An award-winning classic gets a radical upgrade
Contour 20 Black Edition is the apex of 40 years of Contour. We’ve taken every component and upgraded it. Every nuance and improved it. And every surface and made it black.
Box: clever
Contour already had a brilliant foundation. The cabinet construction is stellar: thick, solid and with a shape that minimizes unwanted vibrations and standing waves. And the heavy aluminum baffle (which is actually a lot thicker than it looks) does wonders for increasing stability and eliminating diffraction.
So, how do you improve on the rest? You reach into the bag of tricks Dynaudio Labs has been filling up since 1977 and pluck out the best bits of the best bits.
High spirits
Let’s take it from the top. High frequencies are handled by the Esotar 3 tweeter. It comes directly from our flagship Confidence range – and is, quite simply, the best tweeter we’ve ever produced. (So far.)
The soft-dome diaphragm is finished with our DSR coating. It’s a high-precision method, formulated and mixed by hand and applied by robots, that puts the coating at the exactly right density in exactly the right places, so you hear exactly what you’re supposed to hear. Which is exactly what the artist wants. (And while we aren’t allowed to tell you exactly what the DSR coating is, we can tell you what the acronym stands for: Dynaudio Secret Recipe. So now you know.)
Air marshal
In the way-back you’ll find a labyrinth of conduits, shaped vents and more. There’s a large rear chamber to reduce resonance, we’ve improved our damping game and the super-strong neodymium magnet and lightweight aluminium voice-coil complete the all-star team.
Esotar 3 is more sensitive than previous models, which means it can react with a lower input voltage, which means it doesn’t get hot as fast. And that means it can play louder, with amazing clarity, for longer.
It’s one of the cornerstones of modern hi-fi.
A sensitive type
The mid/bass driver is something rather special.
If it were an engine, it would be supercharged, turbocharged, and quite possibly have an auxiliary rocket fitted too. The super-powerful neodymium magnet gives a boost to what’s an already powerful ferrite unit in Contour 20i, and the extended voice-coil winding improves excursion linearity. And because the magnet is smaller, there’s more space for the kind of air movement we want inside the slim cabinet.
Overall, the driver is more sensitive (so there’s less stress on your amplifier) while bass extension is maintained (it’s normally affected by higher sensitivity). Here, it’s the best of both worlds.
Your ears will notice it, too: more attack and better imaging.
The rest of the driver is classic Dynaudio: a one-piece MSP (Magnesium Silicate Polymer) cone, directly anchored to the extended aluminum voice-coil via its molded balance ribs; a glass-fiber voice-coil former for reducing eddy currents (and improving agility); and optimized ventilation. It’s a formula that’s trusted across the hi-fi world – and even into professional studios.
Port authority
The new woofer has been designed to work seamlessly with the new bass port.
Yes, from the outside it just looks like a hole in the back of the speaker with a tube going inside. But it isn’t as simple as grabbing some plumbing from the DIY shop down the road. If only…
Contour 20 Black Edition has a new port, bigger than you’ll see on Contour 20i. It’s flared in a specific way at both ends (inside and out), which helps to control air movement for better precision, fewer artefacts, and vastly improved low-bass performance.
And we think it looks rather nice, too. It took a lot of work (both for our mechanical engineers and our product designers) to integrate it perfectly with the cabinet’s graceful curves.
More than the sum of its parts
The crossover has been given the all-star treatment, too. Contour 20i already has an incredible unit – which makes things difficult. How do you upgrade an upgrade?
You go back to the beginning and start again. Contour 20 Black Edition has a brand-new crossover using the smallest amount of components we could manage – and the best versions of those parts. We’ve used Mundorf capacitors and resistors, a gigantic air-coil and top-quality internal cables. It’s a second-order topology for both drivers – so there’s no correction circuitry necessary. If you want purity, here it is…
You’ll hear that simplicity, too. Directivity is tightly controlled, thanks to the smooth power response. And that means a precise, focused performance – with no detail left unrevealed.
