…Elegant and Understated… Detailed and Clean, with Bass Presence
Dynaudio Focus XD
Dynaudio, Danish makers of active and passive speakers for nearly forty years in the “home, car and pro (studio)”
environments last week presented their Dynaudio Focus XD range in leafy London W12. The autumnal day was glorious, set in blue skies to a blaze of red, yellow and orange leaves.
It is not often you come away from a speaker demonstration with a lasting impression of looks but on this occasion it must be said the Dynaudio Focus XD range is really good to look at, as well as hear. They would certainly make the negotiation process easier with partners being such an unobtrusive collection, I would suggest the XD 400s would sit in almost any room with right camouflage, the white Dynaudio Focus XDs need to be looked at!
Elegant and understated were my take-aways, we will see what they really sound like next week but first impressions were very impressive with bags of detail in the ear, a lovely clean sound presentation but retaining plenty of bass presence.
The contemporary setting for this event had an array of sofas to suit all tastes, and more curved 4k TVs than you would find in ‘Curry’s’. As befits a Scandinavian presentation, the music was clean and precise. The Focus XD 200s were presented by John Mayer through a hard wired Coax cable played through an Oppo Blu-ray disc player.
The Dynaudio Focus XD range are active wireless loudspeakers in a variety of sizes from the two way stand mounted
XD 200s to the top of the range XD 600s, a very attractive three way floor stander with twin 7 inch woofers, a 5.5 inch mid range cone and a one inch soft dome tweeter. I personally covet the middle of the range 400s that would complement any 4k TV/Blu-ray arrangement to perfection in sound and look.
Each Focus XD has its own amplifier and internal digital signal processor (DSP). So the DAC bit of the modern hifi system ‘is built into the amplification process’. I can bring myself to understand how this could work. The premise here is that the digital signal, ideally 24bit/192kHz High Resolution, is delivered as close to the cone as possible, reducing distortion and delivering pure digital signals to the DSP. Each cone has its own amplification system which seems extraordinary but I guess this is the nature of the active speaker here.
The wireless part of this system is the Dynaudio Hub module which manages the high resolution digital signal to each speaker which has its own integrated digital receiver. The Dynaudio Hub can be connected to an optical source, digital Coax, a normal RCA line-in source or an Ethernet connection. The Hub is compatible with the usual array of computers, Bluetooth receivers, streaming players, radios or televisions & Blu-ray devices. It conveys the digital signal received bit perfectly to each speaker. Finally the Hub, and each speaker, has a USB mini input, as the speakers do, for future Firmware upgrades.
More to follow when the XD 600s arrive for a tune up, watch this site.
Meanwhile here’s the XD site: http://www.dynaudio.com/home-audio/focus-xd/