, I’d have lit it.
I get more than a little bit of satisfaction, pleasure even, when a hifi product comes into the Barn for review and does what its makers claim it can do. The Dynaudio Confidence 60 are big speakers that do not behave like big speakers in one very important regard which is to say they can play as loud as you like, louder than is typically the case in the Barn, without engaging the room due to their carefully controlled dispersion.
Come to think of it, the Confidence 60 do exactly what you want a big speaker to do which is to say they can play as big and loud as you like with the added benefit of playing equally well in quieter moments. But the big Dynaudio’s most important strength is their very well balanced sound that lets them disappear into music right before your ears.
Dynaudio Confidence 60 Loudspeakers
Price: $50,000/pair
Company Website: Dynaudio
Specifications
Series: Confidence
Type: Floorstand
Sensitivity (dB @ 2.83V/1m): 87
IEC Long Term Power Handling (W): 600
Rated Impedance (Ohm): 4
Minimum Impedance (Ohm): 3.7 @ 71 Hz
Lower Cutoff (Hz @ +/- 3 dB): 29
Upper Cutoff (kHz @ +/- 3 dB): 22
Box Principle: Bass reflex down-firing port
Crossover :3-way
Crossover Frequency (Hz): 200/2580 Hz
Crossover Topology: 2nd/3rd order w. DDC
Tweeter: 28 mm Esotar 3
Midrange: 2x 15 cm MSP with Horizon
Woofer:2x 23 cm MSP
Weight kg: 146 lbs.
Dimensions (W x H x D): 10 5/8 x 64 3/8 x 18 4/8 Inches
Dimensions incl. feet/grill/stand (W x H x D): 17 x 66 1/8 x 20 3/8 Inches
Grille :Black
Baffle:Compex
Baffle: DDC 2