Tannoy Sensys DC2

They fill up your Sensys

By Brent Burmester

May 2004

Tannoy Sensys DC2 loudspeaker. $1999

Once upon a time, Tannoy speakers came entirely from Scotland - these days they are conceived there and the manufacturing is done, as with many speakers, in the Far East, or Malaysia in the case of the Sensys DC2. The quality of construction is good, although clearly built to a price. Leave the grills off - they stifle the sound, and their bulging bottoms of the grills are ungainly. The naked speaker isn't bad looking.

Cheap at half the price

Despite the lack of luxury build, you get a lot for your money with the DC2s. For a start, web-cams! Actually, the cast aluminium pod sitting atop each enclosure isn't a web-cam but houses a titanium-domed hyper-tweeter actuated by a neodymium magnet. Just a few centimetres below that you'll find one of Tannoy's famous dual-concentric tweeter/mid-bass units. The tweeter (titanium again) is set in the center of the upper mid-bass driver, and behind the front baffle. What you see on the outside is the horn-shaped wave-guide piping its output to the outside world.

Crossover appeal

The DC2 seems to be a three and a half way design, crossing over from super-tweeter to the tweeter section of the dual concentric driver at 16kHz, then to the mid-bass driver at 1.8kHz, with the lower bass driver rolling in to augment the bass below 250Hz. Adding further authority to the bass is the reflex port on the back of the speaker. Don't be fooled by the 'metal' seven-inch mid-bass drivers: they're silver paper. Nothing wrong with that though: done right, paper is hard to beat.

Friends of the Earth?

Like most speakers these days, the DC2s come equipped with two sets of binding posts and a split crossover, enabling bi-wiring or passive bi-amping. However, unlike any other speaker you're likely to know, the circular connection array on the Tannoy sports an extra, that is, a fifth, binding post. Why? Tannoy reckons audible benefits flow from earthing your speakers, and this extra post enables a connection to an earth on the back of an amp or pre-amp. Apparently the Japanese are very keen on this sort of thing. I tried it and couldn't make out any obvious change in character.

Pod people

Tannoy Sensys DC2 You're probably wondering if I found those web-cams any more effective than speaker earthing. After all, rolling in at 16kHz means the output of the super-tweeter starts beyond the range of most people's hearing, and marches onwards to over 50kHz. In the name of science I experimented by positioning special acoustic absorption devices in front of each super-tweeter pod. Sure enough, repeated testing with these devices in place revealed definite deterioration in the sense of life in the upper registers. It was as though a bit of the shine came off the music when the super-tweeters were shielded. Amazing to what uses you can put a couple of little plush toys.

What lies below?

If the super-tweeters were subtle but improving, down the other end the reflex port was obvious and overwhelming. Even positioned over a metre from room boundaries, the DC2 sound was dominated by a fat and obtrusive bass. The result was surprising, but speakers can be averse to some rooms, so I plugged the ports with the supplied foam bungs. Much better, now the bass was in proportion. Still, long term listening revealed it to be a little undifferentiated - as though from CD to CD every band was using the same kick-drum.

A happy medium

I give the Sensys DC2s a thumbs up, not for their super-tweetery, but because they do a good job where it counts most - in the midrange. A wide range of voices came through with strong intelligibility and emotion. The acid test was a young visitor's album of cover versions by the Smurfs (!), including a disturbing rendition of the Spice Girl's Wannabe. At the volume we played it, few speakers in this price bracket would preserve my sense of humour, but the Tannoys kept me smiling. Sort of.

Another impressive quality was the imaging and breadth of soundstaging. Teachers on TV One caught me out each time I watched it - even without a surround sound system it throws the off-camera noises of busy school playgrounds and corridors all over the room, and the DC2s looked smug whenever I looked about for the source of these odd thumps and cries.

The Sensys DC2 will appeal to a buyer who wants to exploit the extended frequency range of SACD and DVD-A, knows a decent sound when he hears it, and wants a speaker that looks the business.

For your nearest Tannoy dealer

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