These speakers are truly wunderfull. I have had many speakers over the years and i can say thats the Tannoy D700 are the best allrounders i have had. True, they are very unforgiving with poor sources. And they need some space to breath (about 1 meter arond).But i have these speakers for 10 years now and they will never go!
I have them paired to a lot of amplifiers. The best results you get with a tube amplifier. But with a good clean solid state the results are very close.
The can produce al kind of music and the first thing that pops in is a live feeling, if you are realy there with the performers.
In the second hand market the D700 are easily to find (in holland that is).
The quality is spot on and very beautiful (wav factor?)
Anyway you cant go wrong with these speakers.
Just listen, hook them up to a good amplifier and enjoy it!

also good with primaluna premium / kt88 ....

Everything

Needs careful amplifier matching

If you are just about to buy a pair of these speakers you have to be sure your amplifiers and source are up to the job of driving them with power and quality. I think they would be unforgiving with buget hi-fi. Careful matching is required.
However if you have a audiophile quality system that is smooth and natural sounding these Tannoys are a winner.
I have owned and heard over the years probably hundreds of speakers and these speakers rank in the top 5! They are the best pair of speakers i have owned. I heard a pair of Linn active floorstanders at a show once. These things were £11000 each and magical, but I have to say I am enjoying my music as much as I did that day listening to Dark Side Of The Moon on this amazing Linn system at the show.
This is my first time with dual-concentric speakers. They do take a bit of getting used to. But when you do and you have spent a few days finding their best position in your listening room they come into their own. Use a wall to get the best bass response, sit slightly further away from them as they are apart and prepare to be gobsmacked! It's the way they image. 3D is the best way to desrcibe it. If you get their postion right they simply vanish. Voices and instruments hang in the air and it's like you are surrounded in their sound. Even movies sound amazing. I have had the best of home theatre 5.1 and so on, and good as it is the Tannoys in a stereo set is what i prefer. Getting back to music. Alive, real, exciting, dynamic, captivating.... need i go on? I spend hour after hour listening to them, addictive! All this aside, they look good too. The build quality is top notch. They are heavy. It takes two people to carry one of them. They are solid and sound solid.
I'm running them with a Ear V20 tube amp, i think there are reviews on this site for it. They are perfect for each other, good match. Enough said.

Similar Products Used:

Linn Ikemi CD player
Ear V20 amplifier
Straighttru interconnects
Chord Epic speaker cable
Audiophile mains leads
Rotel 1060 dvd player

simply gets you close to real musicians playing real music than anything else remotely close to the price ( and higher) !!!

none - except the use of proper ancilliaries , (in particular a good solid state amp with plenty of current)

Bought the latest series 11 model in american cherry and have been using them now for 6 months. they are the 2nd pair of these awesome speakers I have owned over the years, and have now replaced a pair of b&w 801nautilus with them when i decided to downsize my set up. (the 801s were utterly brilliant!)

I also have a pair of tannoy st50 suopertweeters and rel stadium 11 subwoofer to compliment the speakers.

Driven by my krell kav300il the sound produced by these speakers is abolutely awesome! Full range, neutral and real life with tremendous slam when required
(even at low volume) I would encourage anyone seeking a quality speaker to seek out a pair of d700 if you can find a pair - you will not be dissappointed.

I can honestly say a that my current set up (together with the supertweeters and subwoofer) sounds as good as any as I have owned and heard at any price!

The only criteria is they need a a quality solid state amp with plenty of current to grip the drive unIts

Similar Products Used:

b&w 801n
kef 207
klipsch chorus 11
monitor audio studio 50
tannot d700 mk1

bass performance

need good heavy 'musical' amplifier to sound really good.

Tremendous speakers. You must connect them on a good heavy 'musical' amplifier. I have no speaker heard in this price range that sound so beautiful in bass They are not too large!

Similar Products Used:

dynaudio 1.1 monitor. What a differance!

Beautifully simple yet elegant cabinetry. Bi-wireable. Fantastic all-around clean and accurate sound producers that will get your friends dancing when you kick out the jams....or pure, beautiful music for Sunday mornings with that first cup of coffee.

Really do require a lot of power and bi-wired hookup to perform at their very best. Gotta take those grills off for the purest sound and I have two cats!

These speakers do everything! They will blow your doors off with loud rock and roll. They will play soft passages and still sound good. They will play very very very cleanly IF your source componentry is top notch to input very very very clean signals. I am wowed by their ability to reproduce classical guitar and flute duets with such realism that it sounds like the musicians are in my living room! Granted, I have a super system driving them...2 McIntosh MC352's bi-wired with TMC gold speaker cables in a vertical bi-amped setup (each speaker essentially has its own amplification and feeder cable) MacIntosh C-100 pre-amp, totally balanced system from source to preamp to power amps...the signals never mix! Pure, pristine, very low distortion. The point: the speakers are up to reproducing it all.

Similar Products Used:

JBL bookshelf....not even close! Electrovoice bookshelf...great imaging but again, in a different league totally.

For the price they make me very happy, plus the sound they give out. nice cabnets Bi Wire able. Company has been around for 50yrs.

They are kind of hard to bring up stairs alone, at 90lbs plus what job.

What can I say about these speakers, Good clean pin point sound stage. Some people may not like the truth in sound that they reproduce. I have been in side the cabnets to adjust form for rear ports. When in side cabnet I noticed that the Frame or basket was made or casted material. As for the wood used it is very well made good cross bracing and thick. Now the impedance of these speakers 6-3 ohms shouldn't Be a hard load for a bryston 3B ST. But a 4B ST should give best results, studio speaker with studio amp. Just think 20yrs of fun with bryston And they can play this load all day. If you choose to used amps Please don't use flat braided cables, they Kill so amps.

Similar Products Used:

To many over the years,to mention.

Scale,dynamics and aggression by the truck load.Good imaging.Excellent build quality and looks.

Not a weakness as such,but serious amp power required.

I've just got the D700's and I'm very impressed indeed.I was looking for a speaker that could genuinely fill a large room and was warm without being dull.Personally I don't care for speakers that try to act audiophile by being horribly bright to the point of being fatiguing.The D700's are not bright and they don't bring forward higher frequencies to pretend they are revealing.They are in fact very neutral in character just reproducing whats there and no more.Bass is tight and very well extended.
Two important points:First they require a high current amplifier with a high damping factor for best results.They represent a very high load for any amp,especially in the lower frequencies where actual impedence drops to just over 3ohms.
Secondly they really must be bi-wired for best results.I tryed mine single wired and was not impressed.Consider bi-wiring as mandatory to get a flat frequency response and good imaging and depth.
If you want real scale and dynamics and you have the amp power available,D700's are the way to go.Mine are used mainly for HT and I'm going to upgrade my center to a D750 and rears to D500's as soon as funds allow.
Tannoy have got these speakers just right for me.
Henry

Similar Products Used:

All sorts!

very clear sound, good soundstage and imaging, extended bass, bass can be "adjusted" by two foam-plugs placed inside the bass reflex tubes (works impressively well), good "allround" performance

serious amp power is required (although speaker efficiency is quite high), several integreated amps that I tried did not work very well with these speakers. big, heavy (and ugly ??) cabinet.

great speakers that are available for little money on the used market (I payed DM 2200 ($1000) for the pair). Powerful amp and biwiring is highly recommended. Performance can be very close to perfect when used in the right acoustical surrounding and with the right equipment. Value rating is for the price payed.

System used:
CD: Sony CDP-X7ESD
Turntable: Scheu, Rega RB300, Shure V15/V
Preamp: McIntosh C29
Amp: McIntosh MC 250
Headphones: Stax Lambda Signature
Cables, Interconnects etc.: nothing special

Similar Products Used:

none

power

play whit poor recording

this speaker have a lot of power and dinamics,they play weel
jaaz,acid jaaz,fank and soul not very good whit clasical mysic but i think that this speaker must find matching amp.becoase this speaker are hard for amp.I whil recomendit not some bright amp.becoase the sound whil be to loud and be real mess.tray carfylu before bay and i think that you will suticefied.