Tell me about Dunlavy

tomlinmgt

Lunatic Member
When I was somewhat early into this hobby I bought a pair of Electro Voice Interface C II's from a guy who was liquidating his collection of speakers...all of them pretty nice. I asked him why he was clearing the stable of all the nice stuff and he said "I've got a shot at some Dunlavy's". Like I said, I was pretty green (still am, really) and had never heard of Dunlavy so all I could figure was they must be pretty damn good if they're worth unloading about half dozen really nice speakers to buy one pair. Eventually I did a little research on the name, learned a bit about them and more or less dismissed them as I knew I'd likely not be able to justify spending that kind of money in the immediate future. Well, the immediate future has passed, a pair is available locally and I wouldn't have to sell off my entire collection to come up with the money to afford them. They are SC-IIIa's, which are the later generation Cantata, but I'd like to hear of listening experiences of any of the Dunlavy models, not necessarily just -IIIa's/Cantatas. I'm in the process of setting up an appointment to audition them but thought I'd try to get a little more background on them from you cats first.

- Michael
 
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I've heard the SC VI which is a monstrous set of speakers. Side-by-side the pair would probably be about the size of a phone booth. The sound was very impressive and very cohesive, especially considering the driver spread. The bass in particular was tight, accurate, and would jiggle your gizzard lose. Dunlavy used only 1st order filters in crossovers to keep things from getting spread out in the time domain. As far as I could tell, it worked.
 
stereocuuple has a pair, I am sure I spelled that wrong. They sure look impressive!

Evan, I saw you had replied and immediately thought to myself "oh shit, Evan's fixin' to bust my chops about considering a big purchase given our recent conversation". Thanks for holding back! :D
 
I loved the ones i heard...a guy had them that i sold my Swan F12's to, he was powering them with 500 watt McCormick mono blocks, he said that he always has the feeling that they are underpowered by his big McCormicks they did lack a bit dynamically ,which is Crazy because i've heard those very same Big boy Amps blow the roof off of another guys system with a pair Medowlark Blue Heron 2's...another 1st order time and phase coherant speaker, the Dunlavy's are beyond thirsty....
 
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...the Dunlavy's are beyond thirsty....

Not sure about the Cantata (SC-IIIa) but my SC-IV's are actually pretty efficient (91dB/W/m). I have them bi-amped with a Rogue Audio Stereo 90 Magnum (90W Ultra-Linear) driving the Highs and a McCormack DNA-0.5 (100wpc) driving the Low-end. Believe me when I say my SC-IV's will "rattle the windows" in my room. I'm actually working on taming the Bass right now!

The Cantata is rated at 90dB Sensitivity and this post makes note of this:

The speakers have a very natural, organic sound, which is what I favor. Bass in my room goes down below 30Hz and, as a sealed-box design, is taut and tuneful. I have driven these speakers with everything from a 10wpc Audio Note tube integrated to a slightly higher-powered PrimaLuna tube amp to very high-powered solid-state designs from PS Audio (BHK), Sanders Magtech, Hypex (DIY), Spectron and others. The Dunlavys made beautiful music with all of them, the differences being mainly in bottom-end weight and slam.
 
Dunlavy speakers were very placement sensitive. And even if you eventually optimized their placement, your listening position was very critical. Once you had them in the right room, with the right setup, they were spectacular. Incredible detail, soundstage, bass definition. Not everyone's cup of tea.

The designer, John Dunlavy, was one of the biggest critics of expensive speaker cables around. He embarrassed several audiophile magazine reviewers in his testing facilities, but he never published their names.
 
I heard a pair at a Winter CES show in Vegas and at a dealership one time. They weren't great for longer listing distances and the image could shift radically depending on your listening height. But as others have said if you are seated in a relatively close position with the speakers oriented and positioned properly, they were quite spectacular. There was something very special about Dunlavy for they rendered most recordings very accurately and believably. I found them to over emphasize harmonics and distortions in tracings from LP records. Tape his was over emphasized,too. But with high quality CD and direct to disc recordings the sound was just like being there.
 
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