Floorstanding loudspeakers — Dynaudio Consequence Ultimate Edition

The Consequence Ultimate Edition is a five-way floorstanding loudspeaker from Dynaudio of Denmark and a thorough reworking of the original Consequence, a design whose roots go back to 1984 and which addressed phase and time coherence, driver dispersion and cabinet resonance. The cabinet follows the shape of the first model but is a new build with 25 percent more mass. The model is now listed by Dynaudio as discontinued.

Key specs that matter

Five driver types are used. A 21 mm Esotar2 soft dome acts as super tweeter, a 28 mm Esotar2 dome as tweeter, a 52 mm Esotar dome covers the midrange, a 17 cm MSP cone in a die-cast aluminium chassis handles the lower midrange, and two 30 cm woofers with long-throw 75 mm aluminium voice coils work in the bass. Crossover points sit at 350 Hz, 1,350 Hz, 3 kHz and 13.5 kHz. Dynaudio rates the speaker at 17 Hz to 30 kHz within 3 dB, 85 dB at 2.83 V and 1 m, 4 ohm nominal and more than 400 W of IEC long-term power. Internal volume is 145 litres, the cabinet measures 430 x 1,330 x 630 mm, and each speaker weighs 114 kg.

Engineering and use context

The bass uses a Vented Compound System. One woofer sits between two separate enclosures and keeps the air pressure in the upper bass chamber constant, so the outer woofer behaves as if it were loaded by an infinite volume. A large, specially tuned reflex port was added for this edition, and Dynaudio credits it with the deep bass extension and a linear impedance in the low range. The drivers are placed in an inverted order, with the tweeters further from the listener than the mid and bass units, so the physical offsets compensate for the slower response of heavier drivers. Driver front plates and rings were shaped to micrometre accuracy to limit each unit to its band, and basket rings and screws are plated in chrome or gold. Two Variovent openings act as air-flow resistors in the mid cabinet. The crossover is split over three boards with film resistors, flat-wire copper coils and polypropylene capacitors, and an impedance equalisation circuit is included. Panels are layered HDF 32 mm thick, and the three modules and base plate are decoupled by rubber dampers.

Pairing

With modest sensitivity and very high power handling, the Consequence needs a powerful solid-state amplifier, and its size and weight suit a large room.

Alternatives

The Dynaudio Confidence 60 is a floorstanding model from the current Confidence range, which also includes the Confidence 30 and 50 towers.