Steve, a Tannoy question for you....

Tonight I was listening to my new Tannoy Monitor Gold 12"s to do a test to make sure the voice coils were in good shape. The test tracks were a solo opera track of soprano female vocals from the MFSL test cd and a Rebecca Pigeon track with just her voice and string bass from another sampler/test cd I have. My observation was that although the vocals were crystal clear, during peaks in the music they sounded a little restrained. The sound I was hearing is exactly the sound that I would expect from a compressor where the peaks were tapered off and somewhat held back and muffled, but still clear without distortion. I was using an Arcam Alpha 9 solid state 70 wpc amp. I have four theories: 1) the speakers are so accurate that I am hearing actual compression in the recording that I have never noticed before. 2) the speakers are damaged. 3) it is the nature of these speakers to compress during loud passages or high frequency peaks. 4) my ears are not fully recovered from the fiasco I experienced last week. Steve, do your Tannoys do this also? Any theories here? As usual, I would appreciate your wisdom and advice.

 

Steve, thank you for the advice. I will try as you suggested. Can you suggest a piece of music to try the crank up test with? Also, shouldn't I be careful cranking them with 70 watts of power? Any idea what would cause a speaker like this to compress if it's not supposed to be doing so?

BTW, sort of off the subject, but I wanted you to know that these 12"s have plenty of bass for me. I know you were saying that they might not have the wallop I was expecting and I was worried, but coming from my 6" woofers, they seem like they've got plenty of weight and I can live with them provided I sort out this compression thing.

 

That doesn't sound like a Tannoy problem to me.
In fact, more often than not, Tannoy's show you just how much dynamic range is lost when smaller speakers are driven hard.
It may, as you suggest, well be that you are hearing the compression on the recording for the first time.
Tannoys accurate? Not really, but they do sound nice. Jeff

 

The thing is that I've heard that recording MANY times before. It's a test track that I've used a lot. I guess it's possible that I didn't notice the compression before, but that would be strange. In any case, I still have the question: what kind of speaker malfunction would imitate the sound of compression?

 

Magnets that have lost their charge?
No idea. Jeff

 

Is that really possible??

 

It is possible.
Every magnet will lose some of its charge over time, but the amount of loss in a high quality magnet in a high quality speaker like a Tannoy will be negligible. Other ways that a magnet can lose their charge are through overheating (though this is usually temporary) or for being close to other very strong magnetic fields.
I still consider it unlikely in your case though. Jeff