Floorstanding loudspeakers — Spendor Classic 200Ti

The Classic 200Ti is a dressed-up version of the Spendor Classic 200, the larger three-way floorstander in the British company's Classic line. Where the standard model has a veneered front, the Ti carries a multilayer front baffle in brushed titanium, with walnut veneer on the rest of the cabinet. Spendor states that the acoustic specification is unchanged, so the difference lies in the baffle material and finish. A titanium-fronted variant of the smaller Classic 100 exists as well. Spendor was founded in the late 1960s by Spencer and Dorothy Hughes, and the 200Ti is hand-assembled at its South Yorkshire works. In the UK the Ti has been listed at GBP 19,800 per pair, against GBP 16,500 for the walnut or cherry Classic 200.

Key specs that matter

The driver complement consists of a pair of 310 mm woofers with bextrene cones and Kevlar composite stabilisers, a 180 mm EP77 polymer cone for the midrange and a 22 mm soft polyamide dome tweeter with a wide surround. The network splits the signal at 550 Hz and again at 3.8 kHz. Rated in-room bandwidth is 20 Hz to 25 kHz, with sensitivity of 89 dB at 1 W and 1 m and 8 ohm nominal impedance, falling to 6.0 ohm at its lowest. Amplifiers from 25 to 300 W are recommended. The cabinet is 1117 mm tall, 368 mm wide and 513 mm deep, and one speaker weighs 55 kg.

Engineering and use context

Spendor uses the titanium baffle as a rigid, inert surface for mounting the drive units, so the front panel is less prone to resonate. The sides and top keep the Classic approach of thin, braced walls with viscoelastic damping pads, which let those panels move a little under control and turn some of their vibration into heat. The box is sealed, following the infinite baffle method adopted by the BBC in the 1960s, so the bass rolls off at a steady 12 dB per octave below the enclosure resonance and depends less on how far the speaker stands from the rear wall than a ported design would. Because the dedicated midrange unit takes over at the lower crossover point, the paired woofers are left with just the deepest region. Gold-plated binding posts are fitted, and spikes come with the speakers.

Pairing

With its shallow impedance minimum and high efficiency, the 200Ti places a mild load on the amplifier, and the wide recommended power span means that both small integrated amplifiers and large separate power amplifiers are suitable, the latter mainly for bigger spaces.

Alternatives

For a Spendor floorstander without the titanium front, the D-Line D9.2 is rated at 90 dB sensitivity and 8 ohms nominal with a 4.6 ohm minimum, and is specified for amplifiers from 25 to 250 W.