EQUIPMENT REVIEW / DYNAUDIO EMIT 30 “This is a loudspeaker that needs to make good sounds when pumping some grime from a phone to a Bluetooth DAC.” much as a container-load of Emit 30s, but that isn’t the point. Play anything from dance music to power-chord-driven rock and you get the same result. The original ZZ Top line-up has recently gone, but they left behind a legacy of swampy recordings of note, including ‘La Grange’ from Tres Hombres [London], and here it takes on that need to play air guitar, air bass (thanks, Dusty) and air drums. Something not commonly discussed in loudspeakers is the design’s ability to ‘jink’; abruptly change direction in line with the music. This is a quality that is closely linked to a speaker’s ability to ‘time’, but it’s as much about tracking changes in melody as it is to do with tempo. The Emit 30 ‘jinks’ surprisingly well. Really deep electronic bass notes can get a little ponderous under extreme conditions, but you will have to be playing ‘Chameleon’ by Trentemøller [ The Last Resort , Poker Flat] or similar at near party levels to reach those conditions. For the rest of its playing envelope, the Emit 30 effectively turns on a dime or a sixpence… if we still had sixpences. Frankly, there wasn’t anything I threw at the Emit 30 that didn’t perform well, and that’s an important consideration. Sure, we can use carefully selected pieces of music that are designed to sound good or bring out the best in a system, but in the real world that the Emit 30 occupies, those are optional extras. This is a loudspeaker that needs to make good sounds when pumping some grime from a phone to a Bluetooth DAC, or belting out some K-Pop or practically everything you care to name. OK, so there’s no expectation to make a bad recording sound wonderful, but there is an expectation for the Emit 30 to not make a bad recording sound worse, and that’s what they do exceptionally well. Of course they sound great playing nicely recorded dinner jazz played at genteel levels, but they also hold together at higher volumes with relatively compressed music without making your ears bleed. If anything, the Emit 30 err on the side of forgiveness, because that surprisingly deep bottom end and not-too-peaky tweeter bring out the best, even in the worst. It’s hard to look at the Emit 30’s limitations without looking at them through the filter of how little a pair of these loudspeakers cost. You aren’t buying a cabinet with a depth of finish that draws admiration from passing French polishers and furniture restorers, you aren’t buying a loudspeaker with a crossover network or drive units made from Platinum-coated Unobtainium (although what you get on the Emit 30 gets surprisingly close), and you aren’t paying for bearded Nordic artisans to assemble these speakers to your precise specifications. Yes, you can get all these things in a new loudspeaker for £1,300 per pair… if you have a time machine set to 1971. If you don’t have that time machine to hand, those limitations begin to look very nit-picky indeed. There’s a phrase used in audio; the ‘mug’s eyeful’. It summons up images of products that look like a bargain, but any notions of quality quickly stop at the word ‘look’. The Dynaudio Emit 30 is the absolute opposite of a mug’s TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS Type: two and a half way bass reflex floorstanding loudspeaker Drive units: 28mm soft-dome Cerotar tweeter, 140mm MSP mid/woofer, 140mm MSP woofer Frequency Response: 44Hz–25kHz (±3dB) Sensitivity: 87dB (2.83V/1m) Impedance: 4Ω IEC power handling: 180W Crossover topology: 1st Order (tweeter)/2nd Order (mid‑woofer) Crossover frequencies: 1kHz, 3.55kHz Finish: Black, White, Walnut Dimensions (W × H × D): 26.8 × 94.7 × 33.5cm (incl. grilles and feet) Weight: 15.53kg Price: £1,300 per pair Manufacturer: Dynaudio URL: dynaudio.com UK Distributor: Dynaudio UK URL: dynaudio.com Tel: +44(0)1638 742427 eyeful; it offers superb value coupled with outstanding performance. They are every millimetre a Dynaudio loudspeaker, with the family sound and a deep, pounding bass that matches perfectly with the rooms in which such a loudspeaker will live. It’s a sophisticated design that cuts few corners to achieve that low price. Not only is it a good speaker, the Dynaudio Emit 30 throws down a gauntlet to other brands; if Dynaudio can do something like the Emit 30, why the **** can’t you? Reproduced from HI-FI+ Issue 199 www.hifiplus.com
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