Tannoy FX First Impressions
About 82 feet of 24 gauge speaker wire is included. Use a lower gauge, and you may not be able to make the connections.
The Tannoy speakers arrived in a single and, if I may say, very nicely packaged retail box. Upon opening the package I found two boxes. The first contained the satellites and accessories, the second contained the subwoofer. Inside the satellite box a foam cut-out served to frame and protect each of the 5 speakers. The remaining square-footage was designated as space to hold the wall brackets, speaker cable and other accessories. The four speaker stands actually arrived separately in two additional packages (stands are an option as the speakers come with brackets, ready to be wall-mounted.)
The speaker stands weigh about 5 pounds each, 4 of those pounds residing in the ample base. Considering that the speakers each weight just over 1.5 pounds, the stands do a fairly good job of supplying a stable positioning point for the satellites. Assembly is straightforward, involving a simple threading of the tube stands into the base and sliding the speaker holder on top to complete the stand.
The 24 gauge speaker wire which came with the system was adequate for my listening tests, and
is suitable for most price-comparable receivers which would accompany a system like this. In addition,
the use of thicker, lower gauge wire could result in an inability to make adequate connections to the
speakers (see inset.) 5-way binding posts are apparently out of fashion where Tannoy comes from - a
major disappointment. The speakers are set up so that when the wiring is connected, it snakes down
through the speaker stand and runs out the bottom of the base. This is nice and neat and eliminates the
look of dangling wires, resulting in a clean home theater setup.
The subwoofer module unboxed easily enough. It does not feature a variable crossover, so don't bother looking for one! This sub is matched to the Tannoy system and is meant to pick up frequencies below 140Hz, where I'd recommend you set the receiver crossover if possible. One thing to note, if you have a Yamaha receiver, notorious for its fixed 90 Hz bass management crossover, you'll find that much of the sound between 90 and 140 Hz may be taking a vacation from your system. To get around this, you may want to set your main speakers to 'large' and use the speaker level inputs of the subwoofer to provide the appropriate cross-over for the subwoofer. The Tannoy subwoofer also comes with a three-position switch (defaulted to 'off') which also allows you to set the sub to 'auto' and (always) 'on' modes.