Planar loudspeakers have always held a particular allure for me. They tend to be big and deliver an equivalent sound. But it’s also the case that they are speedy, low in coloration, and, not to put too fine a point it, enchanting. But the downsides are obvious enough, and have, in my view, become more pronounced as cone-driver loudspeakers have improved considerably over the past decade. Superior cabinet construction and exotic driver technologies have combined to allow top manufacturers to banish many of the nettlesome drawbacks that used to be associated with big dynamic floorstanders.

Few loudspeakers drive this point home more vividly than Dynaudio’s new flagship, the Evidence Platinum. It aims to unite the best qualities of a planar—speed and transparency—with the slam and precision of a cone-driver loudspeaker. No, it doesn’t get all the way there. Hardcore planar addicts will probably never be satisfied with an alternative to their immortal beloveds, and more power to them. But the Platinum comes very close indeed, which is what makes it such a pleasure to audition. It needs a goodly number of watts to flourish, as well a fairly large room with a high ceiling. I ended up placing the Platinums somewhat closer together than my Wilson XLFs without shortchanging the size of the soundstage. Their height makes the Evidence Platinums look quite commanding despite their slim enclosures. With a stout amplifier like the Ypsilon SET-100 Ultimate backing them and a good acoustic space, these are loudspeakers that make you jump to attention as you realize what crisp, clean, and refined performers have landed in your listening space.

Dynaudio, which is based in Skanderborg, Denmark, is not a company that changes its lines with great frequency. Instead, it delivers a finished product and lets it, well, speak for itself.

The Evidence Platinum, which was introduced at the 2012 Munich high-end audio show, is likely the best loudspeaker the company has yet produced, which is saying something. It boasts a number of new technological features that allows it to surpass the performance of the company’s earlier Evidence Temptation and Evidence Master flagships. For a start, it boasts dual Esotar2 tweeters that are mounted on a solid aluminum baffle and possess, among other things, what the company calls “precision coating.” New 18W75 woofers have been developed to enhance bass performance and four of them are used in parallel (per speaker side) to increase the sense of precision and impact. Dynaudio adds that crossover components and internal cabling have also been upgraded, as has the plinth upon which the loudspeaker stands. There is no monkey business in this crossover, either. It presents a stable 4-ohm load to an amplifier.

Apart from these technological changes, it’s worth adding that the speakers simply look darned good. (The Evidence Platinum is available in black piano lacquer or four lacquered wood veneers. Custom finishes are also available by special order.) Tall and thin, the pair I reviewed came in a rosewood finish that blended in beautifully with my décor. As svelte as they may be, however, it requires a minimum of two people to situate them safely as they are quite heavy and unwieldy. Michael Manousselis of Dynaudio North America is a hefty guy, but he had injured his shoulder and was partially out of commission when the speakers arrived. So I carried one end of the loudspeaker (and he the other) into my basement down a flight of stairs, and can attest that this is not a job for the fainthearted. Nor is setting the loudspeaker upright.

Once again, it requires at least two people to install the bases properly and to stand the loudspeakers up. But then again, this is the high end, so what’s a little heavy lifting among friends? Fine-tuning the location of these speakers may take a few weeks of close listening, though I must confess that I was pretty happy right from the get-go.

Once the Evidence Platinums were installed, it quickly became apparent that this is one loudspeaker system that sounds anything but heavy and turgid. Quite the contrary. The most conspicuous and immediate feature of the Evidence Platinum is its tremendous alacrity and sense of transparency. Imagine, as I have tried to suggest above, a planar on steroids and you will start to have a sense of it. The Platinum delivered many of the attributes of planar sound but without the minuses. Which is to say that it had both the soundstaging specificity and bass impact that are lacking in most planars. From the outset, the music whizzed out as though it were the audio equivalent of the Concorde jet (at least before it was grounded). Somehow it just helps relax the ears when the soundstage is this transparent, when the instruments become incredibly distinct and individuated without any sense of strain, blur, or haze. One reason for this sensation, I would wager, is that the Platinum features a bunch of drivers. It has more of the look and feel of a line array than a conventional cone loudspeaker. With the drivers lined up on a slim front panel there really doesn’t seem to be much of a sensation of music emanating from a box. Nor does there seem to be much evidence of vibration in the wood cabinet deleteriously affecting the sound. Rather, the Platinum suffuses the listening space in a very fetching manner.

Take Monty Alexander’s album Live! At the Montreux Jazz Festival, recorded in 1976. It features Alexander on piano, John Clayton on bass, and Jeff Hamilton on drums—an all-star cast. Alexander, who hails from Jamaica and whom I recently saw at Blues Alley in Washington, D.C., where he delivered a dynamite performance, is at heart a consummate and exuberant showman who simply pulls out all the stops and then some. In this recorded performance, he was just emerging as a star and wowed the audience with his ebullient playing. The trio covers every facet and mood, from plangent to frenzied, delivering them all with panache. What was impressive here about the Platinum was the effortless way that it delivered a spacious and airy soundstage, but also the great impact it brought to the leading edges of individual notes. You could really hear Alexander hammering the keys when he pounded the piano during crescendos. You could almost see his hands sweeping up and down the keyboard as one glissando after another was tossed off. Nothing was lost or blurred by the Platinums. Instead, they conveyed the sensation of a cheetah pouncing on its prey, almost there before the note had even been sounded.

Another thing that came through very clearly was the excellent tonal balance of the speaker. Some transducers can sound terrific in the treble but discontinuous in the mids and bass. Not so the Dynaudio. It has a very gentle first-order crossover that is surely helping to produce such a smooth, ingratiating presentation. The treble was a beauty to listen to, with a silkiness that endowed the top octaves with great purity. On Alison Balsom’s new CD Sound the Trumpet [EMI], the talented British musician deploys a natural trumpet—that is, one that lacks valves and was widely used during the baroque era—to great effect. A natural trumpet relies to an even greater degree on manipulation of the air flow to hit the notes than does a modern trumpet, which uses the valves to shorten or lengthen the air stream. On a variety of pieces by Purcell and Handel, it was possible to hear the extreme precision and verve of Balsom’s performance. The lusty sound and the great variety of shadings that the natural trumpet is capable of were conveyed with tremendous effect. In particular I marveled at the rousing aria “Sound the Trumpet,” which Balsom plays together with the fine countertenor Iestyn Davies; the Platinum captured the interplay between trumpet and voice with great fidelity. The sheen of the strings, thanks to the Esotar tweeter, was also precisely rendered.

The beautifully burnished sound that the Platinum delivered on the Balsom recording was a tribute to the seamlessness of the midrange and treble. But the Platinum also delivered the goods on a very different trumpet recording—a prized original Prestige LP of Miles Davis playing “My Funny Valentine.” How, you might ask, can you go wrong with a cast of John Coltrane, Red Garland, Paul Chambers, and Philly Joe Jones? Well, you can’t. But the way the Platinum reproduced the sinuous and almost nasal quality of Miles’ muted trumpet was mesmerizing. The notes seemed to decay into the ether. Low-level detail and reverberant information were delivered with great verisimilitude even on this old mono LP, offering a reminder of the treasures that are locked up in so many recordings from yesteryear. All the qualities of the Platinum turned a masterful performance and recording into a profound listening experience, one where you switch off the critical listening apparatus and connect on the most fundamental emotional level, in a state of blissful enchantment.

For all its virtues, the Platinum is likely to disappoint listeners who are bass nuts. There is no replacement for displacement, as the saying goes. Each Platinum has two ports, one at the top and bottom of the cabinet. Dynaudio has tried to compensate for the lack of a large bass driver by substituting a bunch of smaller 7″ ones. There didn’t appear to be any port chuffing or other nasties. But the measures Dynaudio has adopted can only go so far. This ensures that the Platinum retains its speedy character, but it also means that it can’t really deliver the body blow of a Wilson XLF or other big loudspeakers. If you want that kind of sound, then a 15″ driver is probably indispensable. The loudspeaker that can repeal the laws of physics does not yet exist, and no amount of engineering jiggerypook can get around that fact, at least not yet.

I’m not prepared to say that audiophiles should discount the value of deep bass. It can do a lot to set up a deeper and wider soundstage even if the loudspeaker, or subwoofer, is picking up largely inaudible sound cues. The Platinum’s strengths lie elsewhere, but they are so captivating that they render almost nugatory any criticisms. I didn’t find myself dwelling upon what it doesn’t do but, rather, what it does. Which is to say that it is a marvelous transducer that should particularly appeal to those who value accuracy, tonal purity, and speed. Count me in.

Dynaudio Evidence Platinum loudspeakersDynaudio’s Ultimate Rendition

By Jeff Dorgay