Australian Hi-Fi 19
Dynaudio Evoke 50 Loudspeakers
The cones of the bass drivers are made
from Dynaudio’s famous single-piece thermo-
plastic cone (which Dynaudio calls MSP, for
Magnesium Silicate Polymer) where the dust-
cap is moulded in one piece with the cone,
and the roll surrounds are made from rubber,
which is a much more durable material than
the foam that’s often used for the purpose.
(Foam surrounds tend to rot, particularly
when exposed to ultraviolet light, of which
there’s a lot in Australia!) The magnets are
made from ferrite and ceramic. The huge
voice-coils (which, at 75mm in diameter, are
one of the biggest in the business, particular-
ly for a 185mm driver) are made from copper
wire that’s wound around a Nomex former.
What you can’t see in the photograph of
the front of the Dynaudio Evoke 50s is the
single—and absolutely humongous!—bass
reflex port that is located on the rear panel
of each cabinet, quite low down, but above
the single set of speaker terminals. The port
is 100mm in diameter and 200mm long. It’s
made entirely of plastic and although it’s
flared where it exits the cabinet, the same
isn’t the case at the entrance of the port,
inside the cabinet.
As is becoming increasingly common these
days, Dynaudio provides soft foam plugs, or
‘bungs’ with the Evoke 50. The bungs provid-
ed with the Evoke 50 are in two pieces, with
an inner plug and an outer ring. If you use
both plugs, you effectively turn the speaker
into a sealed enclosure. If you use just the
outer ring, you simply reduce the size of the
port. I’ll discuss how you’d use these bungs
later in this review.
It’s very important to note that one thing
all the drivers fitted to the Evoke 50 have
in common is that they are all designed
and manufactured ‘in-house’ by Dynaudio
itself. This huge Danish company can now
lay claim to having the largest and best-
equipped anechoic speaker measurement
chamber in the world, as well as one of the
most advanced loudspeaker manufacturing
factories in the world, both of which were
the direct result of a huge injection of capital
from Chinese manufacturer GoerTek, after it
purchased Dynaudio in 2014.
This gives Dynaudio unprecedented control
over the entire manufacturing process—there
are very, very few loudspeaker manufacturers
in the world that make all the drivers that
are used in their speakers.
For the very few products used in its
speakers that Dynaudio does not manufac-
ture in-house, such
as the capacitors and
resistors used in its
crossovers, for example,
this Danish company is
so large that it derives
enormous benefits from
the economies of scale.
Whereas ‘bespoke’
loudspeaker manufac-
turers buy the essential
bipolar capacitors and
high-power resistors for their crossover net-
works from distributors at premium prices,
Dynaudio buys its capacitors and resistors
direct from the manufacturers. This way it
not only gets better pricing—and a big say in
quality control—but it can also have those
capacitors and resistors branded ‘Dy-
naudio’ rather than with the name
of the original manufacturer.
As I have already pointed out, the
front baffle of the Dynaudio Evoke
50’s cabinet is only 215mm across,
which is relatively narrow (which is
not only cosmetically desirable, but
has the advantage of improving dis-
persion from all the drivers) so you
will be intrigued to hear that the
rear of the cabinet is only 185mm
across, meaning that the cabinet
tapers in width from front to back so
that the side walls are not parallel, a
trick that inhibits the production of
standing waves inside the cabinet.
The cabinet itself is quite tall—
standing 1160mm high when
its four outrigger feet are fixed
underneath it. You will need these
outrigger feet, too, because without
them the cabinet is a little unstable
and quite easy to tip over, because
it’s so tall and narrow.
Even with the feet fitted the
Dynaudio Evoke 50 isn’t exactly
‘rock solid’ stable, since it will
overbalance if it is forcibly tipped
more than 17 degrees to one side or
the other.
The Dynaudio Evoke 50 is
available in two different high-gloss
painted finishes (high-gloss white
and high-gloss black) and two differ-
ent synthetic wood finishes: walnut
and blonde.Dynaudio claims to have the
largest and best-equipped
anechoic speaker measurement
chamber in the world
IN USE AND LISTENING
SESSIONS
When you first unpack the Dynaudio Evoke
50 speakers, on the front of each cabinet
you’ll find a bright yellow plastic puck right
where the tweeter should be, attached via
three tiny neodymium magnets. It could
be that this ‘puck’ is there to protect the
tweeters during shipping—and it certainly
does this very effectively—but I suspect the
real reason it’s there is to protect the tweeters
from damage while the speakers are on dis-
play in retail showrooms. These days, there
are fewer salespeople on showroom floors,
and many customers (particularly children)
feel the need to ‘poke’ drivers (particularly
tweeters) when no-one’s looking, so with
fewer salespeople to control out-of-control
customers, it’s likely that increasing numbers
of tweeters are being damaged.
In most cases it’s possible to completely
repair a soft dome tweeter whose dome has
been dented (the same is not true of hard-
dome tweeters!) but in the particular case of