Desktop speakers for mixing AND music?

There's any number of reasons why the Tannoy's can hiss that's not the speakers fault. With pro gear, sometimes people mistake signal cable with speaker cable. They look exactly the same and use the same type of connectors. I wouldn't be too concerned because Guitar Center has a good return policy.

Ddd1, that must be frustrating. These were by far my favorite monitors, but your story and others is a problem. You are all set now with your HS8's right? The HS5's I listened to seemed quite extreme in focusing on mids and seems designed strictly for mixing, but would be miserable for casual listening. Not at all trying to criticize your taste (who knows what each of us hear in our heads), but does this at all jibe with your experience in listening to the HS5s?

"You are all set now with your HS8's right? The HS5's I listened to seemed quite extreme in focusing on mids and seems designed strictly for mixing, but would be miserable for casual listening."

That's an interesting point. One thing you need to do when looking at products like this is to verify the setup. As audiophiles, I think we take for granted that when we demo a system, someone takes a CD player, plugs it into a preamp, to the amp and then the speakers. And aside from volume, there's not much else to adjust. Pro gear is different. There's buttons and controls everywhere. High and low pass filters, tone controls and all types of other things that will change the sound. Just out of curiosity, I looked at the Tannoy 502's. On the back of that speaker, it has controls for speaker position (I'm assuming left or right), high frequency cut and HF boost. I think it would be a good idea to look at the system from source to speakers and verify all processing is turned off, or set to neutral. People in pro audio usually have no problem with that type of processing, and wouldn't think to turn it off before a demo.

I just had the Tannoys and then the HS5s temporarily on the desktop. About a foot from the wall behind them, which is not correct positioning. I guess you could say that the small Tannoys, except for their self-noise, sounded a bit smoother than the HS5s when both were not set up properly. Not sure which would sound better if they had been set up properly. Any self-noise might be bothersome from a 3 foot listening distance but not be a factor at all from a 6 foot distance.

My audio system was in the same room and my Magnepan 1.7s stood in the optimal speaker locations in the room. I never tried the HS5s in the same spot the Magnepans were. When the Maggies needed to be sent out for repair, I got this crazy idea about combining both my computer system (HS5s) and my regular stereo system (Magnepan) into one system. So I traded in the HS5s and put the new HS8s on sand-filled 4-post Target stands roughly where the Maggies were, rather than on the desktop. Now all is good.

Like I said in my first response, you won't get optimal sound with studio monitors if you stick them on your desktop (or be able to tell their capabilities in a music store). Like audiophile speakers, time needs to be spent finding the best positioning for them, the room needs to be treated and they have to be sitting on good stands at the correct height and you need to feed them good source material. Of course most studio monitors have switches on the back to help compensate for less than ideal positioning, but this should only be done as a last resort.

You need to get some of these home and try them out, on good stands with lots of time on your hands, bringing back to the store the pair that doesn't sound as good to you in your room the way you have it set up. Room differences, positioning differences, personal tastes, loudness levels, etc. can obfuscate the differences between different sets of monitors.

FYI, apparently Tannoy has acknowledged and addressed the problem with the hissing/buzzing issue in their Reveal monitors:

http://support.tannoy.com/entries/60922977-Reveal-502-802-My-monitor-emits-a-static-electrical-buzzing-noise-What-do-I-do-