Loudspeakers

Tannoy

Founded in London in 1926, Tannoy built its reputation on a single engineering idea: that a loudspeaker should sound like it comes from one point in space, not several. Absolute Sound is the distributor for Tannoy in Singapore and Malaysia.

Sound from a single point

In 1947, Tannoy engineer Ronald Rackham solved an old problem in loudspeaker design: a separate woofer and tweeter sit in different places on a cabinet, so sound reaches a listener’s ears at slightly different times from each. Rackham’s answer was to fit a compression tweeter inside the throat of the woofer’s own cone, so both drivers fire from the same point. Tannoy called it the Dual Concentric driver, and Decca bought the first six for its own studios. Nearly eighty years on, every loudspeaker Tannoy builds is still built around some version of it. The flagship Prestige range, including the horn-loaded Westminster Royal, continues to be assembled in Scotland, where Tannoy has built loudspeakers since the 1970s.

Five ranges, one driver

Small Tannoy speaker with a gold dual-concentric driver on a pale sideboard beside a grey armchair and floor lamp.
Tannoy bookshelf speaker on a wooden stand beside a navy sofa in a pale living room.
Large Tannoy floorstanding speaker in walnut with a gold driver ring, beside a white armchair and a grey textured wall.

Prestigethe flagship horn-loaded Dual Concentric range, from the Stirling to the Westminster Royal.

Legacymodern reissues of the 1970s Arden, Cheviot and Eaton.

Super Gold Monitornearfield monitors descended from the studio-standard Golds of the 1970s and 80s.

Revolution XTmid-tier floorstanding and stand-mount Dual Concentric loudspeakers.

Eclipsethe entry point into Dual Concentric hi-fi.

Model-by-model specifications live on the manufacturer’s site: tannoy.com

Common questions about Tannoy

Isn't "tannoy" just the word for a public address system?

In Britain, yes. The word has slipped into ordinary language for any station announcement or PA speaker, and it appears in the Oxford English Dictionary. That usage borrows from this company: the name is a contraction of tantalum alloy, from an electrical rectifier it made before building its first loudspeaker system in 1933. This page is about the original manufacturer, which still builds hi-fi loudspeakers under the name it lent to the language.

What is a Dual Concentric driver?

It answers a basic problem with any multi-driver speaker: the woofer and tweeter sit in different places, so sound reaches the ear at slightly different times from each. Tannoy’s solution, introduced in 1947, fits the tweeter inside the throat of the woofer’s own cone. Both drivers fire from a single point, and every Tannoy loudspeaker since has been built around some version of it.

Are Tannoy speakers still made in Scotland?

The flagship Prestige range is. In 2016, Tannoy’s then-owner announced production might move abroad; the decision was reversed, and loudspeaker manufacturing stayed in Scotland, where it has continued since the 1970s at a newer facility. Tannoy’s other ranges are engineered by the same company but are not claimed as Scottish-built.

What is the Autograph, and why does the Prestige range still reference it?

The Autograph was Tannoy’s landmark 1953 corner-horn design, built to use the corner of a room as an extension of its own bass horn. The current Prestige range carries the same horn-loading principle in the Westminster Royal, and the smaller Autograph Mini is a scaled-down homage to the original, built around the same Dual Concentric approach in a fraction of the space.

Hear Tannoy for yourself

Come and hear Tannoy at our showrooms. Tell us what you would like to listen to and we will have it playing when you arrive.

START A PROJECT

Let's talk

Tell us a little about your space and how you’d like to listen.