Tannoy project
Thanks for your replies. I will keep my eyes out for these Tannoys. The pair I saw were drivers only, and looked to be in good shape. When I first saw them, I thought they were field coil speakers, another topic I know zilch about.
Now that my curiousity is up, I'll have to make a trip back to see if they are still there and what they are exactly. The guy sells stuff on EBAY, so I doubt if there is going to be a screaming bargain.
By the way, when you talk of a "suspended" floor, are you saying the entire structure is suspended (for example by cables or rods) or do you mean "floating" as in the wood itself is decoupled from the underlying floor? I assume you mean some variant of the former. If so, is there any chance of isolating that with some heavy rubber isolation grommets, or some such arrangement? I've seen huge rubber "bisquits" for isolating heavy production equipment on concrete floors. It works very well. I don't know if that would make any difference in your current setup with your speakers transmitting energy into the floor.
Thanks for your replies. I will keep my eyes out for these Tannoys. The pair I saw were drivers only, and looked to be in good shape. When I first saw them, I thought they were field coil speakers, another topic I know zilch about.
Now that my curiousity is up, I'll have to make a trip back to see if they are still there and what they are exactly. The guy sells stuff on EBAY, so I doubt if there is going to be a screaming bargain.
By the way, when you talk of a "suspended" floor, are you saying the entire structure is suspended (for example by cables or rods) or do you mean "floating" as in the wood itself is decoupled from the underlying floor? I assume you mean some variant of the former. If so, is there any chance of isolating that with some heavy rubber isolation grommets, or some such arrangement? I've seen huge rubber "bisquits" for isolating heavy production equipment on concrete floors. It works very well. I don't know if that would make any difference in your current setup with your speakers transmitting energy into the floor.
Hi homebuilder the home we have is built on concrete foundations and then the wood floor is suspended some 12 to 15inch above this. When my speakers are coupled to this as you say i get boom which merges into the midrange. I have found putting granite slabs under the speakers or stands in my case of major benefit. Jim.
Alistair i see you are a fullrange fan which is funny as i have at the moment Aurousal a1 speakers. They use the Jordan drivers and i am very pleased with them. Fullrangers have a nice smoothness to them but as some say lack that top end sparkle. I didnt find that too offputting as my room is bright anyway. Sounds to me like the Tannoys have both characteristics of fullrange and multiway.Only my opinion though. Jim.
Hi Holty,
I had a pair of Technics SB6000's for a long time...when the tweeters went, I couldnt find a good replacement, so decided to go fullrange... no crossover = no problem!
The Zigmahornets I built were convincingly good, easy to listen to, with quite a good bass response..... but no slam!
It took some persuasion from an audiophile friend to get me to try Tannoys as I was thinking of using Jordans.
I tried some 8" DC's to see what they might be able to do. The result was surprising to me (especially given the 'cabinets' I put them in), as easy to live with as fullrange, but with extended response and great detail.
I listen to all kinds of stuff, but prefer baroque opera, so the move to 10" was inevitable iin order to get the most out my musical investment. Perhaps 12" or 15" next....
I had a pair of Technics SB6000's for a long time...when the tweeters went, I couldnt find a good replacement, so decided to go fullrange... no crossover = no problem!
The Zigmahornets I built were convincingly good, easy to listen to, with quite a good bass response..... but no slam!
It took some persuasion from an audiophile friend to get me to try Tannoys as I was thinking of using Jordans.
I tried some 8" DC's to see what they might be able to do. The result was surprising to me (especially given the 'cabinets' I put them in), as easy to live with as fullrange, but with extended response and great detail.
I listen to all kinds of stuff, but prefer baroque opera, so the move to 10" was inevitable iin order to get the most out my musical investment. Perhaps 12" or 15" next....
I purchased a pair of 12 in. Monitor Gold speakers when they first came out in the 1970's. I have sold them with the house, as I made a rather large corner cabinet front out of a plywood, sand, mdf sandwich, with 1.5 inches of sand and I moved overseas. The sand filled cabinet was very non resonant. On comparing other speakers with the Monitors, I almost always found some annoying resonance in the others, compared to mine.
Being coaxial concentric, the imaging was very good. The horn loaded tweeter is extremely good. The low end is lovely due to the lightness of its cone. Most modern cones do not have this type of stiffening curve. I presume a flat cone is much less expensive to make. The Monitor Gold seemed to have an excellent transient response.
The main shortcoming of the speaker is in its midrange.
My cabinet volume was about 5 cu ft. I did not find the changing size of the port made much difference to the bass response, or the character of the sound. When I stuffed the cabinet quite full of fiberglass, I found the sound quality improved due to less middle and higher frequency sound bouncing around inside the cabinet, and coming back through the cone of the speaker itself. I did not even have much in the way of parallel side walls as I used the corner wall of the room as the back wall of the enclosure so reflections off the walls were mostly at 45 degrees.
I recommend the cabinet be made with a large a volume as you can tolerate, and as resonant free as possible. Keep parallel walls to a minimum. Make the port a bit larger than you need and adjust the size by stuffing something in the port to tune it. The smaller the cabinet, the more important tuning becomes, and there is a compromise in sound quality.
I would also recommend that the powdered iron core inductors in the crossover be replaced with air core ones.
I have not tried this, but using a crossover ahead of the amplifiers, and amplifying the woofer and tweeter levels separately will likely give worthwhile improvement.
Building a basic power amp is a satisfying activity and a small active low and high pass filter is not very expensive, especially if you can find surplus parts and you can hide it and not worry about the way it looks.
Being coaxial concentric, the imaging was very good. The horn loaded tweeter is extremely good. The low end is lovely due to the lightness of its cone. Most modern cones do not have this type of stiffening curve. I presume a flat cone is much less expensive to make. The Monitor Gold seemed to have an excellent transient response.
The main shortcoming of the speaker is in its midrange.
My cabinet volume was about 5 cu ft. I did not find the changing size of the port made much difference to the bass response, or the character of the sound. When I stuffed the cabinet quite full of fiberglass, I found the sound quality improved due to less middle and higher frequency sound bouncing around inside the cabinet, and coming back through the cone of the speaker itself. I did not even have much in the way of parallel side walls as I used the corner wall of the room as the back wall of the enclosure so reflections off the walls were mostly at 45 degrees.
I recommend the cabinet be made with a large a volume as you can tolerate, and as resonant free as possible. Keep parallel walls to a minimum. Make the port a bit larger than you need and adjust the size by stuffing something in the port to tune it. The smaller the cabinet, the more important tuning becomes, and there is a compromise in sound quality.
I would also recommend that the powdered iron core inductors in the crossover be replaced with air core ones.
I have not tried this, but using a crossover ahead of the amplifiers, and amplifying the woofer and tweeter levels separately will likely give worthwhile improvement.
Building a basic power amp is a satisfying activity and a small active low and high pass filter is not very expensive, especially if you can find surplus parts and you can hide it and not worry about the way it looks.
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"I would also recommend that the powdered iron core inductors in the crossover be replaced with air core ones."
Careful with that, one of those is an autoformer which is not easily replaced. I'd leave the inductors alone and just replace the capacitors.
Running Tannoys active is very rewarding but one needs to take into account that the passive crossover provides some important eq functions!
Careful with that, one of those is an autoformer which is not easily replaced. I'd leave the inductors alone and just replace the capacitors.
Running Tannoys active is very rewarding but one needs to take into account that the passive crossover provides some important eq functions!
Hi Alistair, thanks for the links and everything you posted. I've downloaded the onken calculator, but I'm pretty busy at the moment so am unsure when I'll have the time to have a play around with it.
Your offer of help is much appreciated and will probably be taken up, as I've not managed to build a decent sounding pair of speakers yet, lol.
Cheers, Lee
Your offer of help is much appreciated and will probably be taken up, as I've not managed to build a decent sounding pair of speakers yet, lol.
Cheers, Lee
Hi DonM. Is your project information still available on line? I tried the link and it was not active.
Cheers
Greets!
Just saw this, what did you wind up doing or do you still want to build an Onken?
GM
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