Dynaudio Confidence 30

LOUDSPEAKER

- KALMAN RUBINSON

Over a lifetime of audio shows, I’ve consistently enjoyed Dynaudio speaker demonstrations. Each time, I’ve told Dynaudio North America’s Michael Manousselis that I’d love to review the speaker on display that year. But I never followed through. So, when Jim Austin suggested I review a Dynaudio speaker “because they haven’t gotten much press,” it resonated with my deep-seated guilt. A little research revealed that the last Dynaudio speaker Stereophile reviewed was the 40 Special in November 2018. The last floorstander was the Dynaudio Sapphire in 2009!

When I set about selecting a floor-standing speaker that fits my room in a price range that fits my pocketbook, I stumbled on Jason Victor Serinus’s report from Munich 2019, to which a reader responded, “Does anyone know how the Confidence 30’s are being received in the real world? Seems like very little fanfare.” I did a web search and found some high praise in Europe but no US reviews. Let’s fix that.

The Confidence 30 (C30) is the smallest floorstander in Dynaudio’s top-of-the-line Confidence series of loudspeakers, all of which share the same woofers, midrange, and tweeter drivers. The Confidence 50 adds a second midrange driver to the array; the top-of-the-line Confidence 60 sports larger woofers. There are differences in the crossover points to accommodate variations in the woofers, and the 30 is tuned with a slight bass boost, but given the similarities in drivers, they’re likely to share a certain sound.