What is the best amplifier for Tannoy Kensington ?

We have a few customers that have the larger Tannoys. They seem to prefer our M-60 amplifiers, which have a greater amount of power (really handly on the big Tannoys as their efficiency is in the high 90s, which makes them unsuitable for lower power SETs unless you are in a small room).

The big Tannoys in general do seem well-suited for tubes. For most of them, 60 watts is a good power for the amplifier because in most situations it will be impossible to clip the amp.

Yes, Tannoys are easy to drive, and don't benefit from being bi-amplified. You are best off just giving it your best shot with the amp.

If you are installing an electronic crossover, the answer is you will loose detail in doing so. Bi-wiring is a means of getting speaker cables to sound better, which is why some speakers have the capability.

Dave_72, you do get some advantage from doing biamping (without an electronic crossover, as opposed to running just a single amp) but it is not all that much.

For example, our amps can be monostrapped for more power and in situations where a customer could biamplify passively (IOW using the speaker's own passive internal crossover) universally it has been better to simply monostrap the amps for more power and run them full range. Said another way, the biamplified setup ran a little better than just one amp, but two monstrapped was better yet.

Al pointed out the reason above. If you are not using an electronic crossover, the amps still have to make the voltage (and power), its just used to heat up crossover components.

Tannoys are pretty efficient anyway- I think 96-97 is typical. So if you have 60 watts available in most rooms that is unlimited power.

Pryso, thanks, that simply means that 120 watts in most rooms will be plenty. That power level is such that an amplifier would be easy to find. In some rooms you can still do fine with 60 watts.