D’Von Audio SQ-20 Standmount Speakers
D’VON AUDIO SQ-20 STANDMOUNT LOUDSPEAKERS REVIEW
D’Von Audio SQ-20 standmount speakers are a relatively compact speaker from a brand-new manufacturer in the UK. The company caused quite the stir at the recent Bristol HiFi Show, so we thought we ought to get a pair to listen to. Jainne Elliot does the honours…
D’Von is a loudspeaker manufacturer that I had never heard of until I was kindly offered to review their Aurora SQ-20. This is always good when doing a review, as you have no preconceived opinions. The SQ-20 is a 2-way stand-mounter and the second biggest in what will soon be a range of four speakers in the Aurora series.
Run by Chris Priddle, their larger floorstanding SQ-30 and SQ-40 are not quite there yet, though the SQ-40 was shown to great acclaim at the Bristol Show in February 2026. With a name like D’Von, you’d think this company is from a warmer and more Eastern European climate, but it is actually a play on the word Devon, and all speakers are designed and built at the Exeter factory. Being heavily dyslexic, that is often how he used to spell the word at primary school, so an appropriate and personal name for the new company.
With such beautiful, silky-smooth cabinet construction with mitre-folded joints, it is no surprise that Chris has had a career for 23 years as a carpenter/joiner. His interest in HiFi, though, goes back to the age of 12 with his first Technics CD player. From building his own speakers at school, and then replacing those in his own HiFi system later in 2019, he has now turned this knowledge and interest into a business. His keenness to build loudspeakers to suit his musical tastes (“I like aggressive bass”) was apparent when I spoke to him, and also evident in my review; this is no Wharfedale Denton from the 70’s! Oh, and the “SQ” stands for “square edge”.
BUILD AND FEATURES OF D’VON SQ-20 LOUDSPEAKERS
With a claim that bass goes as low as 36Hz, I really wanted to give this speaker a listen to. Built from moisture resistant high-density Hidrófugo MDF (and not to be confused with Hidrofugal, which is a German deodorant manufacture, though the objective is still the same!), the SQ-20 cabinet features an internal T-brace and a clever damping system to suppress unwanted resonance.
The main 6” driver from SB Acoustics features a Rohacell® and carbon-fibre sandwiched cone to give it great stiffness and dampening. The tweeter is a 26mm soft dome from the same company, to give it great musicality in the higher frequencies. The crossover is built by Chris at the factory in Devon (using Jantzen Audio components) with 2nd Octave bass and 3rd octave treble filter, and kicks in very low at 2.1kHz, which initially gave me a great smile – I don’t generally like crossovers around 3-to-3.5kHz!
A single rhodium-plated speaker terminal is at the back, so no bi-wiring here.
The cabinet is available at different prices and is spray-painted. Available in Black, White, Birch Black (birch plywood front and Black sides and back), Birch white, Burgundy and Suit Blue, there are plenty of choices for your music room. The review sample was the Birch Black, which has shiny black sides and a thick birch front baffle, and really looked professional, despite being a well-used review sample. Indeed, it was actually one of the best “looking” speakers at this price point I have seen in my living room. I generally prefer a gorgeous wood veneer at the front rather than the sides, as when you are sitting down, you will be looking straight at it! Usually, speakers have veneer sides and a black front! Chris now uses higher-quality pure Italian paint, and he sounded excited about the new finish when I spoke with him. The birch ply layers are visible at the edges, like on several top loudspeaker manufacturers these days; no point in disguising a very sellable design. My home-built Garrard 301 turntable plinth from my youth was similarly built on very thick (3”) ply to keep that rigidity and weight. The baffle on the £2,650 SQ-20 is a generous 30mm thickness, and the rest of the box is 18mm.
Prices range from £2,500 to £2,650, depending on finish. The smaller SQ-10 is priced between £1,700 and £1,800.
The bottom of the review speaker has a felt pad at each corner so it doesn’t rest directly on your stand surface (if it’s big enough; this is a deep speaker). Indeed, the speaker comes with a choice of felt and gel feet (the latter is probably better if you have kids and cats!) plus a foam cylinder you can insert to “bung” the port to reduce that bass, and some lovely extras including a microfibre cloth to clean the cabinet or wash your face, and a spirit level “blob” to check your house is level!
With its 4-ohm loading, it can cope with 200W, so my Krell was on its best behaviour. 87dB/1m sensitivity is not an earth-shattering number, but I didn’t have any problems getting a big sound out of such a small 206mm x 391mm x 288mm box. Indeed, this is a big-sounding speaker. The loudspeakers can come complete with their £700-750 stands, also constructed from multi-layered Hidrófugo MDF, designed to form a solid stem to help reduce resonance.
SETUP AND USE
The setup was very easy once I could find a stand in the house that was the correct height for the tweeter. This is really vital to get a great sound from loudspeakers, and I have recently reviewed several floorstanding speakers where I was disappointed by the low position of the tweeter (perhaps that’s the reason for my bad back, having to duck down as low as I could!) I utilised my Krell KAV25a power amp (500W at 4-ohms) plus vinyl and digital sources. For most of the review, I didn’t use the supplied foam port plug to reduce the amazing bass by several dB. The connectors are of very good quality, and I didn’t use the magnetically-positioned curvy speaker grille except when the cat was nearby.
At 9.5kg, they are quite heavy speakers for their size, but the excellent construction meant these were extremely rigid.
SOUND QUALITY
That excellent construction and bracing meant that these speakers delivered more than their weight in terms of sound. Their claims to go down to 36Hz was deliverable from the very start of Elton John “Song for Guy”. I wanted to play this track because of the long piano chords which, for me always give a good insight into the quality of any speaker, amp or cable. As a musician with perfect pitch, my ears are very critical and I felt the piano just sounded a little too bright from the mid frequency chords, but had a brilliant depth to those lower notes. Indeed, that bass really does go low for such a small enclosure! The soundstage, too, was really good, especially with the percussion bell-tree glissandi and finger cymbals at the top end. Again, I felt the vocals had a very slight emphasis at the higher mid frequencies around 2kHz.
Turning to another wonderful piano work by Rachmaninov, the “Prelude” (Op. 23/No.2, Nikolai Lagansky), the performance was full on, with exceptional soundstage and an almost perfect response, which, for a first loudspeaker from the company, was mightily impressive (when I later tested the frequency response using pink noise, I was actually really impressed just how flat the waveform was!) After its fiery-fast start, the piece then slows down to my favourite type of relaxing Rach-style, and then ends just as it all began. There was great depth to the soundstage and no end to power from these speakers.
Changing the mood to “Sunflower” by Paul Weller with its distorted guitars, powerful bass guitar and energetic drums, it was only the bass guitar that I found wasn’t quite as controlled as I have heard it before. The short drum solo, though, shows plenty of depth, front to back, and with solid punch, making the music the central part of my attention at all times. This speaker deserves your attention. Chris likes loud music and admits to tuning the sound of the speakers to sound how he likes it. And why not? His goal was to immerse the listener in the music, and he certainly achieves it. Similarly, that powerful drum and synth near the start of “In the Shadows” (Amy Stroup) really kept me pinned to my seat.
However, even quieter and more relaxed classical music, like Schumann’s “Romance” (Op. 94) for piano and violin, or his “Violin Concerto” (Midori Goto playing the violin), showed that there was still plenty of musicality and delicacy carefully assembled for my listening pleasure.
Similarly, minimalist American composer Steve Reich and his new “Jacob’s Ladder” and “Traveler’s Prayer” – the latter (a religious work about travelling to the next life, at a time perhaps when we all worried about our future) written during Covid, are very personal thoughts of the composer in his 90’s reaching nearer to the end of his own life. With massive and varied instrumentation and vocals, the speakers really tuned well in to each instrument, with very fast transients and a very uncoloured, natural sound, helped by the very rigid bass/mid driver. The work is very “refined” and typical of a lot of composers/groups as they get much older in life; think Mark Knopfler and Ray Davies as two examples. Mark’s “Ahead of the Game” and other tracks in his later albums takes him well away from his early roots into country and western style, here sounding very authoritative with his deep chesty voice. Ray Davies’ 2017 album ‘Americana’ has songs that are similarly very “Wild West” in style. This is a brilliantly engineered album (played on Bluesound Node via Qobuz) with lots of vocals and great acoustic-guitar sounds that come across so well from these speakers. “Rock and Roll Cowboys” really gives a chance to pick up his distinctive vocal style, with acoustic guitar and other instruments ‘forward’ and his vocals perfectly balanced in level but ‘behind’ the speakers. That gorgeous “lispy” voice again illustrated to me a very slightly raised mid at a little below 2kHz.
Turning to vinyl, and again Ray Davies, “Vietnam Cowboys” (from ‘Workman’s Café’), another country and western style album, the amount of detail and bass weight from my Ortofon Kontrapunkt b cartridge/Manley Steelhead phonostage illustrated to me immediately that analogue is still better than digital. However, that bass was just too overpowering at times. Putting in the port foam bung, however, just took away too much of the bass. In my tests I felt the port was sounding at around 48Hz, but when I extended the length of the port tubing (the port is not just a hole, but rather a tuned tube to create the best frequency to control the bass from the woofer and to extend that bass) by adding to the length with a rolled up HiFi magazine I could reduce the port glare and lowered that frequency by 3Hz and its intensity, too.
Despite my comments above (and thankfully, listening to speakers when designing them is much more important than any test result), I actually really enjoyed listening to the SQ-20, and am eager to hear the 30 and 40 when they come out. Hopefully, there will even be an SQ-50 as well.
Pat Metheny’s ‘Road to the Sun’ Part 4, 5, and 6 (side C) has lots of special effects from this “solo” guitar album (including Pat’s own amazing 42-string – yes, I did say 42 – guitar). I chose to play this album due to my comments about the port and mid frequencies. This album includes fingernails running along the metal-wound strings plus knuckle-banging the wood (with lots of natural reverb coming out of the guitar sound holes). This double-LP really is a test of your speakers and highly entertaining! With 4-ohm speakers and 500WRMS from my Krell powerhouse (I was very careful), I really was impressed with the performance from the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet plus Pat Metheny.
The sound is very listenable for long periods in all that I played, one of Chris’s objectives, and I was surprised just how well the sound behaved in all that I played; all that detail and energy would make you think the speakers would vibrate to the touch, but these speaker cabinets are brilliantly well-damped.
After talking of power and energy from the music, I finished my musical expedition with my favourite (and lesser known) Clannad album ‘Macalla’. It opens with a group of male voices with tons of echo to test the bass, and is followed by lots of percussion, including, again, bell-trees and small hand cymbals to test the top end. This is a great album to relax and forget about your hard day in the office, and it gave me a chance to contemplate what a great journey I had just been on.
QUIBBLES
What a fantastic speaker from a new manufacturer! Just the port intensity slightly spoiled my musical voyage.
CONCLUSION
This loudspeaker has one of the most professionally built cabinets and a sound that belies its small dimensions, which I have heard at this price point. So many speaker cabinets look like they are mass-produced in a Chinese factory, but these look like they were curated with love, and their sound, with magic. From the depths of the lowest frequencies to its extended but smoothed off top above 20kHz from the soft dome speaker, this is a loudspeaker manufacturer I really want to keep my eye on. Playing all types of music with both conviction and delicacy, it will suit someone who really loves their music and their room décor. With such adult behaviour from an infant speaker, the SQ-20 gets Five Hearts.
AT A GLANCE
Build Quality and Features:
Brilliantly constructed and solidly engineered
Sound Quality:
Excellent depth to the bass and musical top end
Value For Money:
£2,650 isn’t entry point, but this speaker warrants serious listening to if you love your bass and not your neighbours.
We Loved:
Beautiful looks
Excellent extension to bass
Good top roll-off at highest frequencies
Detail and conviction
Overall, a very flat frequency response
We Didn’t Love So Much:
That bass port is very good!
A slight upper mid emphasis around 2kHz
Elevator Pitch Review: Yet another loudspeaker hits the UK scene. Times are so different to the 1960’s and 70’s, when you could have named the manufacturers on your hands and a few of your toes. So, anything new to the block needs to be special, and boy, is the D’Von SQ-20 mighty. This 2-way rear-ported loudspeaker sounds really big and all from such a little box.
With a European-sounding name, this great-looking and sounding stand-mounter is actually built in Devon (D’Von, get it…?) by an ex-carpenter and joiner, and now loudspeaker manufacturer, who certainly can see the wood for the trees.
Price: £2500-2650
Janine Elliot
SUPPLIED SPECIFICATIONS
2-way
26mm soft dome tweeter
6″ Woofer
4 Ohms (3.7 Ohms min)
2,100Hz Crossover Frequency
87db/2.83v sensitivity
36Hz – 21kHz in room response
40-200 Watts recommended amplifier
48Hz port tuning
18mm cabinet wall
30mm front baffle
Weight 9.5 kg each
Speaker grills included
Port plugs included
W 206mm H 391mm D 288mm + 31mm binding post
Shipping Weight 22kg Total
