montesquieu
31-12-2011, 18:17
I've been on a bit of a journey with the Tannoys lately which I think might be worth sharing ...
I'm running 15in Monitor Golds, in GRF cabinets, and have been looking at a number of options to improve the sound. The usual Tannoy sound is big, bold and round, capable of great emotion and huge dynamic swings, but sometimes can be a little grainy or coarse - I've always wondered whether this was mainly down to the electronics, or to some other part of the design.
First off, I had some improved crossovers done, made from high-quality bits, especially the inductors and the larger-vale caps. This made a big difference in clarity and I can recommend this course of action to any Tannoy owner. However, they still left a little grainyness and coarseness.
An accident with my drivers - a Krell KSA50 went DC on one channel, causing the coil to over heat and the paper to burn away like the map at the start of Bonanza (showing my age here!) - meant a trip to Lockwood Audio and a recone for both sides (thankfully there was no coil damage done).
Next step was the cabinets. My GRFs were a fairly poor DIY job - was almost embarrassed to show them to Speedysteve when he came round, as they were well short of the quality of his GRF builds. Ply tops and sides but chipboard rear, wobbly horn bits and poor damping made for a speaker far more boomy than they were supposed to be. However a trip up to Russ Collinson in Barnsley (that's a 200 mile schlep from here) was well worth it, in addition to refinishing, he bonded ply onto chipboard panels where they had been used instead of ply, and added a whole loads of struts and supports to stop internal resonances. The result has been almost like a totally new speaker (aurally and visually) - the whole thing is far tighter, images more solid, and generally more coherent over the whole range.
The next step has been to bi-amp - the new crossovers together with Russ's putting them in external boxes, made it easier to achieve separate amping of the channels. I'm currently using a 30w push-pull triode KT88 valve amp to power the 15in bass unit, and a 2.5w 2A3 to power the treble unit. This has made far more difference than I anticipated, got rid of much of the grainyness in the treble and also cleaned up the upper midrange and put in a ton of extra detail and dynamics which I'm sure is magic woven by the 2A3 on that upper treble. (I've found that the 15in cone needs a push-pull amp just to manage all that back EMF - even really good, high-power SET amps like the Unison S8 845 I used to have go squishy handling 15in Tannoy bass - but the 2in driver simply blooms with a low-power SET).
So I'm pretty happy now with what I'm hearing, with all those Tannoy virtues added to a much cleaner, more dynamic presentation than ever before, though short of (say) the absolute transparency of a pair of ESL 57s. I could list lots of hifi words and attributes, but the overall sense is one of effortless detail, and musicality that just commands sympathetic rhythm in the listener's body. String quartets really boogie - what more can you say?
But the next step is going fully active - this in two steps. I've borrowed a Behringer DCX 2496, which digitises and manipulates the incoming signal from the preamp and acts as a crossover outputting appropriate frequencies for the 15in and 2in drivers - I plan to figure this out over the coming week or so and have a play. This should enable me to properly test out the 'active' concept, though I don't see that as a long-term solution as it seems hardly worthwhile paying a premium for really good tube phono stage, DAC and preamp, only to digitise the output before the power section of the amp.
The Tannoy crossover curve is well-documented, and Nick 'Lurcher' is currently building me a fully discrete, stand-alone electronic crossover which will allow me to go properly active through my respective amps for 15 and 2in, and gain-match from there. Anticipated gains from that are are simply to maximise detail retrieval including room ambiance, along with the best possible dynamics, while not compromising the musical feel. If this isn't achieved - then anything I've done is reversible.
Beyond that who knows ... stereo tapped horns to take the first few octaves up to 100hz perhaps? (that very bottom octave below 20-40hz is obviously a target to improve overall realism).
What I do know is that my experience already suggests that whatever fancy cabinets the Tannoys are put in, the electronics feeding the drivers may be compromising the sound, a lesson any Tannoy owner should take note of.
Anyway musings over, would appreciate others' experiences on alternative approaches to getting the best out of Tannoys.
I'm running 15in Monitor Golds, in GRF cabinets, and have been looking at a number of options to improve the sound. The usual Tannoy sound is big, bold and round, capable of great emotion and huge dynamic swings, but sometimes can be a little grainy or coarse - I've always wondered whether this was mainly down to the electronics, or to some other part of the design.
First off, I had some improved crossovers done, made from high-quality bits, especially the inductors and the larger-vale caps. This made a big difference in clarity and I can recommend this course of action to any Tannoy owner. However, they still left a little grainyness and coarseness.
An accident with my drivers - a Krell KSA50 went DC on one channel, causing the coil to over heat and the paper to burn away like the map at the start of Bonanza (showing my age here!) - meant a trip to Lockwood Audio and a recone for both sides (thankfully there was no coil damage done).
Next step was the cabinets. My GRFs were a fairly poor DIY job - was almost embarrassed to show them to Speedysteve when he came round, as they were well short of the quality of his GRF builds. Ply tops and sides but chipboard rear, wobbly horn bits and poor damping made for a speaker far more boomy than they were supposed to be. However a trip up to Russ Collinson in Barnsley (that's a 200 mile schlep from here) was well worth it, in addition to refinishing, he bonded ply onto chipboard panels where they had been used instead of ply, and added a whole loads of struts and supports to stop internal resonances. The result has been almost like a totally new speaker (aurally and visually) - the whole thing is far tighter, images more solid, and generally more coherent over the whole range.
The next step has been to bi-amp - the new crossovers together with Russ's putting them in external boxes, made it easier to achieve separate amping of the channels. I'm currently using a 30w push-pull triode KT88 valve amp to power the 15in bass unit, and a 2.5w 2A3 to power the treble unit. This has made far more difference than I anticipated, got rid of much of the grainyness in the treble and also cleaned up the upper midrange and put in a ton of extra detail and dynamics which I'm sure is magic woven by the 2A3 on that upper treble. (I've found that the 15in cone needs a push-pull amp just to manage all that back EMF - even really good, high-power SET amps like the Unison S8 845 I used to have go squishy handling 15in Tannoy bass - but the 2in driver simply blooms with a low-power SET).
So I'm pretty happy now with what I'm hearing, with all those Tannoy virtues added to a much cleaner, more dynamic presentation than ever before, though short of (say) the absolute transparency of a pair of ESL 57s. I could list lots of hifi words and attributes, but the overall sense is one of effortless detail, and musicality that just commands sympathetic rhythm in the listener's body. String quartets really boogie - what more can you say?
But the next step is going fully active - this in two steps. I've borrowed a Behringer DCX 2496, which digitises and manipulates the incoming signal from the preamp and acts as a crossover outputting appropriate frequencies for the 15in and 2in drivers - I plan to figure this out over the coming week or so and have a play. This should enable me to properly test out the 'active' concept, though I don't see that as a long-term solution as it seems hardly worthwhile paying a premium for really good tube phono stage, DAC and preamp, only to digitise the output before the power section of the amp.
The Tannoy crossover curve is well-documented, and Nick 'Lurcher' is currently building me a fully discrete, stand-alone electronic crossover which will allow me to go properly active through my respective amps for 15 and 2in, and gain-match from there. Anticipated gains from that are are simply to maximise detail retrieval including room ambiance, along with the best possible dynamics, while not compromising the musical feel. If this isn't achieved - then anything I've done is reversible.
Beyond that who knows ... stereo tapped horns to take the first few octaves up to 100hz perhaps? (that very bottom octave below 20-40hz is obviously a target to improve overall realism).
What I do know is that my experience already suggests that whatever fancy cabinets the Tannoys are put in, the electronics feeding the drivers may be compromising the sound, a lesson any Tannoy owner should take note of.
Anyway musings over, would appreciate others' experiences on alternative approaches to getting the best out of Tannoys.