Tannoy Legacy series

[montesquieu]

I would be cautious about the sweet spot issue.

I have a mate with Tannoy Canterburys (15in, Prestige Series, immediately prior to the current versions).

These are plonked on the floor and therefore have the driver somewhat below ear level. They sound fine but you don't really hear all that they can do without getting off the couch and sitting on the floor - this brings the tweeter to ear height and it sound much better all round - more musically coherent but also more detailed and with improved sound-stage compared to sitting on the sofa.

Admittedly this is in a smallish room, so a much smaller cone area for the tweeters in particular (since it's treble that 'beams' due to the physics of dispersal) to work properly. But it would certainly make me think carefully about too toed-in a pattern based on purely theoretical dispersal capability.

Tweeters at ear height and speakers toed very marginally out (not in) seems to work best in my room to deliver a sweet spot for two on the listening sofa, albeit with vintage (HPD) not modern drivers which I think are more tolerant in terms of dispersal than later or current drivers.

 

[John]

My room is quite large and the stands and speakers are very heavy and not something I would look forward to moving around. Perhaps in a large room, toeing in to the cross eye pattern is not as necessary.

I was thinking most of the larger studio monitors were soffit mounted flush with the wall with no toe in.

 

[cooky1257]

I would be cautious about the sweet spot issue.

I have a mate with Tannoy Canterburys (15in, Prestige Series, immediately prior to the current versions).

These are plonked on the floor and therefore have the driver somewhat below ear level. They sound fine but you don't really hear all that they can do without getting off the couch and sitting on the floor - this brings the tweeter to ear height and it sound much better all round - more musically coherent but also more detailed and with improved sound-stage compared to sitting on the sofa.

Admittedly this is in a smallish room, so a much smaller cone area for the tweeters in particular (since it's treble that 'beams' due to the physics of dispersal) to work properly. But it would certainly make me think carefully about too toed-in a pattern based on purely theoretical dispersal capability.

Tweeters at ear height and speakers toed very marginally out (not in) seems to work best in my room to deliver a sweet spot for two on the listening sofa, albeit with vintage (HPD) not modern drivers which I think are more tolerant in terms of dispersal than later or current drivers.

I fail to see any reason for caution, it’s moving a speaker a few inches and following the recommended arrangement by the designers it certainly isn’t theoretical- the directivity is a function of the design.
Any discussion regarding the driver height needs to consider the room and the seating height obviously but again are we really to believe that Tannoy consistently place their drivers too low and have been for 50 years?

 

[montesquieu]

I fail to see any reason for caution, it’s moving a speaker a few inches and following the recommended arrangement by the designers it certainly isn’t theoretical- the directivity is a function of the design.
Any discussion regarding the driver height needs to consider the room and the seating height obviously but again are we really to believe that Tannoy consistently place their drivers too low and have been for 50 years?

 

[montesquieu]

are we really to believe that Tannoy consistently place their drivers too low and have been for 50 years?

Arguably yes. As Guy R Fountain put it himself, 'we aren't in the furniture business'. The technical/measured performance of the drivers would be what concerned them.

The Prestige Canteburys are seriously affected by being too low and I'm sure that's why at least two inviduals I know haven't kept them.

For some speakers at least, getting the tweeters to ear height matters. I know this from my own ears and no theory based on a diagram will convince me otherwise.

 

[cooky1257]

Hmm, the diagram refers to how a cd horn maintains stereo image across a wide sweet spot when crossed in front of the listening position.
As I stated elsewhere the Hf incident angle is just +/-2 deg for a variation in height of +/-10 cm at a3.5m listening distance. It barely changes and the Hf is hitting you in a 60 deg beam in any case. Tannoy are a long way from the rattling wardrobes of the 60's.
Ceiling bounce could be an issue in lower ceilinged modern houses and changing driver height may improve things but I m not convinced it’s a universal recommendation.
Anyway all this tech speak is sucking the joy out of ownership, they are great speakers .

 

[Jono_13]

Good for you, delighted they worked out. I assume you are talking about original Cheviots. Did you go for RFC restoration route or diy?

They were done by RFC just before I bought them.

 

[tonerei]

They were done by RFC just before I bought them.

Apologises I should have checked your avatar and remember now your posts on the other Tannoy thread.

 

[Jono_13]

Apologises I should have checked your avatar and remember now your posts on the other Tannoy thread.

No problem, like you I have found the Cheviots to be a great speaker. They have bought an unexpected insight into recordings that I have had for decades which is why I’m enjoying them so much.

 

[JTC]

With regard to @JTC set up I suspect strongly he needs to at least adjust the Ardens to the 'cross eyed' set up. Well at least try it out as it is the easiest adjustment to make. I read your view on not needing to raise them up and will revisit moving the Cheviots back to ground level at some point to compare again.

I had them that way to start with, but have experimented with bringing them slightly together to play with how they interact with the side walls. My issue with them is probably imagined - it's just that in order to make them sound balanced and extended enough in the HF, I need to have them at +1.5 or even +3 in the energy, and I keep wondering if that's a room issue since most people don't need to add so much adjustment. Of course, it could be just that I lose a bit more HF than most due to the room being carpeted with two sofas etc. and I'm definitely listening too far from them for my liking (but due to room compromises) - ideally I'd have me sitting at the apex of an equilateral triangle which would place the listening position roughly 1/3 way into the room. I reckon I'd get a slightly more even bass response there too, but it would compromise the other uses of the (non-dedicated) room.

It's a problem I've always had with that room - it's just one of those decently proportioned but awkwardly designed rooms - doors in all the wrong places, etc.

Make no mistake, the Ardens are *the* speaker for me, but right now I'd love just a touch more HF. I can add this via tone controls, and do, but if I had my way I'd get that final balance at flat settings.

I wonder, perhaps, if it's something to do with the fact that the Ardens are on the supplied feet (not spiked) and sitting loosely on the carpet, which has underlay. Could that be robbing me of a bit of treble energy? Or perhaps it's a speaker height thing. Or maybe it is just my room, which has always perhaps been on the damped side of lively... maybe it's just more noticeable in large full range speakers than it was on the Adams (which, now that I think back, I had adjusted the HF energy on as well).

Or my ears. Which are ****ed.

 

[Chris81]

I had them that way to start with, but have experimented with bringing them slightly together to play with how they interact with the side walls. My issue with them is probably imagined - it's just that in order to make them sound balanced and extended enough in the HF, I need to have them at +1.5 or even +3 in the energy, and I keep wondering if that's a room issue since most people don't need to add so much adjustment.

I guess that the bass is still to dominating in your room and the HF is muddied by bass. The speakers do have a big bump (3-6dB depending of the reference point) in the area from 50-300Hz in nearly free field conditions (even if you don't want to hear about such stuff). If the room is not big enough for such speakers the bass boost will be even higher. Despite if you use the foam plugs and you don't listen that loud it won't change the situation enough.

 

[John]

I wonder, perhaps, if it's something to do with the fact that the Ardens are on the supplied feet (not spiked) and sitting loosely on the carpet, which has underlay. Could that be robbing me of a bit of treble energy? Or perhaps it's a speaker height thing. Or maybe it is just my room, which has always perhaps been on the damped side of lively... maybe it's just more noticeable in large full range speakers than it was on the Adams (which, now that I think back, I had adjusted the HF energy on as well).

Or my ears. Which are ****ed.

I would think that spiking them through the carpet to the floor below would clean up the treble.

Found this bit in the Legacy Arden product information:

“The base of the enclosure features 8 mm coupling spikes that provide added stability, and help to dissipate unwanted energy that might otherwise detract from ARDEN’s pristine performance.”

I know my DMT cabinets are different but I found this in the Tannoy DMT operating and service manual interesting:

 

[tuga]

Is there more information somewhere regarding the cross eyed setup. I sit just a bit farther from the monitors than they are from one another, about 2.3 meters. My eyes are inline with the inside edges of both speakers so the tweeters beam more to the right and left of me.

Toe-in affects three things:

- tonal balance, depending on the speakers' off-axis response smoothness and directivity in the treble region
- phantom image sharpness, which increases with more toe-in
- soundstage width and spaciousness, which increases with less toe-in because side-wall reflections are stronger (more obvious in short-wall setups)

Image sharpness and soundstage width are inversely proportional.

The off-axis frequency response in most speakers loses energy at the crossover region and top because cones and domes become increasingly beamy as they go higher in frequency. That change in tonal balance is very obvious in the response of this Spendor Classic 2/3 (blue: on-axis, red: 30° horizontal off-axis), where the response is down by 5dB between 2kHz and 4.5kHz and roll-off steeply above 10kHz:

 

[Hoopsontoast]

Tuga, or showing an actual Tannoy Dual Concentric, even on the modest XT6 shows pretty good and even roll off as you move off axis.

 

[montesquieu]

I wonder, perhaps, if it's something to do with the fact that the Ardens are on the supplied feet (not spiked) and sitting loosely on the carpet, which has underlay. Could that be robbing me of a bit of treble energy? Or perhaps it's a speaker height thing. Or maybe it is just my room, which has always perhaps been on the damped side of lively... maybe it's just more noticeable in large full range speakers than it was on the Adams (which, now that I think back, I had adjusted the HF energy on as well).

Or my ears. Which are ****ed.

Appreciate there's been some disagreement over this but you might want to try and get them up a bit higher .... very cheap to test out with some blocks from the garden centre. My 12in HPD tweeters are at 92cm, ear height when sitting in my listening chair, that's above the top edge of the Arden Legacy cabinet. If it doesn't improve things you haven't spent much (and you can have the pleasure in coming back and telling me it made no difference ). If it does, you can think about how best to achieve a cosmetically/domestically acceptable way of elevating them.

Tuga's comments on toe-in/toe-out were quite enlightening, and probably explains my preference for a very slight toe-out (in my current 6m x 5m listening room at least).

 

[tuga]

Tuga, or showing an actual Tannoy Dual Concentric, even on the modest XT6 shows pretty good and even roll off as you move off axis.

Good point. Tannoys, Kefs, TADs and other speakers using coaxial drivers have this advantage.

In a coaxial driver the midrange driver acts as a waveguide narrowing the bottom of the tweeter's passband.
This kind of speaker driver will produce a gradual but even "darkening" of the tonal balance instead of the issues I raised above.
It will also produce wider or narrower directivity depending the profile of the waveguide/cone and how recessed the tweeter is in relation to the front of the baffle.

 

[ToTo Man]

@JTC , measuring your Arden's on-axis frequency response from 1m may help shed more light on whether your somewhat darkened treble is a room issue or is simply the way the speaker is tuned.

 

[cooky1257]

One of the many benefits of the tannoy dc is the crossover frequency is chosen where the polar response of the bass driver matches the polar response of the compression driver/ horn and avoids the off axis response anomalies you get crossing from the narrowing dispersion of a bass mid to a wide dispersion dome tweeter.
When you toe in DCs just remember you aren't toeing in a dome tweeter you are toeing in a controlled directivity horn, the Earl Geddes diagram upthread points out an advantage in widening the lateral sweet spot( psychoacoustic effect of the ears sensitivity to arrival time and intensity).
It's no accident the published FR responses from Tannoy are taken 15 deg off axis and the toe- in recommendation is the same.
All that said it should at least to be a starting point, where you end up is dependent upon circumstances and taste however.
One interesting observation is if your speakers are firing down the room you are listening off axis, as you toe in from this usual set up you are bringing in your tweeters closer on axis, with that in mind the cross eyed arrangement is hardly radical.

 

[tonerei]

I would think the Luxman is potentially a problem for your set up John also. I have never heard it so just guessing here but I would be thinking it is adding a nice dollup of syrup to the proceedings. Get something that can run KT90's, 120's or 150's driving the Ardens even with a granite slab on spikes and toed-in as per Tannoy's instructions and you might get a completely different presentation.

 

[JTC]

I don’t think the Luxman is at all syrupy. I laughed when I read that. It’s very neutral and transparent, gobs of power too. I’m fairly certain it’s just a position thing.