Tannoy FX Setup

All rooms are different, so here are some considerations when setting up your system:

• Room dimensions

• Entertainment center configuration (placement of speakers in relation to)

• Flooring material

• Wall/stand placement, reflections, etc for surrounds

The FX 5.1 Speakers

As mentioned earlier, these are satellite speakers and are priced at a respectable $699 retail - for an entire 5.1'solution.

Setting up the FX 5.1 speakers as near-fields enabled me to position them in the optimum surround placement as suggested by the owner's manual, pointing each speaker directly at the listening area.

The center channel occupied a position just above my television set and was angled down slightly to point at the listening position. Main speakers and surrounds were angled in as well so that the optimal listening position was favored. All listening tests were done from the optimal listening position except where noted.

The FX 5.1 Subwoofer

"Placing the subwoofer" has been a new game of mine recently. In this particular case, however, finding the location was fairly straightforward. What was not simple was convincing myself that I had found the correct location so easily. Thirty minutes of unnecessary adjustments later, I returned the subwoofer to its initial position, shook my head and moved on. What I noticed was that placement of this particular subwoofer was not that critical. All of my shuffling aside, the sound coming out of the sub didn't change all that much in my room, regardless of the location. The final destination was in the front left corner of the room (opposite of the pictured setup inset) even with my audio and video equipment and about one foot away from the rear and side walls. Flipping the 180 degree phase switch greatly reduced the effective output of the sub, so the switch remained in its default position.

While this was one of the easiest subs to set up, it performed as expected for its rated range and produced plenty of boom in the sub 100Hz range. What it did not produce, however, was clean or punchy bass - but in this price range, you are not going to find much that does. The reason is that punchy bass demands an amplifier to have tighter control over the driver and that takes money. What the FX 5.1 subwoofer tries to do is provide a value performance, not take on subwoofers that cost as much or more than the entire FX 5.1 speaker package! In this endeavor Tannoy has succeeded, by producing a nice complementary unit that convincingly reproduces the remaining frequencies the satellites are not able to produce.

Build Quality

The build quality of the subwoofer struck me as quite good for this type of system. I managed to take a picture inside if the sub cabinet and you can see that there is ample use of corner bracing and decent quality fiber board construction of the unit itself.

The driver is mounted to fire into a separate tuned, ported chamber, leaving the amplifier and rear of the driver in its own braced compartment. The amplifier section delivers 100W RMS according to the specs on the Tannoy website, plenty of power for the 8 inch driver. Our examination of the amplifier components assured us that these specs were right on target. The boominess demonstrated by the sub is not going to be solved for free. If Tannoy were to implement better components, this impressive FX 5.1 system could easily climb to $799 retail or more - not exactly where Tannoy is currently positioning this system.

Now for some well-deserved balance. Regardless of the noted boominess, the FX 5.1's subwoofer absolutely crushes Bose's Acoustimass module. Considering that the Bose costs about five times as much as the Tannoy FX 5.1 system and is composed of up to three drivers, it makes you wonder how long it will take people to figure out that instead of pumping that money into R & D, Bose is most likely just funding its admittedly-effective marketing efforts. I'll continue my comparison to the other well-known satellite company later in the performance review section of this review.