dynaudio confidence 5 versus contour S5.4

There is no way you will be satisfied with those amps driving the C5's - they will take all a stout 400wpc amp will deliver and more.

I've owned many pairs of Dyns, but never either of the pairs you're thinking of, so my input is at best an educated guess. I think you'd find the 5.4 a much more flexible speaker, and probably a more "fun" speaker. It has the later driver set, and is much easier to drive. The C5 is, IMO, a classic design, and probably has the potential to be the more accurate speaker.

If you've never heard the C3's, you might look for a pair of those too - I have owned those (a couple of times) and I really love them at their used price. They wouldn't be as demanding in what it takes to get them "right" as the C5's, but would share many of the same virtues.

I had looked at the confidence 5's for awhile too and my understanding from Mike at Dynaudio US is that because of there woofer alignment and physical placement on the speaker, they tend to have a lighter bass presentation then most like. Seemingly lighter then the 3’s, especially if you listen to stuff like massive attack you will miss the bottom end. kthomas also makes a very good point in that they need a lot of juice as you do really with any dynaudio speaker. With the ones that I have had, 175w DNA1 was ok but the 300w DNA2 was much much better! You will probably be much happier with the ported design of the 5.4.

IMO C5 is much better speaker than S5.4.Not even close.
To my ears C5 is even better than new C2 as I had a chance to compare them side by side.Agree that you need at least 250W
to drive them properly.
Hope this helps.

C5's are a classic and are near state of the art regardless of price. That is why you rarely see them for sale, I own a pair purchased in 2002, one of the last pair made, the C2, C4, were already on the market.

The speaker reproduces music, the bottom end goes low enough for 90% of the music recorded, and if there truly is bottom end of a recording, you will feel it.

The bass is not boomy, fat or forward, it is defined, tight and quick, now to some that may make it sound weak, but that is not the case.

That mid-range is out of this world, so coherent; in fact, the whole speaker is coherent. The speaker just sounds “right”. Elegant in design and fits into any room décor.

Only speaker I might replace my with would be the new Sapphire. I never thought the C2, or C4 were better then my 5’s or worth the cost, the Sapphire I might have in the market again, perhaps for the last time.

I wish you luck finding a pair of C5's, to me they be worth any asking price, they are a bargain when compared to speakers today that cost double the price of my C5's.

First of all, I would like to thank all 4 of you for your input, even if it left me somewhat confused.
I didn't reply immediatly because, shortly after our email exchange, I was given the opportunity to listen to a pair of Confidence 5, which I did a couple of days ago. I spent 3 hours listening to a variety of music.
From everyone's comments, I was expecting to hear a fantastic speaker with unmatched coherence... This was exactly the case... What an experience...Everything sounded true, exactly like phillib said: "state of the art," for 90% of the music... In the end, though, I really felt I was missing the bottom end for music like Tricky or Massive Attack. Even though I could feel the very lower end sometimes, I felt the speakers would drasticly cut off anything that could make the cabinet vibrate and colour the sound. At the end, just before leaving, I made this comment to my host very diplomaticly and to my surprise, he replied: "I know exactly what you are saying; I feel the same frustration regarding some of the music I listen to..."

He drives his Dyns with an YBA amplifier (170 Watts in 4 ohms I think), which makes me wonder if this has anything to do with the leanness in the very lower bass.
Anyway, we will be listening to them again in a month or so, with the addition of a Dynaudio Confidence sub to see what kind of match this could be... I will let you know a little more then.

CD player: Linn Ikemi
Preamp : YBA

Regards,

Franklinn