Profile: CAVD and Dynaudio are the new masters of sound

Tucked away on a small industrial estate in Marlow, is the CAVD showroom and head office. Inside CI recently visited to meet Peter Gibb, from Dynaudio,and Wayne Hyde, Technical manager at CAVD.

CAVD was formed back in 2014, when Jamie Pullen Made the move from Genesis Technologies UK.

Dynaudio dates back to 1977. While punk rock was rising in London, a Hi-Fi revolution was getting underway in Skanderborg, Denmark. In the 40 years since, Dynaudio has made a name for itself producing high-end speakers for the home, the professional studio, and the car.

Gibb told us: “Sound is our number one priority, our mission is to create the most authentic and honestly reproduced sound possible. This means to reproduce music or movie soundtracks that sound as close as possible to the natural experience, we strive to be authentic. After 40 years Dynaudio is still designing and manufacturing all drivers in-house, from the ground up”.

The company’s defining premium loudspeaker, the Consequence, was launched in 1983, and remains popular today. In 1986 the first iteration of the Contour was launched, which brought the brand to a wider audience.

Since then we've seen the reference level Evidence series (1999), the Xeo range (2012), arguably the world’s first truly active and wireless high-end loudspeakers, the Focus XD premium wireless active range (2014), and in 2016, the third generation Contour. 

Dynaudio currently offers the Emit series, as an entry level passive Hi-Fi range, with the Evoke, Contour and recently launched flagship Confidence range. The new Evoke and Confidence ranges both feature brand new woofer and tweeter technology developed over the last 18 months in the Dynaudio R&D facility.

Asking Gibb about key technologies he told us: “ In order to reproduce the ‘Authentic Fidelity’ we strive for we have refined our drivers over the years but have a few key technologies that are consistent over the 40 years Dynaudio has been making speakers.”

All Dynaudio speakers use Soft Dome tweeters - “Fabric tweeters carry no resonance of their own so don’t colour the sound or add in an frequencies of their own.” Back in 2002 the brand launched the Esotar2 tweeter and has been refining it ever since.

“Our woofers always use a single piece of moulded MSP. We devised a way to make these from a single piece of material and attach them to the voice coil with the need for a dust cap. MSP gives the perfect balance of rigidity and dampening, its moisture proof so unlike other cone materials it isn’t affected by moisture or humidity, giving it great performance consistency, no matter the environment. Being able to avoid using a dust cap gives us great control of the midrange. Higher frequencies tend to be produced in the centre of the cone, so we don’t want a separately glued on cap located there which affects the structure of the cone”.

Dynaudio also takes pride in tailoring its voice coils to every driver model produced, often using different thicknesses and lengths of aluminium or copper wire to give optimum control and movement.”

Back in 2014, Goertek acquired the majority shares of Dynaudio. A world leader in the development and manufacturing of 3D glasses and Bluetooth equipment, also produces microphones, flat screens and micro loudspeakers/transducers.

This paved the way to a new state of the art research and development centre. It boasts the most advanced digital acoustic chamber in the world, known as the Jupiter room, as well as dedicated facilities for automotive engineers.

Dynaudio has great presence in the Pro audio market, with monitors used in both music and movie mixing studios. Its new Lyd series, designed for Home Mixing Studios, has been enthusiastically embraced.

The company even built a ‘pop up’ recording studio, which it took it to a music festival in Denmark. Unsigned musicians were invited to play and have their music recorded and mastered by renowned producer Ashley Shephard. The project became Dynaudio Unheard.

The Unheard platform made its debut stateside in January, where it was placed outside the NAMM show in Anaheim, California, to help promote the launch of the new Dynaudio Core active studio monitors. The pop up popped up again High End Show in Munich.

The main reason for our visit was to listen to Dynaudio custom speakers. Gibb ran us through the expanding CI range

The Scandi brand really started to invest seriously in architectural speakers in 2016, with the launch of the Studio series. “We wanted to make them simple to install as well as high performance.” Using Dynaudio’s signature technologies, they all produce a distinctive Dynaudio sound.

Unveiled in the US in 2017, K1a Best in Show award at CEDIA. Studio was officially launched in the UK and Europe a year later, at which point the company appointed Custom AV Distribution as its exclusive distributor to the UK CI channel.

CAVD is a specialist when it comes to high performance audio. Other brands on its book include Datasat, ADA, Home Theatre Environment, JVC, Agathe and Stewart Flimscreens.

The hero product in the Custom Install range, and taking pride of place in the demo suite, is an innovative Modular LCR speaker which allows the specifier to scale the size of the system to match the size of the room or SPL requirements.

Also in the range are the Studio in-ceiling speakers, which come in 6.5-, 6.5- dual voice coil and 8-inch variants; all have woofers angled at 18 degrees with adjustable tweeters. There are also 2 way in wall speakers in a 6.5- and 8-inch woofer sizes.

The Studio range utilises a two part, tool free installation method, allowing installers to mount the pre-install frame with simple clips, before inserting the speaker into place. This simplifies installation and tuning.

"Spinning the bipoic Bohemian Rhapsody had hairs on the back of my neck standing to attention"

We auditioned lots of different music and video clips. The front stage comprised the S4-LCR65W and S4-LCRMT  models, while the rear channel used the 8-inch S4-C80 with side channels covered by a pair of wireless XEO bookshelf speakers. The quality of the sound was amazing, the detail exceptional for an in-wall and in-ceiling speaker. Spinning the biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, from an Oppo Blu-ray player, was truly sublime. The hairs on the back of my neck were standing to attention.

There’s no shortage of competition when it comes to in-wall and in-ceiling speakers, but Dynaudio has pitched itself at the premium end, and the Studio range tick all the right boxes when it comes to creating great sounding media and cinema rooms. Its custom combination of speakers and grills will help build awesome cinemas.

We asked Gibb what we can look forward to over the coming months: “We have a strong product road map in place that will build on the Studio series through 2019. It’s our intention to have a concise and relevant range of CI products, which will contain the Dynaudio DNA for sound as being simple to install.

Previewed at ISE 2019, and available from August, is the new Performance series. This architectural speaker range is recommended for use in distributed audio systems as well as effects channels in AV setups.

The good news is, the Performance speakers also benefit from Dynaudio’s tool free 2-part installation system on the in-ceiling speakers, with simple twist-in fixing mechanism. The in-wall speakers have traditional dogleg fixings.

For use around patios, swimming pools and other outdoor areas we also previewed the new Outdoor series. This product line consists of on-wall IP65 rated speakers in 6.5- and 8-inch versions. Each size comes in extra durable, UV treated black and white finishes and are supplied with rust resistant Aluminium grills. They are supplied with a neat mounting bracket which allows both horizontal and vertical adjustment, meaning the speaker to be directed toward the listening area with ease. As well as operating as 8ohm speakers they also have the option of being used in 70/100V line systems.

And scheduled for September is a compact, shallow depth in-wall subwoofer. This employs four 6-inch racetrack drivers in a Reaction Cancelling Configuration (RCC). The Sub will come with two mounting options and grills and will be supplied with a 1000w DSP subwoofer!

If you’re serious about custom install we would certainly recommend chatting to the team at CAVD. 

VISIT DYNAUDIO PAGE HERE