Any experience with Tannoy loudspeakers?

@johnrothschild, all the Tannoys I have owned MX3s (slim floorstanders), R3s (bigger floorstanders) and Berkeley’s (larger floor/standmounts) were voiced to sound satisfyingly full at low volume.

The vintage Berkeley’s are a dream at low volumes, like the R3s (but with a bigger/freer sound). It’s actually difficult to resist turning them up (unless it’s late of course). You can easily begin craving more of that sumptuous sound. Because of low distortion, you can end up going quite loud before they become ’shouty’.

Despite any obvious treble trickery, they somehow render vocalists more legible. There is some commonly used unit of measure for speech legibility, used in cinemas I think, but I can’t recall the name. Whatever it is the dual concentric HPD drivers have it in spades.

They don’t really come more alive at higher volumes like some speakers do (Ruark Prologues!). You just get more of the same. Like having 2/3 slices of cake instead of just the one.

Of course they are not perfect, far from it. I would always prefer a better transient performance/dynamics plus a smoother treble.

As for timbral expressiveness, I doubt I can ever get enough.

But are they high-end? I would say so.

What a great post, thank you: ).

Excellent news on your low volume thoughts...that's definitely what I'm looking for in volume.

Tannoy legacy eatons here and loving them thus far! They are gargantuan stand mounters and have an exquisite finish and build. The midrange is to die for and the bass is fantastic. I’m running them with my sugden A21se signature pure class A single ended integrated and I think they pair very well. They are sitting on custom atacama stands 16 inches high. I have them toed in a good bit but not anything drastic...they seem to throw a soundstage twice as wide as my room, with good depth as well. I only have a few hours on them as of now, I’m sure they can only get better with time. I’m a tannoy convert! The best part? I got these brand spanking new from an audio dealer in Scotland for $3900!! They are a $6000 speaker! The story behind it is the dealer had a used pair which I bought sight unseen online. A day later, a sales person notified me that a local had come into the store the same day and bought the very same speakers. He said that noone had informed him of this! Feeling terrible about it, the same salesman ordered me a brand new pair right from the factory in Scotland! He charged me the same price as the used ones! They were shipped out to me in the states about 3 weeks later... 😁 forgot to mention, that price ($3900) included the custom 16 inch Atacama stands, also brand new! I’d say I stole these!!!
The only thing extra that I had to buy was the atacama atabite stand filler, about 130 bucks for 4 7kg tubs to complete the job. I used 4 pea sized balls of blue tac beneath each speaker.

All I need to acquire now is a linn sondek turntable! I’ll then have all Scottish made components...well, with exception of my tape deck, sacd, cd players, and tuners...all Japanese.