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Tannoy Kensington Gold Reference

S

Singslinger

pfm Member
I'm considering the purchase of the above speakers for my hall, which is roughly 18 x 20 feet.

Amplification/source would likely be the Devialet 400/Marantz NA-11S1/Oppo BDP-95.

Feedback/opinions welcome, thanks in advance.
 
Remember to set with extreme toe-in with the drive unit centre lines crossing about 4 foot in front of the listening position. I have never heard better speakers than my Kensingtons. If they are new then they take a VERY long time to run in.

Nic P
 
Nic P said:
Remember to set with extreme toe-in with the drive unit centre lines crossing about 4 foot in front of the listening position. I have never heard better speakers than my Kensingtons. If they are new then they take a VERY long time to run in.

Nic P
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Interestingly, I've never tried my Tannoys with extreme toe-in. What benefits does this bring?
 
ToTo Man said:
Interestingly, I've never tried my Tannoys with extreme toe-in. What benefits does this bring?
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The manual told me to do this. I was doubtful and tried other toe-in angles, but the Tannoy recommendation brought the sound together brilliantly. In particular the soundstage was much better.

Another recommendation I have is to play without the speaker grilles.

Nic P
 
Nic P said:
The manual told me to do this. I was doubtful and tried other toe-in angles, but the Tannoy recommendation brought the sound together brilliantly. In particular the soundstage was much better.

Another recommendation I have is to play without the speaker grilles.

Nic P
Click to expand...

Thanks for that Nic P. I'm auditoning the speakers on Monday and if they're anything like the D-700 which I lived with and thoroughly enjoyed for 17 years, I'm sure they'll find their way to my home soon!
 
Singslinger said:
Thanks for that Nic P. I'm auditoning the speakers on Monday and if they're anything like the D-700 which I lived with and thoroughly enjoyed for 17 years, I'm sure they'll find their way to my home soon!
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I had the D-700 for several years, one of the best passive speakers I've owned. Then I tried the Turnberry SE. Hated them!
 

Hello everyone,

My name is Uli Behringer, CEO of MUSIC; parent company of Tannoy, Midas, Klark Teknik, Lab Gruppen, Lake, Turbosound, and several other leading brands.

First of all I like to thank you for your honest comments and the passion with which you write. I truly respect how much you care about the brand, its history and especially the people behind Tannoy. I also fully understand the sensitivities this announcement has created and the potential consequences it has for the affected people.

To be perfectly clear I am here to listen and answer your questions in an open and honest way. As the Founder and CEO I am the first one to stand up and accept responsibility. I will try to answer your questions where I can and respond with facts, but also leave out the ones where I can’t contribute in a meaningful way. All I ask is that we engage one another in a polite and respectful manner to make this a useful discussion.

Allow me to offer some facts.

Around one year ago we acquired the TC Group, which among other brands, included Tannoy and its Scottish manufacturing facility. During this year, we spent much time analyzing the performance of the company and its future outlook. Opposite to some statements here, the Scottish entity is losing substantial money and I am sure you will understand that it is paramount that a company runs profitably in order to be able to pay wages, cover operational cost and simply survive. It became clear that in order to save the brand in this heavily competing market, and in particular on the residential side of the business, fundamental changes would be required. We are currently entering a so called “consultation period” where all options are discussed together with the employees and the union, which means no final decision has been reached.

It want you to understand how much we all love the Tannoy brand, its incredible history and the tremendous effort that has gone into the last 90 years. I do know what it takes to build a company from the ground up as I started our business in my living room and invested nearly 30 years of my life building it together with our dedicated people. As a sound engineer and classical pianist by training, my main motivation is to achieve excellence – and this in every possible way.
However, in order to stay relevant, a company has to continuously reinvent itself. There are too many unfortunate examples of once brilliant companies that didn’t make it; just look at Nakamichi, Aiwa, or Nokia and Kodak, etc.

What is the plan for Tannoy?

We have huge plans for Tannoy and will heavily invest in the brand. To be perfectly clear, we are committed and will absolutely continue to invest in flagship products such as Prestige etc. whose manufacturing will remain in Europe.
What most people don’t know is that for many years Tannoy has already been producing speakers in China in line with other companies such as Bowers & Wilkins, Bang Olufsen, KEF, etc. and we are now planning to move those products into our own China factory. Rather than leaving production to external subcontractors which we cannot control, we will be moving these products into our own state of the art and fully automated manufacturing facility; all under the leadership of extremely dedicated managers and engineers from the UK, USA and several other Western countries. We believe this is a very positive aspect for Tannoy and should you ever visit Asia, I would like to invite you to come visit us. Perhaps we can post some pictures in the near future, so you get a clear impression.
The major impact for Tannoy is on the professional side, where we are moving all of the pro products to our China facility as we have a fully automated driver and speaker production line in place which provides us with strong manufacturing efficiency and logistics benefits as we can combine shipments with our other brands.

When we acquired the British companies Midas, Klark Teknik and Turbosound some years ago, we made a massive investment of over US$ 20 million and opened a Center of Excellence in Manchester, UK where we hired close to 100 engineers. Since then these brands have tremendously grown which has allowed us to hire more people and invest in more equipment etc. We are currently opening a high tech acoustic Center of Excellence in our Manchester facility, all dedicated to Tannoy and Turbosound.

I hope this information helps you to understand that there is an exciting future for Tannoy. In this spirit I like to invite you to participate in the future of Tannoy and engage with us. We are very interested to learn for example about product ideas you may have or product categories we should enter.

Thank you for listening.

Uli

He then added:


I fully agree that Tannoy needs a fresh assessment to understand what customers truly desire in terms of industrial design as you correctly state that not everyone lives in a manor house. This is exactly the feedback we received from many Tannoy dealers who requested more contemporary designs. We are now in the process to engage with leading UK industrial design companies to provide us with cutting edge designs. At the same time we have every intention to maintain the traditional designs and in fact even contemplate to revive some of the legendary products from the past.

In my view, the soul and identity of a brand does not come from the building that the company is located in, but the brilliant and passionate minds behind it. Also we absolutely do not discriminate when it comes to nationalities as we love all people who put their heart and soul into their work, no matter where they come from. In the same manner as we have multiple nationalities working at the current Tannoy facility, we have fantastic people from all over the world working at the Manchester facility. As a Swiss national myself, I believe I have skills that go beyond making just watches, and we have brilliant Indian people in our company that provide incredible work in all areas.
As we are moving into an exciting new chapter with Tannoy, technology will play a huge role. The proximity to our high-tech Midas DSP & Software engineers in Manchester will be instrumental to provide Tannoy with modern DSP and streaming technology etc. We are currently working on technology that allows to continuously monitor each driver to ensure they perform perfectly at all times; like in the old days of Philips’ “motional feedback” technology, modern high-speed DSP’s now allow for incredible possibilities that never existed before.

It would appear that Tannoy are losing money which did surprise me.



If the Prestige range is still to be manufactured in Europe, the question is where?
 
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