Review: Tannoy Gold 5 active monitors

Active monitor speakers are mainly for music production work but they are becoming popular among consumers like me, who wish to listen to "good sound" from a computer on the desk. These monitors are for nearfield listening, which means you sit close to the speakers that look to your face. The aim is not to fill the room with loud music but to create a sound stage in close distance before you.  Well, at least they say so and this coincides with what I expected them to perform.

I can claim that my ears are accustomed to good sound. Listening to music is more than hobby to me, it's some serious activity I perform as defined by "Res severa verum gaudium" which means "True pleasure is a serious affair." Roman philosopher Seneca wrote it a long time ago and Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra use it as their motto.

I started investigating for small active monitors for my personal use at my desk and after some evaluation my choice turned out to be Tannoy Gold 5 speakers.

These speakers are the smallest model of a line of three sizes. Gold 5, Gold 7 and Gold 8. The numbers represent the speaker diameter in inches which also shape the overall size of the speaker cabinet. Dimensions of Gold 5 are 29.5cm (H) x 18.5cm (W) x 23.0cm (D) which makes it a reasonable speaker for desktop use.

Let's see the outer box of the speaker as it arrived.

Each speaker is packed individually, so I received two boxes which were easy to unpack and it took a very short time to set the speakers on my desk.

I use my computer as a bit-perfect source to feed my TEAC UD-301 DAC which in turn drives the active speakers. You have to know some tricks to get the music data bit-perfect (which means without any software conversions and manipulations) from your computer, but this is not a must to get some good sound especially if your music files are not better than mp3. I also have a collection of concert videos that I enjoy on the screen. Some decent sound accompanying them would be nice for sure.

So, here's my setup which shows the brand new Tannoys.

My listening position makes an equilateral triangle with the speakers on two corners, quite ideal for a stereo image.

Let's get to some details of the speakers. They look and feel solid. The enclosure is some moulded synthetic material that is quite thick. It's not made of wood such as MDF (I later discovered that the units are made of thick MDF covered with a black vinyl layer.) The retro design is obvious, big knobs on the faceplate, old style logo that also shows a side drawing of the speaker driver (or a historical model) and gold trimmings around the speaker and front firing reflex port.

Are they beautiful? Well, it depends on your inclinations and aesthetic approach. I'm not a nostalgic person, so this is not the design of my dreams but it's also not distracting or kitsch. I might say I even started enjoying the design after spending some time looking at them.

The main thing to talk about these monitors is of course the drivers themselves. This is a two way design with separate amplifiers for each driver. The tweeter is placed in the middle of the woofer, so Tannoy calls this design "concentric transducers" This helps in creating the sound image as originating from a single source. There's a gold coloured, metal waveguide around the tiny tweeter. This looks like some steam-punk design to me but I must say right now that it works!

The woofer cone is made of some synthetic material that I'm not sure of. Not paper, not kevlar, not aluminium but some plastic stuff that seems light weight and rigid, which is good.

There are two knobs on the front. One is a potentiometer, like a volume control and the other is a five stop switch for fine tuning treble response. A round green LED indicates power.

All together, it looks like this.

You can make a size comparison with the mouse in the front.

The backside is covered by a metal cover, probably aluminium. There are two main inputs, both balanced type. A secondary "aux" mini-jack input is also available to connect directly to a phone's earphone output. There's a three position "bass adjust" switch to attenuate the lower frequency output by -2 or -4 dB. This might be handy since the bass level of the speaker is surprisingly strong.

Here's how Gold 5 looks at the back.

I connected my TEAC DAC to Tannoys by XLR cables. TEAC has both XLR balanced outputs and RCA unbalanced type.

All in all, Gold 5 gives you an impression of some good engineering and detailed thinking. Quality of materials used is very high for the price level. There's no indication of cheapness. The only trouble is the level of workmanship. Contours of front baffle to the sides are not all aligned perfectly and in one of the speakers there's a worn out part of gold trimming around the reflex port. Rest is OK.

Then comes the critical part: how do they sound? For such small speakers (and price level) they sound good, really good. Two things got my attention. The first is the level of analytical sound. I was surprised to hear the single instruments in an harmonious overall sound. Impressive. The second is the linearity of the output through the frequency range. I'm not able to give figures, this is a subjective evaluation by listening to music I know.

My preference is mainly symphonic music and classical jazz. I have some very good recordings that I could use for testing immediately. I was not able to find a major weakness that I could complain.

Professional reviewers mostly write about some music they listen to when they review an instrument. "Listening to singer A in album B, I was able to hear the percussions at the right level" or something similar. For me, I was never lucky enough to listen to the same albums they mentioned so it was mostly meaningless detail they talked about. Hence, I will not write about my impressions for specific tracks and instead just give my overall subjective rating: I liked the sound of these monitors. The most positive point I might mention is when listening at lower levels at night (I live in an apartment). Analytical but smooth sound that feels like coming from a high end system. Not too bright, not too sharp. The level of perfection decreases when you increase the volume to high levels. (After listening music for many hours, I revise my comment. The level of perfection decreases only when you increase the volume to really very high levels). At very high volumes you can feel the limitations of small drivers and probably economically produced amplifiers inside. But for my usage, these speakers are absolutely good choice.

I hope they last long!