Dynaudio Special Forty Owner's Manual
Owner's
Manual
Special Forty
We Thank You
Dear music lover,
Thanks for buying
Dynaudio loudspeakers.
You’re in for a treat!
Turn the page to nd out
more about them…
Owner’s Manual Special Forty
P5
Table Of Contents
Table
Of
Contents
6 Meet the Special Forty
10 Safety Instructions
11 About this guide
12 Made in Denmark
16 Connecting
18 Positioning
19 General recommendations
20 Distance to back and side walls
20 Adapting the bass reex port
21 Floor-standing loudspeaker set-up
21 Compact loudspeaker set-up
23 Loudspeaker Toe-In
23 Room and furniture inuence
23 Grille
24 Multi-Channel Setup
25 Loudspeakers for multi-channel setups
25 Multi-channel loudspeaker setup
26 Running-in
27 Running-in the loudspeakers
27 Power rating
28 Care & Maintenance
29 Warranty
30 6 ways to listen like the professionals
Owner’s Manual
Owner’s Manual Special Forty
P7P6
Meet The Special Forty
“What are you going to do for your 40th birthday?”,
everyone asked. We thought about it for a bit and
decided that since we aren’t big on huge decorated
cakes and candles (although we are partial to a tasty
fastelavnsbolle), we’d celebrate a little differently.
With a new speaker.
And yes, we know you’re the ones supposed to be giving us gifts
– but we just couldn’t help ourselves.
Happy birthday to us! Meet the Special Forty.
They say ‘life begins at 40’.
Take a peek inside Dynaudio
Labs and you’ll see that’s
absolutely true.
Say hello to the next evolution
of passive stereo speakers
Owner’s Manual Special Forty
P9P8
Meet The Special Forty
and increase air movement without
compromising the basket’s stiffness or
stability, and this genius design is what
they came up with.
Airow is king
The new Esotar Forty tweeter takes
air-movement to another level. It moves
the air in typically sweet fashion in front
of the DSR (Dynaudio Secret Recipe)
precision-coated soft-dome, of course,
but there’s a lot of engineering going on
behind it as well.
Take the new pressure conduit. It’s a
shaped vent in the back of the magnet
system that allows more space in the
rear chamber. That space lets us pack
in more damping material and reduces
back-pressure, while the shape itself
optimises airow coming backwards
from the rear of the dome.
Then there’s the outlet; the aero-
coupled pressure-release system. It sits
underneath the voice-coil and reduces
unwanted pressure build-up that could
affect its movement. Stopping those
pockets of air from forming reduces
resonance – and less resonance equals
even greater potential for detail.
Flux optimisation and beam control
We love playing with the laws of physics.
Physics wins in the end, of course
(usually), but we almost always manage
to bend it to our will along the way. Just
like we have with our magnet systems.
The magnet turns electrical energy
that ows from your amplier into the
voice-coil, into the physical back-and-
forth movement of the driver diaphragm.
These movements are very small and
very fast (especially in the tweeter), so
they need a lot of nesse if you want to
hear all that luscious detail and emotion
in your music.
Behind the woofer
In the woofer, we’ve achieved that
nesse in two ways: by placing the
magnet inside the voice-coil, and by
playing with magnetic energy itself.
Other manufacturers typically put it
around the outside edge, leaving the
voice-coil hollow. Putting the magnet
inside keeps the magnetic energy (or
ux) in the optimum position for getting
itself wrapped around the voice-coil –
where it should be. That means we can
use more of its power for a given weight.
It also reduces internal reections
because there’s less material for sound
to bounce off inside the driver.
Second, we use a hybrid magnet for
even greater control over the ux and
voice-coil movement. An incredibly
powerful neodymium rare-earth magnet
provides the muscle and ings ux
around with abandon, while a ferrite
magnet tempers that enthusiasm by
gently moving the ux back to exactly
where it’s needed most. The result?
Symmetrical excursion, a reduction in
second-harmonics, and an even more
accurate, authentic sound.
Box clever
And then there’s the nish. Whichever
veneer you’ve gone for – the Grey Birch
or the Red Birch, our designers have
given you a treat. We’ve always pushed
the boat out on our special anniversary
speakers – from the luscious bird’s-eye
maple of the Contour 1.3 SE to the
Special Twenty-Five’s stunning burled
birch and the Sapphire’s amazing
Mocca, Bordeaux and Ivory veneers. The
Special Forty takes that to a new level.
We pushed our team to come up with
something different to the kind of thing
we’ve done in the past, and they took
that to heart. That’s why they’re raw;
visceral; striking. We wanted the Special
Forty to look as authentic and honest as
the music they’re playing sounds.
Happy birthday to us! Enjoy the party
(help yourself to fastelavnsboller).
Laurels aren’t for resting on
We still surprise ourselves. Some people
might be content to sit back and be
complacent about their successes after
40 years of constant innovation. We
aren’t. In fact, we only get hungrier for
new techniques and technologies.
That’s why we developed the Special
Forty. We wanted to revisit those
innovations and see what we’d do
differently this time.
What you won’t nd here is anything
revolutionary (check out our active
speaker range for that – you’ll be
amazed). Instead, you’ll discover a look
at our past – along with some special
sneak-previews of the future.
The Special Forty is classic Dynaudio:
all the craftsmanship, attention to detail
and total love of authentic sound you’ve
come to expect. It’s the connoisseur’s
choice – a simple pair of passive hi-
speakers. But it isn’t about looking back,
misty-eyed, at past glories and leaving it
at that. It’s about using those glories as
a platform from which to launch our next
set of breakthroughs.
Greatest hits… reimagined
We do compact speakers really well.
We always have. So, as a nod back to
classics including the Special One, the
Special Twenty-Five, the Crafft and the
Contour 1.3SE, we kept the Special
Forty pure – if incredibly advanced.
Of course, it wouldn’t be an anniversary
speaker if it didn’t include some of our
greatest hits. But we haven’t just got
the old band back together to trot out
the same old stuff, unchanged. We’ve
remixed, remastered and rearranged
things to bring those old favourites into
2017 – and beyond.
That’s why it has one of our classic rst-
order crossover designs, incorporating
our unique Phase Alignment and
Impedance Alignment technologies.
The crossover expertly marshals the
input signal between the woofer and the
tweeter – so each driver gets only the
frequencies it’s supposed to, and can
perform at its very best. Its specially
selected components handle the
impedance optimisation and, because
both drivers have extended frequency
ranges for even better overlap and
integration, that performance borders on
the mesmerising.
The song remains the same
The Special Forty uses our proprietary
MSP (Magnesium Silicate Polymer)
material for its main driver. MSP delivers
precisely the right combination of
rigidity, damping and stability for the
most faithful sound reproduction. And,
unlike other cone materials, it doesn’t
change over time – so your Special
Forty speakers will still be singing just as
sweetly come our next anniversary.
The cone itself uses a painstakingly
developed symmetrical excursion for
even better midrange performance.
Behind it sits a new Nomex spider – the
‘suspension’ for the voice-coil. It enables
for even more symmetry in the driver’s
excursion – and makes it possible not
only to pick out individual parts in a
piece of music, but even individual
instruments in an orchestra. (So now,
nally, the Third Violin section can have
its day in the sun.) And, like all our other
MSP cones, it’s a one-piece design
(you can tell by the special balance ribs
around the central dust-cap). This gives
it an incredibly solid connection to the
voice-coil, as well as stabilising its form –
which is crucial when you decide to turn
it up to 11.
It all sits in our special AirFlow Basket
– the bit that holds the whole driver
motor securely in place in the cabinet.
Its development was one of those
‘Eureka!’ moments our engineers seem
to get a few times a week in Dynaudio
Labs (you can often hear them cheering
from across the road in our factory). We
asked them to reduce internal reections
P11
Safety Instructions / About This Guide
About
This
Guide
Used expressions and symbols
In this operating manual following signs and symbols are used:
The exclamation point within an equilateral triangle is intended to alert the user to
the presence of important operating and maintenance (servicing) instructions in the
literature accompanying the product.
Indicates (in combination with a safety sign) a potentially hazardous situation which,
if not avoided, could result in minor or moderate injury or damage to equipment.
The arrow will identify steps to be performed. Please follow the instructions carefully
Multiple steps that should be performed consecutively are numbered.
Please follow these instructions carefully.
Note
Additional information is provided, which is important to fully understand the
loudspeaker and how to operate it.
1.
2.
P10
Owner´s Manual Special Forty
Safety
Instructions
High sound pressure levels
Listening to high sound pressure levels over a longer
period of time may harm your hearing.
To avoid auditory effect do not listen to high sound levels over a longer period
of time.
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