Auditioning The Fyne 703 Soon

Do let us know. I can only say that from a design perspective. It has pluses and minuses. It is quite efficient allowing a larger choice of amps. It has controlled directivity which should make room acoustics less of an issue and it's coaxial drivers should image as well as a multi driver dynamic speaker can. What would worry me? The midrange to tweeter crossover is 1st order at 850 Hz, that is real slow and low which can be very dangerous for tweeters. It is an efficient speaker but if someone uses them in a large room with a bigger amp = tweeter toast. It still is going to need a subwoofer to produce bass below 50 H with authority. I am not a fan or ported systems. They generally do not provide the cleanest sharpest bass. I grew up with infinite baffle Bozaks. The first time I heard a ported system I thought there was something wrong with them. It is an interesting port design, slot loaded with a secondary baffle. I am sure it will sound interesting. Are they worth $14,000? For $8000 you can have Magnepan 3.7is. For $15,000 Sound Labs 545s. Both really require sub woofers but then so doesn't the Fyne although the Sound Labs are most dependent. Certainly the Fyne has a better waf score. The Fynes are for certain a different breed which makes them interesting.

I went to listen to the F703s a few weeks ago and also bought them on the spot, although the fact the proprietor offered to sell me the demos at a nice discount didn’t hurt. Still dialing them in and really liking what I am hearing and so far my only possible regret is that I didn’t get the F704s, my thoughts were that the 75mm tweeter vs. the 25mm on the 702 was more important than the 250mm drivers on the 703 vs. the 300mm on the 704 in my room. Very nice speakers 

Very good point and interesting concern raised by @mijostyn .

A 1st order 850 Hz high pass will send an awful lot of energy to the tweeter. By comparison, the big Tannoys had a 2nd order 1100 Hz high pass. Their 2" compression tweeters had 2" round wire voice coils to help dissipate the heat. The Fyne has a 3" compression tweeter (and I assume coil?) so all else equal that can handle more power. For sure, the Tannoys are robust but if something goes bad it’s going to be the compression tweeter from either overdriving, manufacturing defect, or a combo of both. I had a tweeter start to go slightly noisy/distorted in Kensington SE. It wasn’t a catastrophic failure; really subtle and only barely noticeable in specific scenarios, but it’s a good idea to have spare tweeters on hand - they’re relatively affordable and easy to replace here.

Cabinet wise the Fynes follow the Tannoy Definition line - contemporary curved cabinets with rear reflex porting. The focus is more on styling and bracing/rigidity than cabinet air volume. To be quite honest this line never gelled with me sonically. The Prestige line is front vented, not reflex ported, and always seemed to have a richer midrange with a better musical balance. Not sure how much of that difference is from the porting, but I can have my suspicions. The starkest contrast of these cabinets is Definition 10A versus Kensington SE, both with the the same 10" driver. I did not like the 10A at ALL. Bright, lean, aggressive.

The 703 ports out the bottom. Thanks for the inputs. Sonics are most important to me but aesthetics count too.

@tuberist , correct, They port out the bottom through a secondary enclosure into a 360 degree slot. I believe this is a method of tuning the port to work over a broader band. Not totally sure on that. It might also dampen port noise. Regardless, in todays world you can make any sealed design do whatever you want in a distortionless manner with DSP and enough power. This really applies to subwoofers which this speaker really needs anyway to lower distortion in the midrange/woofer and to keep the tweeter from frying not to mention low bass. I would plug the port with expanding foam and get subwoofers. (with a 2 way crossover)  

Having to satisfy the wife is not compatible with decent sound. First of all, there is no satisfying them. There is always going to be something wrong with everything. To you blossoming audiophiles out there, you have to make a deal before you get married. You get X and I get my HiFi and my own room. You can get them involved by letting them design the room around your HiFi gear.