The C1's have a 3" voice coil and they use aluminum wire which is extremely light in weight. Therefore they are very 'fast' and natural sounding to me when compared to the traditional driver. I power my C1's with a Bryston B100. At moderate listening levels I think they it sounds great. At high levels it sounds great too BUT I know from being at my Dyn dealer more power will make them go even louder and still sound fantastic.
They really like high current so don't always look at watts. What I mean is the entry level Naim integrated at 50 watts sounds louder than my 100 bryston watts. At my dealer we paired up that same entry level naim with the sapphires and all I can saw is WOW. That being said I will admit I bought the bryston B100 before I ever heard of Dynaudio. So if you really like loud then more power is something you want and again at high levels I would think you would get closer to the 'impact' you are speaking of. It's pretty hard to pressurize a room with 6.9" drivers. I do have a REL B3 for a sub and a concern I did have was the bass from the Rel seemed slow. It just didn't seem to match up very well UNTIL I upgraded the Rel cable. I had Nordost make me a baseline sub cable to the 'Rel spec'. Now all lower tones blend in very well.
At 1 time considered upgrading to the C2's and my dealer let me demo his C2's in my home for a week. My first impression was WOW but found they were hard to position in my house for the best overall sound. My room is very strange (26' X 12') and I have to listen near field. After a few days I put the C1's back and for me everything was more focused. My dealer has a better room for listening and the C2's really kick butt at his place and the C4's are even better. So the room does have a huge impact of how they will sound.
If you are serious about the C1's ask the dealer if you can demo them in your home with your equipment. A side note if you do get new C1's be forewarned they will sound great out of the box but between 150 and 200 hrs you will ask yourself why did I just spend 7k for these. From there will will get much better. I had what I considered a flaw in the cabinets on the first pair so I did 'break in' 2 pairs. Between 300 and 400 hrs is what they need to be fully broken in.
They really like high current so don't always look at watts. What I mean is the entry level Naim integrated at 50 watts sounds louder than my 100 bryston watts. At my dealer we paired up that same entry level naim with the sapphires and all I can saw is WOW. That being said I will admit I bought the bryston B100 before I ever heard of Dynaudio. So if you really like loud then more power is something you want and again at high levels I would think you would get closer to the 'impact' you are speaking of. It's pretty hard to pressurize a room with 6.9" drivers. I do have a REL B3 for a sub and a concern I did have was the bass from the Rel seemed slow. It just didn't seem to match up very well UNTIL I upgraded the Rel cable. I had Nordost make me a baseline sub cable to the 'Rel spec'. Now all lower tones blend in very well.
At 1 time considered upgrading to the C2's and my dealer let me demo his C2's in my home for a week. My first impression was WOW but found they were hard to position in my house for the best overall sound. My room is very strange (26' X 12') and I have to listen near field. After a few days I put the C1's back and for me everything was more focused. My dealer has a better room for listening and the C2's really kick butt at his place and the C4's are even better. So the room does have a huge impact of how they will sound.
If you are serious about the C1's ask the dealer if you can demo them in your home with your equipment. A side note if you do get new C1's be forewarned they will sound great out of the box but between 150 and 200 hrs you will ask yourself why did I just spend 7k for these. From there will will get much better. I had what I considered a flaw in the cabinets on the first pair so I did 'break in' 2 pairs. Between 300 and 400 hrs is what they need to be fully broken in.