Priced at $999, the HTS 200 comprises short and slender towers, small but not tiny center and sats, and a comparably abbreviated subwoofer. (Substitute the same sats for the front towers, and you get the company's $699 HTS 100 system.) Frankly, having been traumatized by the George Washington/cherry tree story as a child, I've never been a fan of cherry finishes. But these, I must say, are quite nice, especially considering the relatively few Washingtons they will cost you.
SETUP One good thing about small speakers is the reduced probability that you'll have to log onto WebMD to research "hernia" or "slipped disk." This time it was easy to drop the speakers into my media room. I placed the subwoofer along the front wall midway between the center and the left tower. To help the direct-radiating surrounds conceal their precise locations during listening, I placed them somewhat to the rear of the more side position I typically use for dipole surrounds.
Each tower sports a 0.75-inch titanium-dome tweeter and two 3-inch woofers, though my ruler measured the woofers a bit less than that. Either way, that isn't a lot of transducer acreage, but they are assisted by a cabinet with enough interior volume to support some decent bass. The center speaker uses the same driver complement in a smaller cabinet. The surrounds carry on the two-way theme but downsize to one woofer instead of two. The subwoofer, meanwhile, provides 100 watts of muscle driving a downward-firing paper cone spec'd at 8 inches diameter (though, again, it measured a bit less). The nice folks at Tannoy supply wall-mounting brackets for the center and surrounds and a small pedestal for tilting the center-channel speaker (an increasingly common inclusion, and welcome because correct aiming of the center speaker is often vital for good dialogue quality). Also in the package are coupling spikes and wood floor protectors for the towers, a foam plug for the sub's port tube, and even 65 feet of speaker cable. The towers are shipped with wooden bases detached; some trivial assembly is required.
I powered up and spent a few minutes tweaking the sub. As is typical, it has level and crossover (50 to 200 Hz) controls, as well as a 0/180-degree phase switch. After some preliminary listening, I settled on a crossover frequency of about 110 Hz and no phase shift. I experimented with the foam plug and eventually decided to use it for music but remove it for movies. The plug mainly affected the upper-bass response, with the system delivering tighter bass with the plug in and louder (but boomier) bass with it out. Also, after some listening, I pulled the towers away from the wall a short distance till the front grilles were about 12 inches from the wall behind them. This marginally tightened the upper-bass response in my room. Of course, your room and speaker placement will uniquely dictate your decisions.
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The Short Form
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| Price $999 / tannoy.com / 519-745-1158 |
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Snapshot
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| These slim, stylish speakers deliver a lively sound that will be tasty for some listeners but an overindulgence for others. |
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Plus
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•Bright, lively sound just right for some listeners •Excellent transient response with good clarity •Tastefully designed small cabinets will delight decorators |
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Minus
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•Bright, lively sound too much for some listeners •Surrounds a bit bass-shy for the towers •Diminutive sub hits only 5 on Richter scale |
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Key Features
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•Tower: 0.75-in titanium dome tweeter; (2) 3-in woofers; 37 in high; 12.8 lb •Center: 0.75-in titanium dome tweeter; (2) 3-in woofers; 14 in wide; 5.9 lb •Satellite: 0.75-in titanium dome tweeter; 3-in woofer; 6.5 in high; 2.9 lb •Subwoofer 8-in driver; 100-watt RMS amplifier; 16.5 x 10.9 x 16 in; 22.4 lb •Finish: Cherry veneer |
Sting's newest recording is Songs from the Labyrinth, with 17-century music by John Dowland. Classical purists may find the four-part overdubbed vocals cheesy, but compared to contemporary pop music, it's beautifully haunting stuff. Still, you may ask: Solo voice, accompanied by lute and archlute, for speaker testing? Yes, each of us is profoundly aware of what the human voice sounds like. Any imperfection in reproduction is acutely apparent, and therefore it's tough for a speaker to reproduce solo voice naturally. After listening to this stereo recording for a while, I felt the towers provided an accurate vocal midrange, but their high-frequency response was a touch bright and somewhat uneven. Faithful, long-suffering S&V readers know I obsessively prefer smooth, warm, even dark-sounding speakers ("phat" in more modern parlance). These towers tended to emphasize vocal sibilants, drawing attention away from the lower vocal register. The result was a crisp sound that was snappy and dynamic and that many listeners might prefer — but ultimately not my cup of tea.
To exercise the rest of the system, and to measure the limits of its frequency and dynamic ranges, I turned to a Sting classic, Brand New Day — specifically the DVD-Audio version remixed in surround. With more upper-range energy present in this recording from hi-hat and cymbals, the speakers' essential brightness became more evident, reinforcing my initial impression. The towers' low-end response had enough extension to merge with the subwoofer, but their essential bass tonality lacked the warmth I typically crave. On the other hand, the towers' lively sound had its plusses and will certainly appeal to some listeners. On "Big Lie Small World," for example, the unique snare sound and pointillistic synth loops were the essence of snappy perfection, and on "After the Rain Has Fallen," the hand claps were explosively impressive. Hey, some people like caffeine at night, and some don't.
As you might expect, the center channel speaker, which has the same transducers as the towers in a smaller cabinet, had similar sonic character in the mid and upper frequencies for a nicely unified front soundstage. The surrounds omit one of the woofers but retain that lively sound common to the front trio. Because of their small size, however, their lack of bass becomes noticeable on some tracks, such as "Desert Rose." They handled the pulled-back vocals, strings, and shaker percussion nicely and mated well with the fronts from the middle frequencies on up but couldn't move enough air to fully reproduce the lower-frequency synth patches that open the track.
Fortunately, the subwoofer came to their rescue, delivering a solid bass foundation. Although not a powerhouse, it provided reasonable bass levels while staying tight. Unlike with the towers, however, which reached down reasonably low, I did find myself wishing the surrounds had a tad more low end to help the mate better with the subwoofer. Don't get me wrong — while the sub could be crossed over high enough to reach the sats, asking it to operate that far up caused its sound to become unsatisfactorily bloated and to call attention to the sub's location. Still, for most bass duties at moderate listening levels (meaning soft to medium loudness), it threw some good punch, lending Sting's bass great articulation and clarity and allowing the kick drum's beater to pound convincingly.
MOVIE PERFORMANCE To check out the Tannoys' movie chops, I turned to Pitch Black, Vin Diesel's first big film and arguably his best. This low-budget sci-fi thriller stars Diesel as a psychopath marooned on a very bad planet with a group of unknown cast members who, not unexpectedly, die horrible deaths one by one. The soundtrack starts with a bang as a phalanx of meteorites rips through spaceship bulkheads, with plunking sounds in all channels. Different alarms and computer-voiced warnings sound in front and back, along with groaning hatches, firing thrusters, and air turbulence all around. Spaceship pieces tear off and hurtle across the sound field, and explosions rock the sub as the ship comes apart in a fiery reentry into the atmosphere. Throughout the mayhem, excited dialogue pans across the front channels. In a nice touch of sound engineering, faintly audible exclamations from the crew reverberate in the surrounds, adding a bit of spaceship claustrophobia. The Tannoys conveyed this sonic extravaganza quite nicely. Frankly, not much subtlety is required, but the scene needs reasonable sound pressure levels, a cohesive, enveloping sound field, and a sub with sufficient guts. The Tannoys delivered with enough sound pressure to fill a small- or medium-sized space, though as I kept cranking up the volume in my large room, first the sub and then the sats started tup-tupping and finally crying out in obvious distortion. And though dialogue intelligibility was very good, the center speakers's sound grew increasingly colored if I moved much beyond 30º off-axis.
When a crew member peers into a curious hole in the ground during the movie (never, I repeat, never do this when you are marooned on a strange planet) and is butchered by an unseen creature, the full sound field expertly hypes the horror. In a few seconds you hear a collage of rustling, slashing, grinding, crunching, whipping, and squishing from all around. Convincing spatial reproduction of a scene like this hinges on having timbrally matched surrounds, and with the same tweeter and woofer in all the speakers, effects were smoothly distributed all around. On the downside, the direct-radiating surrounds exhibited some beaming that sometimes localized the sound to the cabinets as point sources — a not uncommon effect that was evident even in my large room. (To overcome this, you can turn the surrounds to bounce their sound off a wall, although this will also alter their tone color somewhat.)
Aside from some traditional orchestral flourishes, the film's score, like the planet the crew is being eaten on, is pretty sparse. There are a lot of things thumping around in the low end, contrasted with high-frequency percussion and various spine-chilling creature sounds. The sub was masterful with the relatively quiet thumping, and the crisp-sounding sats easily reproduced the spinal screeching. I may have picked some nits here, but given the limitations you can expect with any small speaker ensemble, I was quite satisfied with this system's performance on movie soundtracks.
BOTTOM LINE I was mightily impressed by the sight of these speakers when I pulled them from their cartons. Although the Tannoy HTS 200 home theater speaker system lacks the low-end power to magically summon the police cruisers at 3 a.m. and came across as a bit bright for my taste (especially on music), its lively, dynamic sound may be just right for yours (especially for movies). If their style, size, price, and pedigree put them on your radar screen, it's worth hearing what these Tannoys are serving up.
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