Silken Highs, Potent Bass: Dynaudio's Contour 30i Redefines Performance.

The Dynaudio Contour i is an evolution of the Contour series, a mainstay in Dynaudio's product lineup. The series comprises four models: the Contour 60i, Contour 30i, Contour 20i, and Contour 25Ci. Among them, only the Contour 60i and Contour 30i are floor-standing speakers, while the Contour 20i and Contour 25Ci are bookshelf and center speakers, respectively.

The Dynaudio Contour 30i, a smaller floor-standing speaker in the Contour i series, is a refined version of the Contour 30. ¹ Its most significant highlight is the use of Dynaudio's newly developed 28mm Esotar 2i tweeter. ² This innovative driver is distinguished by its Hexis inner dome structure, featuring a mesh-covered dome nestled behind the soft dome diaphragm. ² This unique design breathes new life into the Contour 30i.

Dynaudio developed Hexis to help break up the back wave of the soft dome tweeter. By skillfully using damping materials to absorb residual sound waves, this unique driver design can reduce back wave interference to nearly zero. It's no wonder that the Contour 30i, featuring the Esotar 2i tweeter paired with two classic Dynaudio MSP (Magnesium Silicate Polymer) cone woofers, can produce a wide and linear frequency response. This is because these specially crafted drivers work together synergistically, preparing the Danish-made Contour 30i for exceptional sound performance.

The Esotar 2i stands out because this soft dome tweeter inherits all the best qualities of Dynaudio's top-tier Esotar 3 tweeter. Moreover, when Dynaudio launched the Evoke series in 2019, they already utilized design concepts from the Esotar 3 in the Cerotar tweeter of the Evoke speakers. Due to its outstanding performance and remarkable achievements, Dynaudio, upon entering the i generation of the Contour series, seamlessly applied the experience gained from developing the Cerotar unit to the Esotar 2i. This elevates the Contour 30i beyond its past accomplishments. The Contour 30i, with its Esotar 2i tweeter and two MSP cone woofers forming a 2.5-way bass reflex speaker, fully leverages the advantages of both types of Dynaudio's unique driver unit designs, effortlessly delivering a wide frequency response of 32Hz-23kHz (±3dB).

The first Dynaudio Contour speaker was born in the late 1980s.  Its first major transformation came in 2003, while still retaining the classic Contour design's square, straight-lined enclosure. It wasn't until its next evolution in 2016 that Dynaudio finally decided to round the enclosure, allowing enthusiasts to easily distinguish the new and old Contour models simply by their appearance. To complement the new Contour's curved enclosure structure, the sides of the aluminum baffle at the front of the enclosure were also streamlined. This significantly strengthened the enclosure's rigidity and made the audio diffusion even more ideal.

The aluminum baffle, which covers about two-thirds of the speaker enclosure's front on the Contour 30i, has become more refined and smooth thanks to years of manufacturing experience. This makes the Contour 30i's design even more beautiful and stylish. Although this aluminum front baffle, which strengthens the enclosure and enhances its aesthetics, appears to be about 2mm thick at the edges, it is actually 14mm thick in the center and most of its area. To seamlessly integrate this solid aluminum plate into the Contour 30i's enclosure, Dynaudio specially carved away 10mm from the front of the 26mm laminated MDF enclosure used in the Contour 30i. Then, using an elastomer material, they tightly bonded the aluminum plate and the enclosure together without any gaps, creating a high-strength front baffle with a total thickness of 30mm. The difficulty of manufacturing and the complexity of the process can be imagined. However, it is precisely because of this thick and rigid structure that the Contour 30i is not affected by vibration problems. To further enhance its vibration resistance, the engineering team added special damping inside the multi-layer anti-vibration MDF enclosure. The damping material with unique carvings, combined with the Contour 30i's precisely calculated rounded enclosure structure, helps to reduce the formation of internal standing waves. Additionally, the speaker adopts a rear-facing bass reflex dual-pipe structure, ensuring that the low-frequency performance is not affected by vibration problems and is particularly clean and crisp. The sound wave diffusion also benefits from the streamlined enclosure, resulting in a more ideal performance!

Having conquered the challenges of cabinet resonance, Dynaudio's engineering team turned their innovative energies towards other critical aspects of loudspeaker design. Yet, through all of Dynaudio's evolution, the fundamental essence of their tweeter and woofer diaphragms has remained remarkably consistent. For decades, they have steadfastly adhered to their principles, employing soft dome silk diaphragms for their tweeters and their proprietary Magnesium Silicate Polymer (MSP) cones for their woofers. Unswayed by the allure of novel materials, this unwavering commitment ensures that while Dynaudio loudspeakers continually advance in sonic performance, their distinctive and enduring character remains beautifully intact.

Dynaudio is committed to ensuring their Esotar silk dome tweeter surpasses all others, and their research and development team employs several exclusive design innovations to optimize its performance. Firstly, Dynaudio utilizes a proprietary coating and equalization process for the tweeter diaphragm, distinguishing their silk dome from conventional designs and yielding exceptional performance.  Furthermore, the Dynaudio silk dome tweeter has evolved into the Esotar 2i, engineered to significantly reduce diaphragm breakup distortion while extending high frequencies smoothly upwards. This is achieved with powerful neodymium magnets, incorporating the groundbreaking Hexis inner dome structure, enlarging the rear chamber, and employing a specialized yoke. This yoke directs airflow from the silk dome into the rear chamber, where damping materials comprehensively absorb residual sound waves. By drastically reducing resonance, the Esotar 2i tweeter achieves exceptionally low coloration, successfully creating a level of analytical capability rarely found in typical silk dome designs.

Turning to the Magnesium Silicate Polymer (MSP) material employed in their cone drivers, this is a proprietary diaphragm material developed in-house by Dynaudio.  Since 1985, MSP has been the cornerstone of Dynaudio's cone driver production, across various sizes and models.  Its inherent strength and optimal damping ratio are key to enabling loudspeakers to reproduce a richly textured and exceptionally layered mid-bass performance. In the Contour 30i, the two MSP woofers, in addition to featuring oversized aluminum voice coils, are equipped with a dual magnet structure. A polyamide fiber spider meticulously suspends the MSP cone, ensuring that even under sustained, high-impact musical signals, the MSP drive units maintain unwavering stability and performance.  The combination of these massive voice coils and the powerful magnetic drive system allows for exceptionally precise control over each excursion of the two 180mm MSP cones. This contributes to the Contour 30i's extraordinary mid-bass reproduction.  Furthermore, due to the inherently high quality of these drive units, the Contour 30i avoids the need for impedance correction circuitry to optimize performance.  A streamlined, second-order crossover network is employed, allowing the 2.5-way Contour 30i to achieve a wide, flat, and naturally balanced frequency response.

As a result, whether driven by the 70W (into 8 ohms) Marantz Model 40n integrated amplifier or the мощный Gryphon Diablo 300 delivering 300W per channel (into 8 ohms), the Contour 30i avoids imposing any unnecessary losses on the music signal. It faithfully reproduces the intended effect according to the amplifier's capabilities. This demonstrates that the Contour 30i is not demanding to drive, and variations in amplifier output power do not significantly impact its performance. This ease of drive is likely attributable to Dynaudio's newly designed MSP drivers, where the cone thickness has been reduced from 0.5mm to 0.4mm without compromising cone rigidity. Combined with a meticulously crafted, component-rich yet streamlined crossover, the input power is directly channeled to drive the Contour 30i's aluminum voice coil cone units, which are lighter than copper, rather than being dissipated in a complex crossover network. This results in remarkable efficiency and dynamic capability. However, when circumstances permit, utilizing a high-power amplifier can truly unlock the Contour 30i's full potential. In this instance, pairing the Contour 30i with Gryphon, also of Danish origin, proved to be a synergistic match made in sonic heaven. Under the unwavering control of a powerful and ample power source, the dynamic gradations within the music became even more breathtakingly vivid, with every nuance and detail meticulously unveiled. Each note and melody was rendered with such expressive richness that it utterly captivated my listening experience.

 

The exquisitely balanced Contour 30i renders "Fragments of Spring," an album by Nordic trumpeter Linnea Jonsson, leading her band of four long-time collaborators, with exceptional grace and freshness. Its refined, delicate, yet effortlessly smooth and natural sonic purity perfectly encapsulates the romance and tenderness of springtime, bringing the lighthearted and enchanting melodies of the album's eight tracks vividly to life.  The Contour 30i's thoroughly realized performance, benefiting from the new Esotar 2i tweeter, delivers captivatingly detailed and richly layered sound reproduction.  Beyond revealing every subtle nuance of Linnea Jonsson's embouchure control and breath manipulation – the very actions that shape the resonance within the trumpet, influencing pitch, volume, and timbre – the speaker's airy and effortlessly analytical soundstage imbues each instrument on the disc, from trumpet and guitar to piano, double bass, and drums, with a delicate, ethereal beauty and captivating vibrancy.  The result is a sun-drenched, vernal ambiance that washes over the listener like a gentle spring breeze.

When powerfully driven by the Gryphon Diablo 300, the Contour 30i's reproduction of large-scale orchestral works becomes even more breathtakingly complete. Whether rendering the cinematic grandeur of John Williams' scores for orchestra or tackling the diverse modern compositions of 19th and 20th-century masters, the Contour 30i performs with captivating brilliance.  Its lightning-fast transient response and dynamic vigor result in a sound that is both incisive and richly textured.  The speaker vibrantly and completely captures the unique timbre of each instrument, while simultaneously presenting the complex interplay of orchestral sections with exceptional clarity and organization.  This satisfyingly faithful sonic reproduction, combined with a seamlessly extended and expansive frequency range, compelled me to fundamentally reassess my expectations of the new Contour 30i's remarkable capabilities!

While Dynaudio's unwavering dedication to silk dome tweeters and MSP cones for three to four decades might suggest a reluctance to change, this is far from the truth.  Instead, they have relentlessly pursued incremental yet continuous refinement, resulting in significant advancements in both their silk dome tweeters and MSP cones.  The Contour 30i we tested exemplifies this progress.  This 2.5-way loudspeaker not only demonstrably benefits from the upgraded Esotar 2i tweeter, outperforming its predecessors, but also features seemingly identical MSP mid-bass drivers that now incorporate a new generation of cone design – lighter and thinner yet without any compromise in rigidity.  This ongoing technological optimization, in addition to enhancing the Contour 30i's captivatingly detailed performance, also stems from the увеличенный size and extended length of the aluminum voice coils in the two MSP drivers.  Combined with copper rings affixed to the pole pieces, these advancements result in a remarkable 70% increase in the new MSP drivers' excursion capabilities.  These factors are central to the Contour 30i's potent dynamics and richly textured sonic character, all while retaining its signature韵味.  Through extended listening, you will discover that the 'i' generation Contour 30i achieves a level of sonic fidelity and realism comparable to Dynaudio's audiophile-grade Confidence and studio monitor Core series, yet with a more accessible price point and appealing aesthetic.  The Contour 30i is a truly worthwhile investment.