Dynaudio Audience 42 Bookshelf speakers

Here are a further evolution of Audience 40 - mini monitor speaker, which in 1999 became the "Loudspeaker of the year" from EISA. New system, like its predecessor, is equipped with 28-mm tweeter with a manually impregnated silk dome and improved 15-cm midwoofer with a diffuser, pressed from the special polymer (it contains mineral additives). The difference is the more inert (in terms of acoustic resonances) body made of MDF with vibration-resistant faceplate. Dynaudio Audience 42 are equipped with natural veneer of high quality. Due to the multi-step offhand grinding, color matching and lacquering the speakers get expensive and respectable look, which even the best photo is hardly able to reproduce. What have I missed? The system has a partial magnetic shielding (magnetic field is very weakened, but not eliminated completely). The bass-reflex port is placed to the back. Connection is, as usual for Dynaudio, only SSB.

Audience 42 made the impression, which I did not expected. The sound of Dynaudio systems is familiar; linearity has always been its strongest point at any volume level. Here is the full order with it. Absolute dynamics is low - to open it, you'll need a very powerful amplifier. Subjectively, the middle is dry, the top is rough. The character of transfer of lower case struck a warning note too. Surely, you shouldn't expect impressive basses from compact systems, but Audience babies do not agree with it - they try to reproduce something. But more important "working" bass sounds strained and tight.

And now about the main thing. The hearing, as you know, adapts to the nonlinearity quickly. That's why after five-six minutes you, like me, will forget any claims to Dynaudio Audience 42. The systems amaze by the wholeness of sound, charge with energy. Their sound is very rich in content, emotional and incomparable by information. Sound stage is extremely clear, three-dimensional space is as if materialized, not reproduced.