Loudspeakers

Forty years young, Dynaudio’s Contour series is raised to a new level in this ‘Black Edition’ standmount, featuring improvements to every component. Welcome to the dark side!

True to form, Dynaudio showed a slew of products at last year’s High End Show in Munich [HFN Jul ’24] – including a new loudspeaker styled by Tokyo’s Keiji Ashizawa Design studio, plus a turntable built by Thorens. Also shown was this Contour 20 Black Edition standmount, now finally in production. This is a range of one – an elegant two-way with no floorstanding partner – but it serves a useful purpose, offering Dynaudio fans an option to bridge the £4500 Contour 20i and the premium £9600 Confidence 20. Okay, at nearly £6000 a pair, it’s not exactly midway in price, but does represent a tempting step up.

Offered in sealed (SB) and ported (PB) variants, SVS’s new Ultra subs claim refinements to driver, amplifier, power supply and DSP, and include a new auto EQ room correction

Although SVS sells a variety of loudspeakers, from its desktop-friendly Prime Wireless Pro powered monitors to the recently launched Ultra Evolution series [HFN Jul '24], it's best known as a subwoofer manufacturer. This is, after all, how the Youngstown, Ohio-based company first got started in 1998, and in the intervening years it's evolved a catalogue of subwoofers that's now crowned by the new 17-Ultra R|Evolution models.

Situated squarely in the middle of Canton’s five-strong set of floorstanders, is the Reference 3 the sweet spot?

First seen at High End Munich in 2023, Canton’s Reference range brought a major renewal to the flagship offering of Germany’s largest loudspeaker brand. Introducing a new design aesthetic, with a rounded lute-shape cabinet profile made popular by Sonus faber many years ago, and integrating new drivers, it heralded a major course change from the previous Reference K generation [HFN May & Aug ’22]. Yet Canton’s penchant for sprawling ranges has not changed, so the Reference series contains no fewer than eight models – and that’s not counting the exclusive GS edition, nor the two Alpha models revealed at Munich in 2024.

Germany’s T+A has long been a champion of ‘line source’ floorstanders and its S 530 is the entry model to the concept

‘Theory and Application’ (T+A) is well-known for hi-fi separates ranging from its CALA and Caruso ‘lifestyle’ models to the DACs, amps and ‘multisource’ receivers of its premium R and HV series, all featured regularly in Hi-Fi News. Less well-known are its loudspeakers, despite T+A starting out in 1978 as a speaker manufacturer. Hoping to refresh our memory and provide scope for a full high-end T+A system, is a new three-strong Solitaire S range, of which the S 530 is the middle model.

‘Big sounds’ are promised from this Nordic brand’s slender Signature speaker range that includes floorstanding, standmount and AV-ready on-wall models. Is the Sig 5 a star?

If you have a preconceived notion of System Audio, chances are it’s been formed by its Silverback range of active, wireless loudspeakers. Occupying the top tier in the Danish manufacturer’s catalogue, models including the Silverback 60.2 and Silverback 40.2 [HFN May ’21 and Aug ’21] combine DSP-based crossovers, DACs and integrated amplification, with cable-free transmission via the WiSA standard. Add in the app control and room EQ and there is, to put it bluntly, a lot going on in the Silverbacks – something which can’t be said of System Audio’s new Signature series.

The only standmount in Canton’s eight-strong Reference series includes the same driver and crossover tech found in its flagship Reference 1 floorstander. A chip off the block?

Although it’s relatively easy to build a large ‘cost no object’ loudspeaker worthy of a brand’s flagship, things get a little trickier when the requirement is for a compact model. Quite apart from the budget constraints – customers believe there should be a direct relationship between size and price – there’s the small matter of ‘you can’t argue with physics’ when it comes to delivering a big, room-filling sound from a smallscale enclosure.

The Danish brand’s flagship floorstander mixes upgraded in-house drivers with a sculpted ‘Directivity Control’ baffle

With more than 45 years of speaker-making under its belt, Dynaudio has a remarkably diverse range of product lines. There are no fewer than ten series, in fact, each featuring a stack of the company’s in-house technologies. And so it is with the Confidence 60, the £36,500 flagship of a range comprising one standmount and three floorstanders, and where ‘Everything is new, from the cabinet to the drive units’.