Naim and Dynaudio Thread

I have Nova and Evoke 50 and am very satisfied with this. Really beautiful rich sound particularly pleasant with vocals.

I used to have Special 40s with a Nova and really liked the sound.
I now run Evoke 50s with 282/300DR. To me the Evoke has an greater range and bigger soundstage which is to be expected. Thereā€™s something about the Dynaudio sound that I preferred to other options. Had I chosen another brand I think it would have been Kudos.

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Hi, this my first post here. Iā€™m (another) returning Naim owner. Having got my 30 yr old Linn/Naim system out of storage after 12 years and having it condemned when I took it for service I have recently purchased a complete new system. For speakers we chose the Evoke 30 after an extended home demo against Special 40, B&W 705 Signature and Spendor A7. The system is 100% streaming from local server and Qobuz with Allo USB Bridge Sig/Digione Sig (as Roon endpoint)/Chord Qutest/Nait XS3.

The Spendors were rejected early on as they just didnā€™t work in the room which is a modern
construction with suspended plasterboard walls, an awkward 5m x 3m size and with the listening position across the short axis. The B&W were impressive but just too forward and ā€˜in your faceā€™ - very exciting to listen to but not for extended periods of time. So it came down to Evoke 30 vs the S40, I could have purchased either and been happy. The S40 needed to be further away from the the wall to prevent the bass booming which put them a bit too near
the listening position. The Evoke 30 was more tolerant of the compromised positioning and also
better at lower listening levels. The audio differences were small and it took a couple of weeks
listening to make the final choice. In the end the fact that the Evoke 30 was more domestically
acceptable sealed it.

Coming back to a decent system after a long absence, I have been amazed at the quality of sound available at ā€˜reasonableā€™ price points. Both these speakers are outstanding at their price point to my ears and I donā€™t think you would be disappointed with either of them.

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How long is your speakers away from the wall?

Here is a picture of my current system and as you can see I do not have much space:

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Can you move the speakers 20-30cm further from the wall and give them some toe in? That will likely improve the sound (depending on your room and your listening position of course).

40cm works ok for me

I will move the speakers further from the wall and give them toe in. The big question is can I go from floorstanderā€™s to bookshelf? I must visit my local hifi shop when he opens again

The guy I bought my LP12 from last year had these Confidence 50s on the end of his 500 system. OMG - what a sound they produced! :heart_eyes: Beautifully finished too. :sunglasses: Definitely on my ā€˜end gameā€™ list of speakers Iā€™d demo along with the the likes of Titan 808s etc too.

Itā€™s all on hold though until this pandemic is over and work hopefully picks up again.

Congrats on you getting yours though @xcentric :ok_hand:t5:

Cheers, Rack.
:+1:t5:

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That very much depends on how your room response is in combination with the floor standers and with the bookshelfs. Like you say, visit your local hifi shop and try it at home. I can turn out really well, but you might also be disappointed. Personally I think that in a smaller room bookshelfs can really shine.

My listening position is about 3.5 meter from the speakers

quite interest that the evoke 30 could compete with the Special 40.

or vice versa.

Not sure why you would think that. The Evoke 30 is, I believe, a more recent design, incorporating more recent advances in Dynaudio speaker design, at around the same price point. I had both pairs for an extended period of time (6 weeks). Both pairs were brand new when I received them and I was running them in for the dealer really. I started off swapping between them every few days and then weekly. Speaker cable was 3 metre pair of NACA5 with Chord Ohmic plugs both ends.

The S40 were more forward, exciting and attention grabbing; especially straight out of the box. They smoothed out over time but those characteristics remained. The Evoke 30 were more laid back, smoother on the top end and less involving to start with. Over a couple of weeks they opened up a lot and gained more punch at the bottom end. We generally donā€™t listen to music turned up loud and the S40 did need more volume but that caused problems with the bass so they had to be moved out into the room. 50cm from the rear wall seemed to be the absolute minimum in our room. There wasnā€™t really enough room for this to be practical and they became too obtrusive. The Evoke 30 were ok at 30cm from the wall but better at 40cm.

At the end of 6 weeks the choice was still a difficult one. The S40 was the more exciting to listen to but it did need to be louder and was more forward and tiring in long listening sessions. When you turn the music off and find yourself letting out a sigh and just appreciating the silence it is telling you something. The Evoke 30 was involving and revealing, vocals, solo instruments and the interplay in ensemble performances was outstanding at all volumes, on the other hand when music got loud and complex they could lose some coherence so the music made less sense - the S40 handled this better. The Evoke 30 could be playing all day and I could still be reluctant to turn it off - ā€˜just one more albumā€™ was always tempting. The tie breaker was really the fact that the Evoke 30 fitted in domestically much better with positioning and also my other half found the floor stander visually more appealing than stand mounts. Of course this is just my experience, with my system, in my listening space with my musical taste.

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i have the evoke 10 and your comments about the running in process mirrors mine, and they are on all day quietly whilst wfh and they now have gained an easy going yet detailed character , which i agree you can listen to for hours. mine are 20cm from the back wall being much smaller but in my room they deliver a really nice bass that is deep but tight. suits naim very well.

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very interesting, thanks for posting.

not sure you want to hear this - with Naim every little detail makes a big difference.

Your NACA5 is too short, it should be 3.5 meters minimum, Also the Chord Ohmic is a crimped plug, you might do better using gold plated banana plugs in which NACA5 is soldered, to me it sounds better than crimped, but the solder needs a week to burn in - and gets better with more listening.

I think there was a thread recently on Kudos speaker cable, and the chord ohmic plugs did not particularly sound great.

I would not go back to crimping after hearing how NACA5 sounds with soldered banana plugs.

Also I have the allo digione Sig with Shanti PSU, but stopped using it in favour of the optical input with my Chord Dacs, the cheapest solution is a google chromecast audioā€¦

NACA5 - agreed. I had a 6 metre length from my old system that I split and my dealer soldered the plugs on. Concealing 2 x 1.5 metres of spare A5 cable is not, domestically, achievable - the 2 x 3 metre lengths were the maximum. The ideal isnā€™t always achievable. My next upgrade when finances allow will be a dedicated unit for the system (probably Quadraspire). This will move the equipment out from between the speakers and off the TV unit where it is currently housed. At that point new 2 x 4 metre speaker cable will be required.

I use spdif between streamer and DAC - Chord Signature that I acquired for a very low price. It made as big a difference to the sound quality as going from a Raspi3b/HiFiBerry DAC to the DigioneSig/Qutest. The TV uses the optical input on the DAC. I also have a Chord Signature RCA from the DAC to the amp also acquired well below RRP. The next upgrade after the dedicated unit is an upgrade to the Roon Core from the iMac where it currently resides to a dedicated audio computer. That will eliminate the wireless link between upstairs and downstairs for the locally stored music library.

The DAC/Amp/Speakers is as far as this system is going. I have been down the rabbit hole before with my old Linn/Naim system. Iā€™m all about getting the best from what we have.

We each have our own unique set of compromises we have to make putting a system together.

Hi

For those that have the Dynaudio Confidence 30s / 50s can you please describe why you like them and what else you listened to when you are looking for new speakers.

They are definitely on my list to listen to once the dealers are open. Not sure if the 50s will work in my 4.5m x 5.0m room but I do like the design idea of focused drivers that reduce room interactions.

Many thanks in advance.

Karl

I was watching a Crutchfield YouTube review of the Evoke 20 recently and the reviewer, who auditioned several iterations, mentioned the way Dynaudio name their models describes the characteristics of each ones sound. The Excite and Evoke ranges seemed fitting names for his descriptions in that the Excite was more, you guessed it, exciting and the Evoke was more transparent and expressive. He didnā€™t describe the Focus range but it did make me wonder how my Focus 110ā€™s would compare to the Evoke 10ā€™s.
Iā€™m sure Iā€™ve read somewhere that the Dynaudio sound has changed in the most recent Evoke range.
Any thoughts from previous or new owners?

I donā€™t own them but have had a brief demo of Confidence 50s through a Klimax LP12/500 system in similar sized room (maybe slightly smaller) and they sounded superb.

Iā€™d be curious to know what the difference is between contour 30 and confidence 30 (sound wise). I donā€™t think the 50ā€™s would work in my room. Also Iā€™d. be curious if either one works better at relatively low volumes - that is how most of my listening is done. Sorry to change the topic, but somewhat same info wanted.