Dynaudio Emit 30 floorstanding loudspeaker

Most loudspeakers take some time to run in, and the Emit 30 is no exception; from cold out of the box you could be looking at a hundred hours or so before everything settles down. Fortunately, the changes are subtle and gently progressive (rather than a hundred hours of aural pain and a complete change of character at the end).

This is a truly excellent loudspeaker, not simply ‘for the money’. It has the detail and clarity of many giant-killers coupled with a lot of bass, both bass depth and the dynamic range of far bigger loudspeakers. This results in a loudspeaker that has the scale and energy to handle Mitsuko Uchida playing Beethoven’s late piano sonatas [Decca]. At this price, you either get the technical brilliance of her playing or the range of emotions she conveys. It’s what separates the high-end from the merely ‘good’; on the Emit 30 you manage to hear both that information and the passion behind the playing. This alone is rare, but couple that with the sense of space and solidity of image the Emit 30 produces and you get the feeling of a real sized concert grand piano being played by a real human being… and that combination done right is incredibly hard to find in loudspeakers this side of about £3,000.

Such loudspeakers will never sell in droves if they only play to the classical or jazz-end of the spectrum, but the piano is a difficult instrument to get right on a number of levels and the Emit 30 does well in all of them. OK, so it doesn’t have the filigree ‘spaces around the notes’ inner detail of smaller, exceptionally well-designed two-way stand-mounts, or high-end models that cost as much as a container-load of Emit 30s, but that isn’t the point. Play anything from dance music to power-chord-driven rock and you get the same result. The original ZZ Top line-up has recently gone, but they left behind a legacy of swampy recordings of note, including ‘La Grange’ from Tres Hombres [London], and here it takes on that need to play air guitar, air bass (thanks, Dusty) and air drums.

Something not commonly discussed in loudspeakers is the design’s ability to ‘jink’; abruptly change direction in line with the music. This is a quality that is closely linked to a speaker’s ability to ‘time’, but it’s as much about tracking changes in melody as it is to do with tempo. The Emit 30 ‘jinks’ surprisingly well. Really deep electronic bass notes can get a little ponderous under extreme conditions, but you will have to be playing ‘Chameleon’ by Trentemøller [The Last Resort, Poker Flat] or similar at near party levels to reach those conditions. For the rest of its playing envelope, the Emit 30 effectively turns on a dime or a sixpence… if we still had sixpences.

Frankly, there wasn’t anything I threw at the Emit 30 that didn’t perform well, and that’s an important consideration. Sure, we can use carefully selected pieces of music that are designed to sound good or bring out the best in a system, but in the real world that the Emit 30 occupies, those are optional extras. This is a loudspeaker that needs to make good sounds when pumping some grime from a phone to a Bluetooth DAC, or belting out some K-Pop or practically everything you care to name. OK, so there’s no expectation to make a bad recording sound wonderful, but there is an expectation for the Emit 30 to not make a bad recording sound worse, and that’s what they do exceptionally well. Of course they sound great playing nicely recorded dinner jazz played at genteel levels, but they also hold together at higher volumes with relatively compressed music without making your ears bleed. If anything, the Emit 30 err on the side of forgiveness, because that surprisingly deep bottom end and not-too-peaky tweeter bring out the best, even in the worst.