Well, I’ll chime in a bit. I have the expert edition of the J25 Dynaten, bookshelf speaker. I really enjoy this speaker. It’s one of those speakers that have enough detail to scratch that analytical audiophile itch, but at the same time can pull you into the music and just let you enjoy listening. I won’t say it’s a flawless speaker but it has the fun factor down in spades, including the cool retro look.
My audio history includes a host of Magnepan iterations, ending with the 3.6s. What a great speaker that was. The ribbon tweeter was just glorious and they had such a huge soundstage. It was like having the musicians in your room. While I found the Maggie’s excellent for classical and jazz genres, they just didn’t do it for me for rock music. So I moved on to the Merlin VSM. The Merlin’s actually had a Magnepan kind of clarity, which was impressive for a box speaker, but they still didn’t quite have the grunt I was looking for considering my eclectic musical tastes. I took a break from audio for awhile and when I came back recently I started looking for a speaker that wouldn’t break the bank and would just let me forget about my system and just enjoy the music (I tend to over analyze the sound and then tweak my system to death). I read reviews of the Wharfdale Liinton Heritages and how musically engaging they were and thought this was the direction I wanted to go. I also considered the Zu DWX. On the other hand, I had always wanted to try a single driver speaker and started exploring Omegas. I knew I’d get the midrange magic from a single drivers but I wasn’t convinced they’d satisfy me with all the various genres I listen to (I listen to almost everything, though hip hop and rap not so much). I saw the Dynatens and was intrigued by the design and concept. It was a rash move when a pair of experts j25 popped up on sale and I just pulled the trigger. As with most Omega speakers, it’s almost impossible to audition in advance.
The expert edition is supposedly an upgrade from the standard model. I cannot compare those since I’ve never heard the standard model. The expert has the purple Seas woofer and Audax dome tweeter. To my knowledge, there’s no crossover on the woofer, and a capacitor on the tweeter that acts, I suppose, as a sort of high pass filter. I get the midrange magic of a single driver but with a lot more energy on the top end from having the tweeter. The Audax is a great tweeter. It’s not harsh or edgy. No, it’s not as smooth and extended as the Esotar tweeter of the Merlin’s, at least to my ear. And it’s not as lifelike as the ribbon tweeter of the Maggie’s, but it does the job intended and does it well. The tweeter can also be attenuated to suit listening taste (there’s a knob on the back to change the attenuation). So if you find it too bright, the brightness could be tamed a bit. To be candid, I have not extensively played with this feature. I set it to where it sounded good to me and then let it be.
The bass allegedly goes down to about 38 hz with the rear port unsealed (Omega provides a Nerf ball to seal the port if that’s preferred, giving a tighter bass but not as low). I find the bass to be quite tuneful and satisfying. I do think a subwoofer would be welcomed, but due to lack of space I have not have one at this time, nor do I feel a strong urge to add one…yet.
This Dynaten does exactly what I was looking for and a little more. It’s a very versatile speaker. It plays all of the genres of music I listen to quite well and engaging. It is also detailed enough to give my audiophile analytic brain a good workout; in other words, they are revealing. They do not overly soften the presentation—you can clearly hear all the nuances when you change upstream equipment, and bad recordings still sound bad (though I find such bad recordings more listenable on the Dynatens than either the Maggie’s or the Merlin’s).
I’m reluctant to give a full review of these speakers since I had them for a month in my old listening room but for the last 6 weeks I am now in a new much smaller home with no listening room and an incredibly acoustically challenged room without much space to work with. I’ve also added a DAC I hadn’t had before I moved so with so much new in the mix (new room and DAC), it’s a bit premature to draw solid conclusions. The best I can say is I am really enjoying them. They are not as life like as the Maggie’s, but I still can hear into the recordings and pickup on all the detail that’s there. I’ll repeat that I find them excellent for my versatile taste, but if you’re heavily into metal or rock you might want a touch more grunt and look elsewhere (I personally find the grunt good enough—they play Grateful Dead the most satisfying of all speakers I’ve owned—but I think I instinctively make some allowances since I listen to classical, jazz ensembles, folk, bluegrass and other Americana). Vocals sound excellent, and they have tremendous soundstage. The soundstage is not quite as large as the Maggie’s but it is quite wide and deep and each instrument and vocal holds there own place in space. The speaker sounds well damped and the overall dynamics are fast and snappy. It is still a box speaker, however, and my experience is there are often slight colorations that can come with box speakers. That said, I’m not hearing anything in the presentation that I find offensive; moreover, even if I did, it would be difficult to pinpoint the speaker as the source since there are certain anomalies to my new room where I listen. Additionally, Omega generally specializes in single drivers do when they had a tweeter I’m not really sure how they handle phase and time alignment issues. I personally don’t hear any, but I have no claim to having golden ears (plus I’m getting older and my hearing ain’t what it used to be) and others with better hearing may find they’re more sensitive to such variances. And, lastly, I feel, for full disclosure, I should add that the pair I purchased were a demo pair; so either the previous owner didn’t like them or couldn’t keep them for whatever reason (according to Omega, they were returned rather quickly suggesting other reasons rather dissatisfaction from the speaker). That said, I hope more people get a chance to hear this expert addition of the Dynatens J25. To my ears, this is a speaker worthy of much more attention, and provides a great deal of satisfaction at this price point. And if anyone else has heard it, I hope they can share their experiences as well.
My system: amp: Music Reference RM-10 (approx 30 wpc); preamp: Herron VSTP 1A; CDP: Lector 7t, DAC: Border Patrol SE-I. I should add that I am not using any audiophile grade speaker stands. The Dynatens sit on an old pair of Kenwood speakers about 18” high, but the Dynatens are decoupled using some Herbies Audio Tender Feet.
