My Tannoy Upgrade - as recommended by Paul @ Reference Fidelity Components

[mikeyb]

amp back then.. thats good

Yip just collected it an hour ago and all plumbed in. Still no idea what was wrong as no paperwork came back from the distributor who is main repair centre for these.

No doubt a bill will appear in the New Year lol

[killie99]

How are you getting on with the new crossovers and improved cabs?

[Macca]

I am also interested to know.


Maybe not had much time to listen with it being Christmas and that.

[Wakefield Turntables]

Mike, system looks great but I'd experiment with speaker placement. It might be an idea to push your main rack as far back as you can against the back wall and maybe fetch the speakers forward a few inches. You might improve your soundstage. I have the same problem in that my listening room is not wide (less than 3 meters) and I have a large rack which nearly equals my Tannoy speaker cab height. This is not ideal, so I'm trying to reconfigure and lower my rack height, I'm hopeful that this may improve stereo imaging. This is one of the downsides of small rooms and large speaker cabs . Maybe you already have a great soundstage but I thought I'd share some thoughts!!!!

[Roy S]

Yes, I'd be interested to, thinking of updating the crossovers in my Ardens (they came with replacement crossovers which, for whatever reason, were never fitted) but they're sounding so good with the new cdt/dac/amp combination I might just leave them alone.

[cuddles]

Mike, so how are they sounding? I'm betting you're too busy listening to find time to give us your thoughts

[Wakefield Turntables]

He's probably got a 12" long beard and lost several stones in weight due to not coming out of his listening room for several months!!

[struth]

Still burning

[mikeyb]

Ok, sorry I've not updated before now, I was still having amp issues up until about the beginning of last week when I discovered that all that was wrong with it was a poorly driver valve grrrr. Mind you took a few days swapping around to identify the valve in question as my amp has 8 power valves and 6 x 12au7s for the gain/driver side.

Just a pity the distributors technician hadn't told the shop what was wrong, might have saved me a ton of grief and frustration. The shop received no info as to what the issue was at all so that wasn't a great help.

Never mind, amp is back on track.

Right, the crossovers....

Once I'd actually sat down to listen properly, I didn't like them at all, this was to be expected, Paul had told me to give them about 15 hours or so to burn in. Initially they sounded bass light, this I was told was normal until a few hours had passed. He wasn't wrong, after a couple of days they really came on song.

I had already taken Rextons advice about bringing the speakers slightly more forward to avoid the rack. Paul had funnily enough emailed me to say the exact same thing

First thing I noticed with the bass was that bass guitar sounded more real, the notes sounded more like you would expect to sound like when a string was plucked if that makes sense.

Vocals sounded better, I'd lost the edge I sometimes had when things got a little loud, perfect just what I was hoping for.

Soundstage was better, wider, deeper although that was no doubt also helped by slight adjustment in speaker position too.

I could hear individual instruments a lot clearer, and I could place them better in the mix rather than just in front of me, I sometimes hear instruments a lot nearer and wider than I did before.

Worthy upgrade?

Well I would say definitely for me anyway. Now I know that maybe sounds like the speakers were crap before, they weren't, Tony and Brian have heard my system prior to the crossover changes and really rated it especially on vinyl. Both with differing tastes, I trust their views.

I'll need to invite them back to hear the system now, different pre amp ( which I'm still looking to replace ) so that will be an interesting listen for them to see if I've improved that side or not. I think so, but it's still not perfect, the little Velleman struggles when pushed to 11, but it has more drive and dynamics than the TVC I used previously.

Not a cheap upgrade for sure but the uplift in sound quality and with the quality of the workmanship, if you have a set of Tannoys it's definitely worth doing. Bear in mind that Paul does several options price wise, I went for the top of his range, mainly because I thought buy once and no need to look at them again.

Be interesting to hear a standard pair next to mine.

I'm pretty sure even just doing the work I did following Paul's advice with the cabinets makes a big difference, Paul's crossovers take them even further. Unless we move house or we end up broke these Berkeleys are going nowhere

I'll give you one indicator as to how much I've enjoyed the upgrades, I've hardly been gaming on my PC since they've been done, and let me tell you I can game 6-8 hours a day, the counter I use for my stylus has taken a hammering

[jandl100]

Phew - that's a relief!

I was wondering if you were having a "Shit, what have I done?" moment.

Paul@RFC knows his stuff, even I (a Tannoy hater) can find his modded Tannoys listenable!

Irritating about the amp, though - hopefully it's all now sorted.