Valves Unlimited


Review of Tannoy M2.5

Loudspeakers

This is my personal review.

First a brief description of the set-up and cable feeding the speakers. The speakers are mounted on proper speaker stands, placed about 2 metres apart and slightly angled inward towards my seating position, which is, again, is about 2metres away.

The speakers them selves are wired up with QED Qudos (the standard, OFC one they do). There are 5metres of this 2.5mm2 cable on each speaker.

After running the speakers in using a variety of music, I was already suitably impressed with them. This running in took about a week, of say about 4hrs of music a day, and at weekends 10 or 12hrs of pure music.

All of the testing was carried out using Vinyl as the source, unless specified.

OK on with my personal reviewJ

I started with Pink Floyd’s The P.U.L.S.E, a live recording of their 1994 tour, this 4LP set includes a full rendition of Dark Side Of The Moon. Lowering the needle on to the vinyl, the first thing that I noticed, was the crowd, they seem to leap off of the record with out much seeming to be lost, then came the music, a detailed treble, but not so as to make you cringe! A strong mid range, and deep, but tight bass, all seemed to help you relax in to the atmosphere of a Floyd concert. The one thing that really showed up in the 3-4 hrs this lasts is the bass drums sound like they are bass drums, tight, but not booming and the mid to high frequencies are crisp.

The final track on the last LP, is Run Like Hell, taken from the album "The Wall". This really gave the speakers a work out, a solo guitar plays, as the crowd is heard cheering and blowing fog horns, some thing I did not know was there until I got these Tannoy’s! This winds up in to a piece of heavy (ish) rock. The climax is at the end were there is a brilliant drum solo, which is not distorted in any way, this then finishes with a massive explosion, and this can be heard to echo off around the stadium.

Moving on to something less demanding I pulled out "Out of The Blue" a 2LP set by the Electric Light Orchestra. For those of you who have not heard of the Electric Light Orchestra (E.L.O), they were are in the 70’s, and there music was a mixture of classical, and electronic synthesisers.

The thing I noticed about this the most, was the higher frequencies, were very good. I.e. The cymbals could be heard coming out of the sound stage, but not to much to spoil the presentation of the album.

Spinning "The Division Bell" by Pink Floyd (On CD) The track "Wearing the Inside Out" has a Sax at the beginning, which sounds full and fills the room with this wonderfully rich, warm sound. Then during the track there is a horn, which sounds much more real than I thought it would! Again, and again I was hearing little details that I had never heard before, such as the higher notes, which were all there, but again NOT harsh!

"Coming Back to Life" starts with a guitar solo that you can here the strings being plucked, and it sounds no way "fake"!

Overall view of the speakers;

Very good, and I would recommend them to any one, who wanted, I suppose you could say they are entry (High-End Audio) level, speakers.

© Daniel Allen

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