Hi Dennis,
I started my Dynaudio journey with the Special 25's. Only problem was I always found them too forward in the midrange in my home. I tried various speaker cables, amps, different stands etc. I also then bought the little Contour SR's (which are meant to be surrounds) and found they had a much warmer balance, made vocals very pleasant, but nonetheless, I delegated them to surround duties (plus one as a centre, for how little I do home theatre stuff anyway). Then I ordered a pair of the large Contour S5.4's which have the 2 of the bass drivers in the S25 plus a midrange and the same Esotar tweeter as the S25. They sounded so much warmer in the mods as well, and the treble seemed to be a lot more refined as well. But they're bass is a bit much in my room, though I could use DEQX even in single amp mode to correct that. With both the S25 and the S5.4's I think the cabinets are also not quite solid enough and are contributing to the sound.
I think the main problem with the S25 is that perhaps an 8 inch driver shouldn't be made to do midrange duties. I was hoping that biamping them with DEQX (and having the DD15 sub) might bring them to the same vocal quality I get with the large S5'4s or even the small SR's, but I just can't get it to do that. I have thought of even making the 5.4's active (triamped), but the S25's were hard enough to get inside, having to take the tweeer out backwards, and the solder was so hard to melt to disconnect the drivers from the speaker wire. And that was with a metallurgist friend trying to do it for me.
THat's why I thought I should maybe just sell all I have and start afresh before butchering more speakers.
ANyway , off to tennis now.
Thanks for all the replies guys, its all very helpfull.