Amp pairing with Tannoy Turnberry?
Hi all!
Going to be picking up a pair of Tannoy Turnberry speakers in the near future, and was looking at some various options for integrated amplifiers. There are a couple on my radar and was wondering if anyone who owns the speakers has any insight.
1. Primaluna EVO 300 or 400 - torn on whether the extra $ warrants going for the 400 over the 300. I had a Primaluna + Tannoy pairing some years ago and loved it, so immediately thought of this one.
2. NAT audio single HPS v2 - this is at the very top end of what I could consider budget wise. I have heard this amp, but not with the tannoys. It sounds incredible to me, but I'm not sure if it would play nice with the Turnberry speakers and don't have the ability to test one at home.
From what I've hard of the NAT, I'm thinking it may be the better option, but maybe there is a better solid state in the price range I'm looking at. Ideally, I'd like to stay in the 5-6k range, but willing to stretch a little bit more for something I will be happy with for the forseeable future.
Thanks for any insight.
NAT HPS is every bit interesting and I echo what @charles1dad said. It’s probably hard to find another amp with two of my all time favorite tubes. I once heard Shindo Labs GM70 - 20W monos and instantly fell in love with their seductive sound design. The possible pairing of HPS with Turnberry’s intrigues me but their power rating gives a slight pause. It appears HPS’s comfort zone would be around 30W and that may not be an ideal match for a 93db efficient speakers. Having said that, looks like audio gods are smiling upon you. Once you get your Tannoy’s, reach out to Mike Powell (NAT distributor) for in-home audition of HPS, he lives in ATL :-) As an alternative to tubes, consider Accuphase Integrated, something like E-480 or E-650, both can be had for a good price on used market. I’m driving my Canterbury’s with E-650, a match made in heaven! In direct comparison with Luxman L-505, T+A PA3100 and darTZeel CTH-8550; I end up preferring the Accuphase gorgeous sound and synergy with Tannoy’s by a mile. |
I agree with your assessment but like you said, there are lot of variables that can influence end user choices not to mention room acoustics which are often overlooked. I have driven my Canterbury’s with a 300B - 8W amp. Did I hear and enjoyed the mid-range magic 300B known far, you bet I did. But beyond that, I felt they just couldn’t drive my Canterbury’s with authority. The 15” woofer kept begging for more power and control. IME, an amp with power to spare (headroom) is always a wise choice. |
Thanks for sharing your genre and sound preferences. Now that you mentioned, you’ve already heard HPS with Kensington and really liked the sound; that makes HPS an easy choice for Turnberry’s. Keep us posted on your journey. If you’re ever step into my neck of woods (Houston), feel free to stop by for a taste of Accuphase/Tannoy sound. I stream most of the time so there won’t be any shortage of Jazz musicians :-) |
Tannoy includes ground terminal to further optimize performance by way of reducing RFI. The intent is to keep RFI away from the voice coils. There are several ways to ‘ground’ …I’ve tried both mechanical and mineral based grounding. In my system, I found mineral (ores) based grounding to be most effective in further enhancing the performance. After connecting a pair of Entreq boxes to Tannoy’s dedicated ground yielded a new order of magnitude in sonic improvement - the bleeding of RFI noise to grounding box allowed me to hear nuances more clearly. The detail retrieval is further improved whilst remaining natural and organic in presentation. |
