Floorstanding loudspeakers — Tannoy ARDEN

The Arden is the largest model in Tannoy's Legacy series, a reissue of the 1970s design built by hand at the company's Coatbridge factory in Scotland. The Legacy line recreates three models from the original HPD era, the Eaton, Cheviot and Arden, using updated drivers and cabinet materials, and the Arden is built around a 15 in Dual Concentric driver derived from the HPD technology first introduced in 1974.

Key specs that matter

The Dual Concentric driver combines a 380 mm (15 in) paper pulp bass cone with a single-roll rubber surround and 52 mm edge-wound voice coil, and a concentric 33 mm aluminium/magnesium alloy dome compression driver with an edge-wound coil. The crossover point is 1.1 kHz. Frequency response is 35 Hz to 30 kHz (+/-6 dB), sensitivity is 93 dB, impedance is 8 ohms, and Tannoy lists 20 W to 300 W of amplification. Power handling is 150 W continuous and 600 W peak. The cabinet measures 910 x 602 x 362 mm in height, width and depth, and one speaker weighs 41 kg.

Engineering and use context

In a Dual Concentric driver the tweeter fires through the centre of the bass cone, whose flare acts as its horn, so both frequency bands radiate from the same point and arrive at the listener in time alignment. Horn loading raises efficiency, which explains the high sensitivity of the Arden. The passive crossover has two separate channels for the bass and treble sections, using 12 dB per octave slopes on the woofer and 6 dB per octave on the tweeter, and it is hard-wired for low loss. Bi-wire terminals are 24 carat gold-plated WBT binding posts, and a fifth post provides a ground connection to reduce radio frequency interference. The cabinet follows the original Arden design but uses high-density materials that were not available in the 1970s, with 19 mm side and top panels. A triple distributed port system loads the bass, and 8 mm floor spikes couple the cabinet to the floor. The burgundy cloth grilles follow the original 1970s look. Every Legacy pair comes with a signed birth certificate and a care kit for the cabinets.

Pairing

The Arden reaches high levels from low-powered amplifiers, including single-ended valve designs, while the wide amplifier window leaves room for large solid-state amplifiers. The broad cabinet suits rooms of 30 m2 or more.

Alternatives

Tannoy's Legacy Cheviot uses a 12 in Dual Concentric driver in a smaller cabinet of the same series.