John Darko
Dynaudio’s Confidence 20 is the Danish company’s flagship standmount loudspeaker. It’s a 2-way design that marries a 2.8cm Esotar3 soft dome tweeter to an 18cm NeoTec MSP mid/bass driver using a crossover made of passive components: resistors, capacitors and inductors. Yours for €11,000/pair. But we’re not done yet. We still need a suitable one-size-fits-all amplifier and a DAC.
One question careening ’round the bend: which outboard DAC and amplifier could we score for €9000 (or less) that would best the sound quality of Dynaudio’s latest iteration of the Confidence 20: the Confidence 20A, which we first saw at Munich High-End 2024 last May.
That ‘A’ means ‘Active’.
Dynaudio’s engineering team has taken the Confidence 20’s cabinet – including its exponentially-flared downward-firing port and driver array – and replaced the passive crossover network with a DSP-based equivalent. This nets superior phase accuracy and an instant real-world win of nine additional Hertz of bass reach. Dynaudio rates the passive Confidence 20 as 3dB down at 42Hz but the Confidence 20A is reportedly 3dB down at 33Hz. Some listeners might hear the passive model as needing subwoofer assistance but the active version probably does not.
The clever-clever doesn’t end there.
Once the signal has been divvied up between the two drivers in the digital domain, it is converted to analogue by a pair of DACs and the results are dispatched to two Class D amplifiers from Danish neighbours Pascal: 150 Watts applied to the tweeter and 400 Watts to the mid/bass driver. Each amplifier is tuned at the driver level.
The electronics for each loudspeaker don’t live inside the cabinet. They are housed inside the custom stands which in turn double as heatsinks. Turn one around to see user controls for input sensitivity, tonal balance, SRC, room position compensation and LED brightness plus connectivity that includes XLR analogue and AES3 XLR digital.
BYO streaming or analogue source and you’re off to the races.
And in case you’ve not worked it out already, a pair of Confidence 20A will sell for €20,000.
Furtjher information: Dynaudio
