Which Tannoys, folks?

[Reffc]

Hi Paul,



That isn't my experience of using 15" Tannoys in Lockwood cabinets. See below, later. I just use them in an ordinary (pretty small) room, and they sound fantastic! 10" drivers just sound 'small' and lacking in heft, in comparison.



That's a shame, not that your Turnberrys aren't great, but I'm almost certain that the Lockies (with 15" HPDs) wouldn't have been overkill in your room, as they aren't in mine - and my room's smaller than yours!

The Lockwoods work best right up against the rear wall, and you can put them into corners too, with no bass boom whatsoever; in fact they will boom if you place them out into the room - it's the way that the cabinets are designed.

Lockwoods (with 15" Monitor Golds) in situ, chez-moi (not a big room, by any means. Incidentally, behind the white door is a cupboard, it's not the entrance to the room):





...yet, although the room is small, they sound stunning in there. My listening position is only about 3m away from the speakers!


And in situ at the Wigwam show at Scalford Hall, as part of the AoS system:








That was a big room, and even in there, they sounded best placed in a similar position as I use them in at home... Trust me, you must try a pair some time, Paul, as I guarantee that you'll love them and they'll work just fine in your room. You don't have to restrict yourself to 10" drivers

Marco.

Interesting Marco. The Lockwoods are very large cabs and as we already have a lot of furniture in the room, it would have been a tight squeeze to get them in. My experiences previously were with a pair of Horning Agathon Ultimates in which each speaker housed two 12 inch drivers. I could never quite tame the boom which is also down to the room dimensions and layout, although since then I have added some room treatment which has improved things.

I'm pretty happy with the Turnberrys TBH. They're very domestically acceptable and simply get better the more running in they've had. The addition of the stands has made a big improvement.

[Marco]

No worries, matey.

I totally get the big cablinets/lots of furniture thing (domestic acceptability), and that's an important consideration, but in terms of allowing the Lockwoods to work, sonically, I'm pretty sure that you'd have no problems.

The only issue might be if you live in a modern house, with square-ish rooms and thin walls, but if you have nice solid walls and an irregular-shaped room (to break up standing waves), like mine (I also have oak beams helping, too), then you should be fine.

Just a thought if you're ever tempted to try some of the 'big boy' Tannoys!

Marco.

[wiicrackpot]

Just a thought if you're ever tempted to try some of the 'big boy' Tannoys!

Marco.

Wid'yee stoap it Marco San !!, ya forever trying tae disturb others domestic harmony aren't ya.

Joking apart you are very lucky you've got a man cave for you hobby, something many of us don't/never will have the luxury of,
one thing amazes me is how some on here and other fora's have such beautiful rooms that lets their system breath,
great thread been enjoying it all the way through.

[Marco]

Lol... I can assure you that if we ever move house, the No1 priority would be finding one with the right room to put the system into!

Fortunately, I'm lucky to have a wife who would agree...

Aside from the Lockwoods, upstairs in the 'man cave', as you call it, we've also got a pair of Celestion Ditton 66 Studio Monitors, like this:





(Picture taken from the AoS room at Scalford Hall two years ago)


...downstairs in the lounge (fed from the system upstairs), so with simply a quick change of speaker cable, we also have superb sound in the lounge, and the Celestions offer an nice alternative, musically, to the Tannoys.

Marco.

[DSJR]

It's amazing you know, when I was changing gear back in the 80's, I never considered some Ditton 66's, despite the fact that they'd have gone perfectly in my small bedroom/listening room. Maybe I thought they were good but out-classed, I don't know, or more likely, the fact that so few came up for sale back then. We did have some 551's and 661's traded in, and they sounded really, really nice, but the cabs and grilles were tatty on both and the fact that Celestion had only just run out of tweeter dome assemblies sort of put me off

[Reffc]

I always liked the Ditton 66's. A cracking set of 'speakers by any standards and well worth searching out used.

My listening room is being slowly cleared now and a new carpet recently down has helped things quite a bit:



For scale, the acoustic panels behind the speaks are a little larger than Lockwood major cabs in frontal area! (also that screen for reference is a 42 inch screen). These are sometimes lifted out during music sessions and one placed in front of the flat screen, the other on the RHS mid way to the listener

[tannoyman]

Hi Paul

What a very nice room. The Tannoys fit beautifully in terms of size.

Am I right in thinking that the speaker axes cross in front of the listening position? If so does that help the imaging?

David

[Reffc]

Hi David

thank you. Yes, at present the speakers cross just in front of the listener as I'm still experimenting with positioning. I sometimes turn them so they only have about 5 degrees of toe-in and depending on what's playing they can sound pretty good that way too. They're roughly 8 feet apart at the minute. I'm selling the sofa in the picture and smaller fabric sofa's are coming soon (yup...I'm changing furniture to help with room acoustics!) following which I'd like to try a more near-field listening position within 2m of the speaker plane as this is where the sound stage seems to open up into an astonishingly believable image.

[Marco]

Nice, Paul. I'm sure it sounds fab!

Have you ever thought of putting your gear where the TV is, and the TV where your kit is now, but angled out into the room slightly, so you could see it from your sitting position?

That way, you'd remove the negative effect the TV (and the other 'gubbins') there is having on imaging (and the sound in general), and you'd also be able to shorten your speaker cable substantially, which would also improve the sound, and give you even better results than you're getting at the moment.

Ideally, you don't want anything sitting in between the speakers, but if you had your kit (and racks) there, you could put them behind the front plane of the speakers, so that imaging wouldn't be affected. I'm sure that the cumulative effect of doing that would be sonically beneficial - dunno, though, about domestically!

Just a thought....

Marco.

[hifi_dave]

Kit between the speakers has a huge negative affect on the sound. You need to move the speakers forward, or the gear back. Another thing I have often done when installing a system, is to drape a blanket or duvet over the equipment/TV. Might look crap but sounds a whole heap better.