‘Heritage Special’ isn’t
just a name. It’s a salute to traditional high-performance Danish audio design.
And each of the 2500 limited-edition pairs is unique.
Listen to craftsmanship. Listen to real wood. Listen to
state-of-the-art, hand-built tweeters and woofers. To more than 2000 hours of
devoted R&D. To the depths of your record collection. Listen to what you
love.
Heritage Special is brimming with the spirit (and
flødebolle-fulled boldness) that made the Dynaudio name – plus some new
surprises. Run your fingers over the hand-finished American Walnut finish.
Discover the meticulously crafted joins and corners of the individually
selected – and individually matched – veneer panels. Pause at the signature
groove surrounding the baffle (you’ll remember it from the Dynaudio speakers
you coveted years ago).
And then put the top-of-the-line Esotar 3 tweeter and
souped-up Evidence woofer through their paces with something that’ll rock your
socks off.
Made in Denmark
Heritage Special is limited-edition: 2500 pairs… and once
they’re gone, they’re gone. When our production department found out what we
were building, they were so excited that they demanded to make it from top to
bottom, inside and out, at home in Denmark.
That’s why ‘Special’ isn’t a word we use lightly.
Everything in these speakers, from the cabinets (made and finished in
Skanderborg by Martin, Arkadijs, Mikkel and Malene), to the drivers (headed-up
by Stine, also in Skanderborg) and the crossovers (designed by Daniel, also in
Skanderborg and made by Holms Radiofabrik just down the road in Horsens) is
crafted with that word in mind.
It’s hip to be square
This is where Heritage Special takes shape. Literally. It
isn’t a photo-set, carefully dressed to look like a factory. It’s a factory,
left as it is, with a finished Heritage Special left on the bench after Martin
went home (he didn’t want us distracting him with cameras while he worked).
Martin has been with Dynaudio for 17 years. The cabinets
he and his colleague Arkadijs produce are made right here. Each panel is
matched – the fronts, sides, tops and bottoms to each other, and then between
the speakers in the pair – and then numbered before assembly so they can be
kept together.
Next, the list strips. These thin veneers along the
cabinet edges are selected for the right colour tone and grain characteristics,
then matched to each other (and between each speaker pair) and numbered to sit
with the panels.
We use 19mm MDF for the cabinets (it’s a rigid, stable
material that’s perfect for the kind of precision cutting and joining, and
sustainable American Walnut for the external veneers. Internal bracing is
installed to ensure the cabinet is as rigid as possible, and there’s also a
layer of heavy bitumen on the inside surfaces that helps minimise unwanted
resonances even more.
Once they’re glued and clamped, they’re left to dry.
Then, 24 hours later, they’re given to Malene for sanding to perfect smoothness
and flatness. By hand.
She makes it look easy. It really, really isn’t.
Malene makes sure the surfaces are ready for Mikkel to
lacquer. He applies two coats (returning them to Malene for another sanding
after each one), before giving them the final finish. It’s a process we’ve
perfected over the course of more than 40 years – and when you run your fingers
over that surface, you’ll feel just how good we’ve got at it.
After being checked, lusted over by passing employees and
given a goodbye salute, the cabinets are taken to have their drivers,
crossovers and finishing touches applied.
Old’s cool
If you were to ask any Dynaudio speaker how it would want
to be built, it would say “like this”. And then point to itself.
For Heritage Special, it was only natural to reach
straight for the top shelf when it came to specifying its drivers.
Look closely at the tweeter. Dynaudio historians will
notice the unmistakable shape of the legendary Esotar T330D soft-dome tweeter.
That’s Special enough on its own – but if a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing
jaw-droppingly. So we’ve replaced the insides with the finest tweeter
technology we’ve ever created: Esotar 3. You’ll also find it, along with its
powerful neodymium magnet, larger rear chamber and resonance-defeating Hexis
inner dome, in our top-of-the-line Confidence series.
Taking on mid/bass duties is something equally Special:
the 18W75 XL Heritage Special MSP Woofer (sometimes it’s worth giving a
component its full honorific). If you were truly eagle-eyed, you might remember
its exponential cone design from the magnificent Evidence Platinum series. The difference
is, we’ve taken it further: this driver has an improved voice coil (a classic
internal-magnet design with aluminium windings, now on a glass-fibre former);
magnet system (a hybrid design with both neodymium and ferrite magnets for even
greater flux control); and spider (Nomex, as seen on Confidence and Contour i).
The crossover is really quite something. Senior acoustic
designer Daniel Emonts went back to basics and came up with a bespoke
first-order topology, then demanded it be endowed with the finest components
our friends at Mundorf in Germany could supply. Key parts are custom-built to
our exacting standards, and Mundorf’s legendary Evo Oil capacitors are used in
the critical signal path. There’s also local impedance-correction on board for each
individual tweeter and woofer, as well as time-alignment technology, to make
for a silky-smooth transition between drivers.
If you were to take the speaker apart, you’d also
discover 12 AWG internal wiring by Van den Hul, and Swedish-made polyester damping
material. (But you’ll just have to take our word for that; please don’t
disassemble your new Heritage Special speakers.)
On the brushed aluminium back-plate you’ll see
top-of-the-range WBT 710 Cu mC NextGen terminals – yet another premium detail
for you to marvel at. And when you plug in your cables… well, we’d be surprised
if you didn’t do it two or three times more just because it feels and sounds so
nice.
Finally – of course – there’s also your individual pair
number. (We’re being selfish and keeping number 0001 for ourselves.)
Listen with heart
Sometimes you buy A Thing with your head. You have very
logical reasons, and the results are entirely predictable based on the
circumstances that Thing finds itself in.
Sometimes, though, you buy with your heart. Logic be
damned.
And the results are… well… Special.
