Dynaudio Contour Legacy Floorstanding Speakers (Pair)

Remastering a classic

Contour Legacy is an intentional homage to the late, great Contour 1.8 – and, like its muse, it has that… ‘Something’. That reassuring sense of pride and craftsmanship that is, perhaps, less common in the world these days.

So, you might already be expecting a listening experience that’s a trip down memory lane. Or Penny Lane.

But no. It’s better than that. This is a memories upgrade.

Beneath that chocolate brown American Walnut veneer lives a totally different generation of technology. The original drivers and electronics from the elder Contour have been replaced by components that look superficially familiar, but sound substantially better.

As a Contour Legacy owner, you have permission to feel nostalgic but modern – whether you’re streaming or lowering a stylus. Go ahead. Invite someone from the white plastic earbuds generation to take a listen. Watch them go into in a flow state, track after track, losing track of time and what they’d promised to do with it.

Or make a point of inviting nobody, sit down in your sweet-spot and remind yourself what pure indulgence sounds like.

A marriage made in Skanderborg

Every left and right Contour Legacy loudspeaker is, like a swan, paired for life. It has a partner, from the moment its components are carefully placed on our workbench in Jutland.

Each panel of each cabinet is made from a composite board made from the same source, chosen as if it were a vineyard for a domain. It’s faced by a layer of sustainable, tactile, warm American Walnut. Martin – a man with twenty years’ experience of making Dynaudio speakers – selects these panels, two by two, so that their grain looks similar. It can only be done by eye.

It’s a labor of love, and a process that would be unfathomable to have replicated by some anonymous robot in some anonymous factory.

That robot wouldn’t clamp each joint bonded by our Glue Master, (yes, that’s his real title). It wouldn’t be concerned about the precision of the joints, cut to fractions of one degree. Or the effect the weather will have on the integrity of the jointed angles (our humans make sure all their gluing is finished by the end of the day to stop any unwanted changes).

It wouldn’t reject a pair of speakers because one of them had a blemish almost invisible to the naked eye.

A robot wouldn’t sense the feeling you get as you run your fingers over a tiny groove in the front facing panel. It wouldn’t take pleasure in the smell of hardwood, as the doors to the workshop are opened, early morning, at the same time as laptops.

Making a pair of Contour Legacy loudspeakers is time consuming – and even slightly obsessive, with a magical result that certain people appreciate.

Like all Dynaudio speakers, that obsession extends to the bits you can’t see, or rarely look at. Like the dual-flared bass-ports, which gently control airflow and bass response, or the heavy, stable cast-iron base. No sticky-out feet here.