DIY Speaker Cabs for Tannoy DCs - Advice Wanted

I'm afraid that you will discover that Tannoy dual concentric drivers maintain their inherent dullness irrespective of what enclosure they are in. In particular, if the bass cones are the plastic variety with the rubber surrounds they sound particullary lifeless...

You will get a better result with the paper cone/fabric surround type of driver as used in the SRM series.

Tannoy used to have a diy cabinet constructor manual for their DC series of driver kits which you may be able to find somewhere.

Mark

 

Hohum. No. But that's just my opinion.

 

Joel, I wasn't going to rise to it . Didn't seem worth the effort. I suppose everyone is entitled to their opinions.

 

Dev,
You're right about not rising to the bait, especially when it's so far off target... Someone on their first post should probably add IMHO.

 

Your right...IMHO.

If your happy with the Tannoy dc sound then thats the most important thing.

Btw, Alex Garner, the designer of the SRM/DC generation of drivers and systems and subsequent md of Tannoy, used to run a Linn/Naim setup at home...

Mark

 

Mark,

Tannoy DC range (i.e. DC100 and DC200) wasn't perhaps their best effort but the DC is an abbreviation often used generically for Tannoy's Dual Concentric speakers. This practically covers the entire Tannoy range (over several decades) apart from their lower range stuff. You are surely not suggesting that all DC speakers are dull, from their monitors to Prestige range to Kingdoms. (IYHO)

 

Hi Dev!

Putting aside my personal view of the Tannoy sound...you will find that there is more commonality than difference between the various generations of Tannoy dual concentric drivers.

The hf compression driver and associated flared horn have changed little since their inception(including the nasty little kink in it's frequency response around 1.2kHz) hence the signature of the sound you hear from 1.8kHz onwards is pretty much the same for all the hf units. This equally applies to the three way systems like the Buckingham & Dreadnought as they both use the same hf unit...

You will find a tightening of the bass sound as the generations moved forward in line with improvements in manufacturing technology v-a-v the cones and surrounds(including the plastic cone/rubber surround domestic variants - introduced for lower cost purposes)...the spiders have remained essentially the same barring doping materials. Likewise the voice coils...

The passive x-overs all follow the same form...even the "active" XO-5000 used low level passive x-over modules of the same form as the high voltage ones. The main XO-5000 difference being the inclusion of an active variable time delay, active eq, phase switching & active variable gain on the various channels.

The main reason for the dc driver based system popularity in the film, broadcast and recording industries was this very consistency in sound, in that you could record material in one studio, say in the UK, and then go to, say the USA, and provided the other facility had Tannoy dc based monitors, the mix down etc was done on a common monitor sound reference.

From the above you can discern that the Tannoy dc sound is partially intentionally, partially technologically stuck in a time rut.

To me this greatly defines the "dullness" that I refer to - to others this represents the "uniqueness" of the Tannoy sound. Speaker technology has greatly moved forward in the hands of other manufacturers who do not have these constraints.

IMHO :MILD:

Have fun...

Mark

 

Your move Dev

Michael.

 

I don't run a Tannoy system, and am not unhappy with what I have.
But I haven't found the Autographs or Kingdoms I've heard to be dull, either.
Then again, Linn and Naim make and have always made awful speakers. IMHO

 

Hi Mark

Welcome to zerogain and a great post.

I do disagree with some of the things - or perhaps disagree with my interpretation of them.

For example, the assertion that speaker design has moved on tremendously in the last few years. In the domestic market I see slimmer cabinets (to make things more domestically acceptable with limited bass), nice veneers, and not particularly impressive drivers littering most loudspeakers.

Electrostatic panels, horns, cones - all old technology. NXT panels are new, but of course since when did 'new' mean better?

Im also unconvinced that the tightening of bass we are seeing is always due to improved bass cones. Smaller cones that we so often see have what is often refered to as tighter bass, but really its just not bass thats as deep!. Likewise, the change from foam surrounds to rubber surrounds had everything to do with making cones last longer, but was a step backwards in terms of dynamics. We can talk about ceramic cones, kevlar cones etc - but again we see many designers pick paper cones over these later alternatives due to a preference in sound.

The profile of a horn is unlikely to change much IMHO - perhaps because the shape of the perfect horn hasnt changed! - they may have a certain kink in the sound at a certain frequency, but all HF designs exhibit differences. Some of course exhibit very good results on the scope but dont actually sound very good..

The standardisation on Tannoy as a studio monitor of course does have a lot to do with the same sound being produced in all studios, giving a commonality to the engineer, but again we have to question why they picked a Tannoy DC speaker in the first place? - Im sure the answer is found in the same reasons that PMC, ATC etc are chosen today, because quality is important.

So finally, I disagree that other speaker manufacturers have necessarily moved forwards - they have moved sideways and in some cases moved backwards.

NB
I dont have any Tannoys, but I believe Tannoy GRFs and Autographs to be some of the finest speakers in the world.

All IMHO

Chris

 

I'll pass thanks As I've said before, everyone's entitled to their opinions, even if they're completely wrong

I didn't actually want to join this debate for reason already stated. To Mark, Tannoys are dull, to others they are not. What's there to debate? All I was trying to stress was that not all Tannoys are the same, Mark thinks otherwise. End of story.

I like Chris's balanced )) view faaaar better.

 

For Uncle Ant - you will need the following information if you want to design alternative cabinets for your Tannoy drivers:

Tannoy DC100/200 driver Thiele/Small parameters

Param 8"(2008) 10"(2588) Units

Fs 36.1 29.8 Hz
Qms 3.65 5.32 -
Qes 0.315 0.432 -
Qts 0.29 0.40 -
Mas 24.1 47.1 g
Cms 7.19x10^-4 18.3x10^-4 m/N
Vas 40.9 89.5 l
Sd 0.02 0.035 m^2
Bl 11.48 12.12 Tm
Re 6.82 6.3 Ohms

Have fun.

Mark

 

Sorry seemed to have lost the tab spacings on the table.

Any queries let me know.

Mark

 

Hint - if you want to keep tab spacings etc in a post, enclose the whole thing with "code" tags. ie <code> some tabulated text</code> - substituting < and > with [ and ] of course.

Michael.

 

Mark,

Thanks for this. You are a star. I guess this means its no longer in the realms of guess work . Now I have these magic numbers, anyone care to tell me what I do with them now

As to the other debate. I'm not sure I would describe them as dull. Depends what you mean by dull. "Dull", as in boring sounding? - no I wouldn't have said so. "Dull" as in "not bright" - maybe. Matter of taste I guess.

PS.

 

WinISD says you want an 87 litre box and a 30Hz port to get the flattest bass. Note this doesnt include the passive X over and cable resistance, which would inevitably mean a bigger box. An alternative is an active bass xover and 2 amps per channel

 

oy dont knock tannoys,i reqularey use tannoy cougar monitor wedges,ive had the chance to replace them and wont cause they sound so good.its not olny me but all the incoming shows were we do noise love the sound of them also

 

Hi Graham, Thanks for this. Just by coincidence I did a google trawl and downloaded this program a few hours ago and been messing with it. Is the aim to adjust the volume and port tuning to get an absolutely flat response that tails off or is the aim to get the response as wide as you can between the 0 and -3db lines?

I can go bigger (by quite a bit - probably up to 150 litres). If for example I plug in 150 litres and a the port tuned to 25Hz, the reponse extends a bit lower (though admittedly not by a whole lot) but starts to drop off far earlier, albeit very gradually so that it doesn't dip below -3db until it gets down to 25Hz (see attached graph nb. the pink line is the recommended 87 litre box and the green a 150 litre).. Sounds like not a lot gained for a lot more box, but I've got no experience interpreting what these things mean in practice.

Any idea roughly how much extra volume would be needed to account for X over and cable resistance?

 

Hi Mark,

Any chance of providing these figures for SRM10B ?

Thanks in anticipation.