Coaxials - Reality vs. Experience?

In your opinion, are they great because they are Tannoy or because they are coaxial?

@erik_squires That’s a good question! Thinking on it, I’ve somehow managed to avoid hearing KEFs and most other coaxials. I have heard Thiel CS7.2, which features a coaxial, but there’s a lot more going on there too besides just the coaxial - unlike most Tannoys, which focus primarily on the coaxial driver.

I certainly liked the CS7.2, but it didn’t do all the Tannoy things I love :)

Coax speakers were very popular in the 50s and 60s but times moved on. Nothing wrong with a modern coax design but I’m not sure they have any sonic improvement over a conventional 2 or 3 way.

@russ69  So much of the audio tech we enjoy today is positively ancient in origin. The moving coil dynamic driver itself is ancient. Maybe you enjoy class D amplification with digital streaming and, I dunno, air blades? Plasma tweeters? Is there any other speaker tech that isn’t ancient? I myself enjoy vacuum tubes, so the fact that something came from the 50s or 60s (or 40s, etc) is of little concern to me. 

Tannoys use concentric drivers not coaxial. In a concentric driver, the tweeter Is part of the woofer structure, the center. They have been doing this since 1947....that's a long long time. The Original and the best. 

To add clarity, concentric is a subset of coaxial. In other words, all concentric drivers are coaxial but not all coaxial drivers are concentric. @erik_squires Pardon the presumption; you are probably referencing most designs intended for the hifi home user, of which most (if not all) are concentric.

I heard a few designs at audio shows as well as listened critically (TAD micro)  while evaluating two amplifiers for purchase. Having experienced music through quality concentrics, my opinion is that a quality design well executed in all parameters sounds great.......concentric drivers or not. The theoretical advantages of concentric drivers notwithstanding, there are probably a number of other design variables that bear more weight (at this point) on how a loudspeaker "sounds" to each person.

Hi I just picked up Hsu coax driver speakers $300 used, and holy smokes they are amazing.  The reason is because I found synergy using $15K worth of electronics. I have another amp that cost me $800 but has tubes and the Hsu speakers do NOT sound good.  I think the question isn't if this design or that is good but what will work with what.  I had to send my main speakers back and needed something but had no idea these would sound this good. Shocked actually.  So you could listen to these speakers and conclude they do not sound good because....   This was an eye opener for me. I think horns, coax, single driver, etc all have different compromises so talking about that is great fun but if we keep we want to hear sound/music in amazing ways then focusing on synergy is very fruitful. 

I love this stuff. 

jh

Erik,

I’ve had a pair of KEF Reference 5’s for about a year and a half now and have been mostly happy with them.  They have a pretty good sound stage and even with having an aluminum tweeter, they are not as bright sounding as I first feared. I’ve been powering them with a Hegel H390, which is a slightly warm sounding A/B amp and I’m thinking that is why.