I bought it used from the original owner who had them for about 15 years. I really liked the wood veneer and look of the speakers. They are well built and have stood up to the test of time just by the fact that they are still here and sound great with no issues. Originally I had them hooked up to a ES line Sony home theater receiver and they sounded pretty good with a very natural feel. I was a bit disappointed with the bass. However when I hooked the up to a Vintage Realistic SA-200 amplifier they came to life. The old Radio shack dog kicked the A@@ of the expensive Sony ES receiver. These became amazing with lots of bass! What a great buy

The only real weakness is that they need a quality amplifier. Not an expensive new one but any vintage amplifier will do! Should cost you about $100-$200 to be amazing!

I bought the Tannoy pair of r2s back in 2000. I needed them to accurately reproduce recordings I was working on, using then Adat 8 track digital and Yamaha o3D mixing desk. I went to an audio store in a suburb of Melbourne, and asked or a blind listening test to ALL of their speakers. My budget was about $3500 Au and only the best would do as I was super fussy and needed total accuracy. Anyway, after aural fatigue after about two hours of listening to speakers, the salesperson switched the comparator to the Tannoys and suddenly, wow.. how sweet, how clear. I was familiar with the material as I had recorded it. The price at the time was $800 for the pair. I bought them without further ado, and fiddled with the rear port until the bass sounded about right. Now, my system sounds wonderful as I have added a powered subwoofer, without which the Tannoys would be accurate at frequencies above 100 Hz, but lacked punch, well, to my ears anyway. I was bussing my recordings through the Yamaha mixer into a then 10-year-old QSC 100 watts per channel amp.... bullet proof. no tone controls, just individual vol controls on each channel. And it is now 28 or so years old and has NEVER missed a beat. Now, I now longer record, but if you wish to listen to my recordings, go to www.showcaseyormusic.com/marimbas and you will discover music made by children on orchestral percussion instruments, albeit student size. I did record an acoustic album of a young woman singer, and it was important to capture the timbre of her voice.Unfortunately, due to personality clashes with the musician, we abandoned the project and the album is lying fallow at the moment. But, if anyone wishes for floor standing speakers and have an extra $k for a good subwoofer, one will get the ultimate sound in- expensively. Other hi end speakers sound harsh and metallic to my ears. Everything from Mozart to modern popular and acoustic sounds just so lush and sweet through the R2s.

Hi guys.

I just bought these second hand speakers after listening to several other brands and these are the ones that stand out. I'm using a 5.1 amplifier(pioneer VSX-528-K) with them which obviously isn't the perfect scenario but the sound still amazes me...
I would like to buy some rear speakers that could work with these ones and I saw good reviews on the Tannoy revolution R1. I found some on ebay but the problem is that I live in Portugal and they don't post outside the UK...
Does anyone recommend other speakers or know someone that is selling the R1?

Thanks for your time.

I had the chance to audition these speakers recently against others. I am amazed by the quality of sounds these produce. I would say that for the money when new was a steal, I have speakers that cost 4 times that these cost but I must say the overall sound quality equals the more expensive ones and in some frequencies especially middle, excels.

dry sond.
warmth
open.
for long listening.

nothing.

this is a great speaker, who can play everything of music.
it,s sweats, en never sounds thin or hard.
it,s a good looking speaker, wih a super presentation, voor me it is a number one.
i,m happy with it.

Similar Products Used:

focal.
dynaudio

Midrange, treble, solid construction. As for the bass performance, these speakers seem to output as much bass as the studio engineer who mastered the CD had intended.

None at this price. Some people would prefer a more exaggerated bass response.

When I first purchased these speakers, I was simply bowled over by the clarity of the sound they put out. The speakers they replaced were Mordaunt Short MS20i Pearls; swapping the speakers and doing a before and after test, it sounded like the MSs weren't producing any midrange at all! I had read reviews citing the excellent midrange of these speakers, I was pleased to discover that they had not been exaggerating! The midrange excellence common to all Tannoy products stems from Tannoy's original core business of public address systems and studio monitors. Such systems were rated according to how identifiable various letter sounds were to listeners. The critical frequencies for speach intelligibility are close to 1000Hz, the overtones that distinguish the various vowel sounds. Human hearing is adapted to excel at these frequencies, so they are the most important for transparent sound reproduction. A bit off topic, but hopefully that explains why I prefer Tannoy speakers with their minimal THD!

Depth Clarity Did I mention Depth?!

They will show the weaknesses of the recording and or your system (the Matchbox 20 DVD is just awful). Remind me of Linn's old slogan "trash in, trash out." Not really a weakness, but may frustrate some...

After reading all the great reviews for these speakers, decided to get a pair for my home system. I couldn't be happier with the R-2s. They reproduce the sounds as they were recorded. I must say that I've never cared about technical data, so I won't get into any of that. I just listen to the equipment/speakers and is as simple as one sounds better than the other. My good ol' ears never lie to me. I've played all varieties of music on these speakers - Nora Jones, Sting, Louis Amstrong, Pavaroti, Bare Naked Ladies, Master and Commander Sountrack, Juan Luis Guerra, and Tracy Chapman among others - and the R-2s showed no weaknesses. These speakers add depth to a room setup that handicaps them in every possible way (no reflection wall for the right speaker, a 30' high ceiling, they both point at 10' high by 12' wide windows) and they still provide excellent sound. I have tried many high-end speakers B&W, Linn, Naim to name a few and the R-2 speakers, for their price, have no equal.

Similar Products Used:

Linn Sara and Ninka Naim Intro B&W 603 Wharfedale Yes, I am partial towards British speakers...

Compact size Good Looking Clear top end reasonable midrange play loud

Comparred to R3's Less defined bass more congested midrange less emotional

I bought the Tannoy R2's after previously owning the R3's, the reason for this was due to a house move whereby the main listening room was reduced in size from 16ft x 16ft to 11ft x 14.7ft and as you can imagine the R3's looked a tad dominating. As a result of the reduced dimension the R3's could sound boomy when used with or without the foam bung so after much deliberation I decided to down scale and to replace them for the R2's. The comparisons are as follows: R3's: Better sense of controlled scale, more controlled and clearer base, easier to pick out finer detail, more relaxing, more emotional, can be to dominating, need room to breathe, top end can be a little spitty/detatched, good looking, play loud. R2's: Not so dominating, better top end, muddier base, harder to pick out finer detail, convey's less emotion, good looking, more compact but congested sound, play loud. As you can probably gather I preferred the R3's more relaxed/mature sound and probably wish I had moved to a larger house but you can't expect the wife to understand and one must also bear in mind the price difference between the two. I originally paid £460.00 for the R3's and £250.00 for the R2's both in cherry and both have been loaded with dry sand for this comparisson.

Similar Products Used:

Tannoy Revolution R3

Deep controlled bass. Sweet Mid.

Shows up compressed recording. Thats all.

What a pair of speakers, true to what ever goes through them. You want to listen to music buy them, if you want loud party music forget them. Superb Speakers.

well balance with clarity, depth, and substance.

non

I have got the R2 speakers for years now. I still have to tell everyone that this is really a superb speakers. As the years gone by, they are seasoned to the extend that the sound is well balanced. If you listen to vocals with good recording CD, there were times one thought that the singers are just right in the room singing in front of you. Especially with female jazz vocalist, the speakers seem to bring out the best of everthing. After years of having R2, I still want to tell everyone that this is must have speakers.