#Tannoy dual concentric speaker drivers

#Tannoy dual concentric speaker drivers

вЂњ Unlike ordinary drive units, the Dual Concentricв„ў is effectively two drivers properly merged into one, where the high-frequency unit is positioned on the back of the low frequency driver to ensure that they are on the same acoustic axis.

The dual concentricВ speaker causes a natural time alignment of all audible frequencies that must be corrected by complicated networks and filters otherwise. Tannoy isВ well knownВ for its Dual Concentric speaker design which places the tweeter behind the lowВ frequency driver (co-axially) although Tannoy is not the only speaker manufacturer to design coaxial drivers (Altec and Kef being just two notable examples). вЂњ Aerosmith singerВ Steven Tyler recently orchestrated an impromptu karaoke session over the Tannoy system of a Californian branch of the Home DepotВ hardware store, according to staff.вЂќ and is equivalent to the generic branding of Kleenex or Coke or Velcro that we in the US are more familiar with. This generic brand reference continues today. This lead to the phrase вЂњOver the TannoyвЂќ which means an announcement made over a PA system.

Due to this, вЂњTannoyвЂќ became a genericВ term forВ all PA systems in the British Commonwealth. The Tannoy nameВ is a composite of Tantalum-Lead Alloy which is the material that comprises a solid state rectifier invented byВ the companyвЂ™s founder Guy Fountain.Дuring World War II, Tannoy was commissioned to produce and distribute all the communication systems used by British military bases. Tannoy Ltd, an English manufacturer of loudspeakers and public-address (PA) systems, beganВ in 1926 under the Tulsemere Manufacturing Company. Having said all that, KEF has not produced a single non uni-Q loudspeaker for decades and Andrew Jones, after KEF, went into ELAC where they produce their own vesion of the concept, receiving good reviews.ДЄnd during all that, the BBC LS3/5a remains a legend and B110 and T27 command high prices.By Cathy Satin on Octoin Blog, Speaker History But most people don't listen in ideal rooms, don't have room treatment and left/right hemispheres of the rooms are hardly symetrical, hence one can't really expect a great stereo image or even same frequency response coming from the left and right. In controlled measurements in an ideal room, the concentric drivers, well placed on a suitable enclosure, should prevail, by at least a tiny margin. There are so many compromises made in designing a loudspeaker that I doubt the single point source concept outweighs all the rest. Especially the aspects that affect external looks, seem to more follow a fashion trend or wife acceptance criteria rather than solid engineering findings. Allowing for the technical solutions that have become obsolete or superseded by others, I find that many or most manufacturers of loudspeakers don't really use all of that expertise in their products. There has been a lot of research and a lot of expertise has been gathered over the past several decades. Problems including diffraction and directivity maladies due to the mid range surround affecting the tweeter's low end response made them introduce the uni-q in the entry level models rather than the reference. The midrange as well had to use a stronger magnet as it lost the core material.ДЄccording to KEF as well, it took them several generations to make coaxials sound good. If they had a sales organization as effective as Bose or Klipsch, in older times until now- we'd likely see Tannoys all over the place, IMHO.ДЄccording to KEF, concentric drivers were not viable until neodymium became available as magnet material, offering strong but tiny magnets for the tweeter that needs to be tiny to fit within the midrange's voice coil area.

It's just that, IME, the fact that Tannoy can't market or distribute their way out of the proverbial paper bag- that is why they're not any more popular than they are. That said- IMHO- Tannoys from the 1990s and newer (from the time of the Churchill Wideband and beyond)- they have seemed to consistently get everything pretty much right. And even there, there's some 'quirks' about them (primarily small response deviations from flat response), that can make them not match what some people want to hear. Tannoy, IMHO, is about the only people who have reliably 'gotten it right'. Many fail the second (forcing the woofer to go too high in frequency, and/or rolling off in the top octave badly, which can result in harsh and/or dull soud), and even more fail the third (the tweeter gives up when asked to provide life-like transients). Dual concentrics are harder to do well than other designs- primarily, due to the difficulty of building a concentric tweeter that will simultaneously fit, cover the needed frequency range (from below 1KHz to above 20KHz, ideally), and handle the dynamics and max output level correctly.