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tannoy legacy series

Townshend Podiums size 4 do the job superbly as well as raising Arden cabs 50mm +/- including Tannoy supplied feet (non spike) in contact with podiums.
 
Found this bit from an Absolute Sound review that interested me with the recent changes made to toe in.

“A coincident driver’s primary reason for being is coherence—the music’s fundamentals and their harmonics originate from essentially the same spatial location. Thus it should come as no surprise when I tell you that the 8F generated a colossal soundstage populated by tightly focused image outlines. The listening sweet spot was enormous, being far more expansive than that produced by a typical two-way design, extending to at least 15 degrees off-axis. The tonal balance and image focus remained stable even with substantial head movements about the listening seat; no need to hold your head in a vise with the Tannoy. In particular, image stability was a joy to behold. This attribute isn’t something that is often mentioned in print, but it reduces the amount of mental energy required to accept the soundstage illusion as believable. The 8F made it effortless for me to virtually embed myself in a recording’s acoustic space.”
 
@JTC I think I would be trying the solid concrete blocks first at a few quid each. Size 4 is only £2600. o_O

I hauled the Cheviots off my home made stands today and I think Frank is correct re not needing to raise them up. Still toed in this certainly works best for me. Checked my dates and I don't even have these 4 weeks yet! So no doubt they have probably a lot of loosening up to go yet. Still raised a tad sitting on granite slabs with 'bench dogs' under the granite. Bench dogs are used for holding a piece of timber while you sand or plane it. They are basically round plastic feet with rubber on the top and bottom. @JTC maybe skip the concrete blocks for the moment:D.

Xmas and work has made it hard to spend lots of time listening. It is a hard station!

Also I have played around with the treble settings a lot. Treble energy is at +1.5 and the roll off which I just can't comprehend is at the max + setting. Sometimes bungs are out and that works well I think for classical and Jazz. It can be enjoyable with them out playing rock, funk, new wave etc but for critical and clean listening the bungs need to go in to tighten it all up. I felt before I bought that all this adjustment meant they were not designing the speaker correctly but now I wonder why other manufacturers don't use it.
 
I angle my Eatons very slightly upwards on the stands; this means I don't have to have very high stands (50cm). I have hard sorbothane spacers between the speakers and stands, and currently I just make the front ones slightly bigger with bluetak. We're talking minutiae here, but it's just toe in on the vertical plane.
 
Interesting. Oddly enough, having brought the speakers an inch or so closer, I've regained a bit of what I felt was maybe missing, but I've also coincidentally been recording a video of my son for his channel and when I listened back to the (spoken) audio I'd recorded (using a shotgun mic) I realised just how much 'room' there is. My gut feeling is that this might be something that's obscuring that last 1 or 2% of the sound, plus I daresay the carpet and sofas are attenuating the HF more than the LF and at the (too far IMHO) distance away from the speakers - i.e. further away from either than they are apart - much more of what I hear is indirect and therefore the actual direct sound is compromised a bit.

I'm not sure what practical things I can really do, but it at least explains the slightly rolled-off in-room response I'm perceiving. Probably not something that fancy feet would necessarily fix.
 
I angle my Eatons very slightly upwards on the stands; this means I don't have to have very high stands (50cm). I have hard sorbothane spacers between the speakers and stands, and currently I just make the front ones slightly bigger with bluetak. We're talking minutiae here, but it's just toe in on the vertical plane.

Yes I think I will eventually come to my senses and end up with the speakers raised just a little and use the angle adjustment if necessary. I think the Eatons sit higher than the Cheviots when on stands but the ports are above so driver is probably at the same level.
 
Interesting. Oddly enough, having brought the speakers an inch or so closer, I've regained a bit of what I felt was maybe missing, but I've also coincidentally been recording a video of my son for his channel and when I listened back to the (spoken) audio I'd recorded (using a shotgun mic) I realised just how much 'room' there is. My gut feeling is that this might be something that's obscuring that last 1 or 2% of the sound, plus I daresay the carpet and sofas are attenuating the HF more than the LF and at the (too far IMHO) distance away from the speakers - i.e. further away from either than they are apart - much more of what I hear is indirect and therefore the actual direct sound is compromised a bit.

I'm not sure what practical things I can really do, but it at least explains the slightly rolled-off in-room response I'm perceiving. Probably not something that fancy feet would necessarily fix.

I have moved them back into the corners of the room but they always creep back out until they are approx 2m away from me. 1m out from the alcove and .6m away from the side walls. I think for messing around granite slab or mdf with castors will make it easier to move around.
 
Tannoy owners. What’s the height of your tweeter vs ears at your seating position? My tweeter is 40 inches(101cm), ears 34 inches(86cm). My tweeter level is best at -1.5db in a lively room. My speakers are cross toed 6 inches either side from the sweet spot.

I’ve been playing around with them to get them further apart from each other as well as the rear wall and closer to my listening position. I now have them 92 inches(234cm) apart tweeter to tweeter, 99 inches(251cm) tweeter to ear and 45 inches(114cm) tweeter to rear wall. I think I now have them pretty well setup and sounding right having not touched them in over a decade.
 
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I hauled the Cheviots off my home made stands today and I think Frank is correct re not needing to raise them up. Still toed in this certainly works best for me. Checked my dates and I don't even have these 4 weeks yet! So no doubt they have probably a lot of loosening up to go yet. Still raised a tad sitting on granite slabs with 'bench dogs' under the granite. Bench dogs are used for holding a piece of timber while you sand or plane it. They are basically round plastic feet with rubber on the top and bottom. @JTC maybe skip the concrete blocks for the moment:D.

Xmas and work has made it hard to spend lots of time listening. It is a hard station!

Also I have played around with the treble settings a lot. Treble energy is at +1.5 and the roll off which I just can't comprehend is at the max + setting. Sometimes bungs are out and that works well I think for classical and Jazz. It can be enjoyable with them out playing rock, funk, new wave etc but for critical and clean listening the bungs need to go in to tighten it all up. I felt before I bought that all this adjustment meant they were not designing the speaker correctly but now I wonder why other manufacturers don't use it.

Moving the woofer up/down will change the frequency at which the floor bounce cancellation occurs.
At mid- to farfield distances such a dip usually happens around the upper-bass, sometimes higher (depends on woofer height and listener distance), and although it is technically bad interms of accurate signal reproduction some people like the effect ("faster" and "crisper" bass notes?).
You can use an online calculator to determine the floor bounce frequency but I would recommend measuring the response for increased accuracy.
 
Tannoy owners. What’s the height of your tweeter vs ears at your seating position? My tweeter is 40 inches, ears 34 inches. My tweeter level is best at -1.5db in a lively room. My speakers are cross toed 6 inches either side from the sweet spot.I’ve been playing around with them to get them further apart from each other as well as the rear wall and closer to my listening position. I now have them 92 inches apart tweeter to tweeter, 99 inches tweeter to ear and 45 inches tweeter to rear wall. I think I now have them pretty well setup and sounding right having not touched them in over a decade.

John Tweeter is approx 70cm and ears approx 95cm. Speakers are 240cm apart. My room is like @JTC 's thick underlay, heavy curtains and I even have dense mass loaded vinyl under the underlay. Timber floor. We have a basement underneath. I have put in a double row of joints screwed/bolted to the existing joists with lots of bracing. The ceiling below is double slabbed with soundbloc and green glue inbetween the slabs.

Moving the woofer up/down will change the frequency at which the floor bounce cancellation occurs.
At mid- to farfield distances such a dip usually happens around the upper-bass, sometimes higher (depends on woofer height and listener distance), and although it is technically bad interms of accurate signal reproduction some people like the effect ("faster" and "crisper" bass notes?).
You can use an online calculator to determine the floor bounce frequency but I would recommend measuring the response for increased accuracy.

I seen from a lot of your posts over the last couple of years on here and Wigwam you have a good handle on measurements. I am more in the luddite category. Floor bounce, the wording in Tannoy's manual about the roll off which mentions a 'shelving effect'. Couple that with Franks interpretations of driver design etc etc for me it drifts over my head. I read it all but I am crying out for it to be translated into english :D
 
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I seen from a lot of your posts over the last couple of years on here and Wigwam you have a good handle on measurements. I am more in the luddite category. Floor bounce, the wording in Tannoy's manual about the roll off which mentions a 'shelving effect'. Couple that with Franks interpretations of driver design etc etc for me it drifts over my head. I read it all but I am crying out for it to be translated into english :D


Floor bounce cancellation is not the same as shelving.

A shelving filter is an EQ filter which raises or lowers a range of frequencies evenly.
The following is an example of high-shelf filter (so called because it acts on the treble) boosting the upper octaves:

rRdgbtU.png


And here are the effects of the tone controls of a Nad preamplifier, which are basically ± 9dB-wide high- and low-shelving filters:

1006NADFIG3.jpg





Boundary-generated acoustic cancellation happens due to sound reflecting from the floor, walls, ceiling or even a mixing desk. This interference happens at the frequency where the reflected sound is a mirrored or phase-inverted wave (if you've been on a sea wall you've surely seen this happen, a wave hits the embankment and as it reflects it cancels the incoming wave).
Maybe this graph will help: green is the sound of a speaker measured oudoors and red is the response of that same speaker in a room.

QINtyhs.gif


Depending on a few factors, floor bounce cancellation creates a strong audible dip around the upper-bass/lower-midrange (150-350 Hz) and this can produce a perceptual effect like "thin" or "cold" or pehaps "fast" and "dry".

Moving the listener closer or farther will change this frequency as will moving the speakers up of down (see the calculator I posted earlier), and this will change the perceived effect.


Some loudspeaker designers deal with floor bounce by placing two or three bass drivers along the front baffle (see video below). Another way to deal with this is placing the woofer close to the floor or using subwoofers.

 
Thanks Tuga, the bounce explanation tallies with the perceived better response I am getting from the speakers positioned a bit lower. Going to have to put a bit of time into measurements and trying to interpret the results. There is no doubt that putting effort into positioning the speakers and trying to acoustically manage the room is worthwhile. I intend getting more bass traps and might make up a homemade diffuser to see if that works. But really I have to embrace learning to work with the software and understanding the results.
Hardest part will be explaining the need to stick panels on the ceiling to my wife :D
 
I posted a bit regarding listening position setup for the DMT’s earlier in the thread. Here’s what I found in an older Arden manual followed by a Kingdom manual that I found helpful.

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Having shifted the Ardens to what I thought was pretty cross-eyed last week I checked what 15 degrees off-axis actually was this morning and have now toed them in even more. With them raised 9" off the floor I am less than 10 degrees off axis vertically and it looks like they would actually need to be floor level to get to 15 off-axis vertically. This is pretty nearfield I guess in a pretty much 2m equilateral triangle.
The top end issue that @JTC talks about is something I had noted when I first had them but had ceased being an issue at some point - can't actually pin point when or what had changed at the time though!
 
Floor bounce may not be an issue but .....Imagine the floor is a mirror, locate large scatter cushion/ thick rug where your speakers' reflection would be when viewed from sofa. Love this room.

Here’s a new picture after repositioning the speakers. I used a mirror on the floor to identify where the reflection point is. The cushions on the floor indicate that location.

HuxarNp.jpg
 
Having shifted the Ardens to what I thought was pretty cross-eyed last week I checked what 15 degrees off-axis actually was this morning and have now toed them in even more. With them raised 9" off the floor I am less than 10 degrees off axis vertically and it looks like they would actually need to be floor level to get to 15 off-axis vertically. This is pretty nearfield I guess in a pretty much 2m equilateral triangle.
The top end issue that @JTC talks about is something I had noted when I first had them but had ceased being an issue at some point - can't actually pin point when or what had changed at the time though!
You know, that's weird, because I'm in the same boat - I'm not noticing it now, but have noticed it before. It could be (in my case) a combination of the amp and/or speakers breaking in. I don't know whether amps change audibly during break-in, and if so how long that period might be, but as I write this I'd still guess I have less than 100 hours on the Luxman, maybe double that on the Ardens, both from new. And the speaker cable was renewed just before I got the Luxman as well, but again it all depends whether break-in is real or imagined. Assuming that it's a real thing for amps, speakers and/or cable, it's plausible that it might be enough to tip the balance a little either way.

All that said, my stronger suspicion (as written about before) is that my room is absorbing more of the HF than most rooms do, leaving a slight tip towards LF and mids. OR, my listening levels are simply so low that the sensitivity of the ear to HF is diminished. I don't listen anywhere near as loud as many on the forum, and the HF issue is more noticeable when the listening levels are low (i.e. <70dB).

In any case, I'm still convinced it's just a matter of fine-tuning somewhere, and (overall) the sound is fantastic.
 
You know, that's weird, because I'm in the same boat - I'm not noticing it now, but have noticed it before. It could be (in my case) a combination of the amp and/or speakers breaking in. I don't know whether amps change audibly during break-in, and if so how long that period might be, but as I write this I'd still guess I have less than 100 hours on the Luxman, maybe double that on the Ardens, both from new. And the speaker cable was renewed just before I got the Luxman as well, but again it all depends whether break-in is real or imagined. Assuming that it's a real thing for amps, speakers and/or cable, it's plausible that it might be enough to tip the balance a little either way.

All that said, my stronger suspicion (as written about before) is that my room is absorbing more of the HF than most rooms do, leaving a slight tip towards LF and mids. OR, my listening levels are simply so low that the sensitivity of the ear to HF is diminished. I don't listen anywhere near as loud as many on the forum, and the HF issue is more noticeable when the listening levels are low (i.e. <70dB).

In any case, I'm still convinced it's just a matter of fine-tuning somewhere, and (overall) the sound is fantastic.

I attribute some of it to a change in DAC (both R2R but I think the previous one was that bit more rolled-off and/or the current one is better suited to the rest of the system) but I also think in hindsight that there were times that I was more on-axis than I realised. Given the overall width of the speaker (and using them with grills on) where the centre of the speaker is actually pointed is not always as obvious as it might appear.
 


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