@smodtactical
I owned the Contour 60’s for about a year. 12 x 17 room, 9 foot ceiling. Concrete floors with carpet and padding overneath. Dedicated listening room. GIK bass traps in all corners, treated etc.
They are good, not great. I like them leaps and bounds over the entire Persona Series.
Pros - Bass, and gobs of it. I like bass, and I even plugged a port (that was even in a treated room). It’s good quality bass also. Not the absolute tightest, but it’s punchy and gobs of it.
Neutral, yet with detail. Esotar Tweeter, it’s great.
Natural sounding, can be played very loud without compression, won’t hurt you at louder levels.
Cons - Soundstage is not the largest, I found myself constantly trying to get them to sound "Bigger" outside the edges (I like a real big soundstage, maybe even slightly exaggerated).
Break- In - First new speaker I’ve owned that I felt broke in.
Power - ignore the efficiency rating, they want current.
Speakers I was able to directly compare them to: (in the same store, or in my own home).
Salk Soundscape 8 - Dyns have better bass, Salks do the mids and highs a bit better, if you leave the back open the Salks soundstage is bigger. If you like running your subs with your mains, and blend them well - the Salks might be a better combo. If you want your mains to sound good and pound, the Dyns are very very good at that pricepoint.
Golden Ear Triton 1 - Dyns are better in the mids and highs, GE has a slightly bigger soundstage. Dyns look better (eye of beholder). Dyns need a LOT more power than the GE’s. Both can pound, Dyn’s have better defined bass.
Vandersteen Treo CT... tough call. Vandersteen has better mids and highs, and the bass they have is more defined, but the Dyns can out slam them any day of the week.
IF you want your mains to pound, for under 10k, new or used, with solid mids and highs (and not be more than say 5ish years old, my tier one would be...
Dyn Contour 60’s
Golden Ear - pick of the litter...
Ohm Walsh 5000’s - I REALLY like these for the money - incredible value, do things other speakers really struggle with (huge soundstage), and great bass. But, they are unique.
Legacy Signature and Focus SE series - (new or used)
JBL 4367 - won’t go as low as all of the above, but they can pound midbass on up.
Salk Soundscape 10/12 (used, tough to find, need power) - These might be my favorites. But really hard to find as they are out of production. They have the same/better highs than the soundscape 8’s, but have deep, defined, punchy accurate bass.
I like Rock, Blues and Reggae primarily. I like bass, and I tend to listen loud. I don’t like integrating my subwoofer with my mains though.
I think the Contour 60’s are better than the Triton 1’s, but I’ve not heard the 1R’s. I think the Legacy Focus SE is pretty similar to the Contour 60’s and Tritons with the overall package.
The Ohm Walsh 4000’s/5000’s - unique, but do some things just incredibly well with a huge soundstage, great coherance, no compression. But, more room dependent in some ways, but yet more tolerant in others.
4367 - Great Rock speaker
A speaker I recently demo'd you might like - Salk SS9.5 - similar midrange to the Contour 60, VERY smooth for a BE tweeter, better defined bass than the Contour 60, but not quite as much. Big soundstage. It's a really good speaker (with incredible finish options)
Soundscape 10/12 - Best overall speaker of all of the above IMO, but rare, out of production (though Jim Salk support is great), accurate but needs power.
