Owner's Manual
1110
How we got there
How do you
design a new legend?
Experiments, arguments,
tests, more experiments,
designs, prototypes …
You can’t reinvent the wheel. But you
can change the spokes. In redesigning
the Contour range, we changed a lot of
spokes.
We worked hard to retain the original’s
DNA; its character. But we also wanted
to provoke – so we gave our teams free
rein to experiment with different materials,
different techniques and different designs.
That meant scaring ourselves a little
sometimes. Like when we did some
A/B listening tests on small voice coils
compared with our signature large ones.
That’s a big step. This time, it proved to
be a step too far – they just didn’t sound
as good as the technology we’ve been
using for years – but we didn’t simply
discount the idea. We listened.
Then there’s the time when Malte
Köhn, Lead Product Designer on the
Contour, rocked up to a meeting with
armfuls of sketches (you can see some
of them here). “I tried to work with
non-traditional colour and material
combinations,” he says. “But I wanted
to keep the Contour’s classic design,
which is quite edgy and brutal. We
turned it into something that’s more
elegant and technical.” Malte is really
proud of his design – and he should be,
because that’s the one we all chose as
a group.
Michael Rohde Böwadt, our brave VP of
product management, was the one who
took the leash off. “We went very wide
in the beginning,” he says. “I told them
to just make the best drivers in the
world. The best cabinets in the world.
To approach it all in a different way.”
No pressure, then.
“It backred a bit! But it was also very
interesting. We got some very interesting
results, provoked a lot of discussions,
and were able to really zero in on what
we wanted to do next.”
One of the things that came out of those
discussions was using different driver
materials. Ultimately we decided to stick
with our tried-and-true MSP – but we
told Daniel, Andreas and Danny that
we wanted it to sound even better.
Their Eureka! moment came when they
started varying the material’s thickness
across the diaphragm, because it means
Dynaudio Contour