Owner's Manual

1312
How we got there
the whole cone is optimised for the
frequencies it’s been built to reproduce.
And it works.
Michael insisted on keeping the metal
bafe. It’s part of the Contour’s design
heritage, after all, and there are some
incredibly good acoustic reasons for
keeping it. It’s rigid, solid and extremely
well-damped (which lets those fancy
new MSP drivers do their thing as
exactly they should).
But now it’s made from aluminium
instead of iron.
We decided on aluminium because we
can shape it. You can see that from
the drawings. It chamfer ts with the
gently curved cabinet edge, and its
milled shape gives a modern feel to the
Contour’s classic performance.
But it also meant we could bring other
details to the party: the driver baskets
themselves are chamfered, too. We love
how they look, but they also help to
reduce diffractions. Good job all round,
then (we even went so far as to have
more than one argument about whether
the screws should be visible. The “yes”
side won, and even our minimalist
contingent had to agree that it was the
right choice).
In developing the new drivers and
crossover, we turned to Daniel Emonts
and Mark Thorup. (Mark started here
Dynaudio Contour
We don’t simply do
what we did before,
and we denitely
don’t try to make it
easier for ourselves.
as an R&D engineer in 1983 and rose
to the lofty heights of strategic product
manager.) Between them they’re the
gurus of our design department.
They know everything. We took
their ndings to our R&D team and
psychoacoustics guys, said “aim this
way”, and they got to work.
When we design, we experiment.
We talk. We play. We listen. We don’t
simply do what we did before, and
we denitely don’t try to make it
easier for ourselves.
We got to where we are on the new
Contour because we (and you) love
the original. It’s still there inside.
But now, the legend can begin again …