Tannoy Mercury m2 Speaker System Review

T annoy is one of the oldest companies in the audio industry, with over seventy years of experience in the design and manufacture of loudspeakers. Through its long history the Tannoy name has been associated with virtually every category of loudspeaker application.

In the last few years, Tannoy speakers marketed in the United States have been principally upmarket models, priced from several hundred to several thousand dollars a pair; the Westminster Royal carries a staggering $30,000 price tag! Recently, however, the company introduced the Mercury series of speakers, which are considerably more affordable.

The Mercury speakers look quite similar to any number of other compact, inexpensive speakers. Currently there are four models. The two smallest, the ml and m2, are two-way systems with small cone woofers and 1-inch dome tweeters operating in rear-vented enclosures. Differing slightly in their dimensions and driver characteristics, they are both designed to be mounted on stands or shelves. The largest model, the m3, is a floor-standing columnar speaker with a slightly larger woofer and a front-vented enclosure. There is also a center-channel speaker, the Mercury me, for home-theater installations.

The Mercury m2, the subject of this report, has a woofer that the manufacturer describes as 160 millimeters in diameter, although we measured its effective diameter as just over 5 inches, or 130 mm. Nevertheless, the compliant suspension of its paper cone allows a considerable excursion for a driver of its size. The m2 has a rated bandwidth of 48 Hz to 20 kHz and is recommended for use with amplifiers rated for 10 to 80 watts per channel.

The front panel of the cabinet is normally fully covered by a black cloth snap-on grille. Removing the grille reveals the drivers, with the soft-dome tweeter above the woofer. On the rear of the cabinet are the woofer port and insulated binding-post terminals. Although our test speakers were fitted with binding posts for the European market, which do not accept dual banana plugs, Tannoy says that those sold in the United States and Canada are fitted with standard five-way binding posts that will accept dual plugs.

We measured the room response of the two speakers, mounted on 18-inch stands 8 feet apart and 3 feet in front of the wall behind them, with the microphone located at a point 12 feet in front of the left speaker, at the height of its tweeter. The output of the microphone was smoothed and averaged separately for each of the speakers, and the two curves were plotted on the same graph coordinates.

The resulting averaged room-response curve was a very good ±2.5 dB from 45 Hz to 10 kHz, falling off above 10 kHz to about -8 dB at 20 kHz. We measured the horizontal directivity 1 foot from the tweeter, at angles of 45 degrees to either side, and averaged the two measurements. The off-axis curves were generally quite similar to the high-frequency rolloff of the room-response measurement.

Quasi-anechoic MLS frequency-response measurements at distances of 1, 2, and 3 meters confirmed the excellent dispersion and range of the speaker’s frequency response. Except for some irregularity at 9 kHz, which appears in all speakers we measure in this way and is obviously a measurement artifact, the speaker’s response was within +3 dB over the full measurement range of 300 Hz to 20 kHz.

The close-miked woofer response was measured using two microphones placed close to the woofer cone and its port, respectively, and the two outputs were summed in proportion to their respective areas. The resulting bass response curve was consistent with what we heard from the speakers, fully confirming the manufacturer’s ratings, which actually turned out to be quite conservative. The combined bass response from the cone and port varied less than +0.5 dB from 100 Hz to 40 Hz and rolled off at 12 dB per octave below 40 Hz. This is impressive performance for a single small driver in a box of this size. Obviously, the output below 40 Hz falls off rapidly, and the Mercury m2 cannot generate room-filling sound at those frequencies, but it acquits itself admirably.

The m2 has a rated impedance of 8 ohms and a sensitivity of 88 dB sound-pressure level (SPL) with a 1-watt input level. We confirmed the sensitivity rating, and the measured impedance came very close to the rated value, dipping to a low of 7 ohms at 200 Hz and with maximum readings of 33 ohms at 25 Hz and 38 ohms at 75 Hz.

As we progressed through the measurements, it soon became obvious that the m2 is, at the very least, a highly competent small speaker, and certainly an excellent value at its price. Still, as always, the final proof is in the listening.

Over the past year or two we have tested a number of compact speakers that have performed quite well and offered good value to the consumer. Indeed, the art of loudspeaker design has become refined to the point where good sound and affordability are no longer mutually exclusive, as the Mercury m2 demonstrates most effectively.

Nevertheless, reproducing the lower bass range cleanly and believably still imposes size, weight, and cost factors that inevitably limit the performance of every small speaker. Although the Tannoy m2 was no exception to this rule, it came remarkably close to circumventing it. Its measured bass response was clean and strong down to the upper 40-Hz range. And despite falling off at 12 dB per octave below 40 Hz, it managed to impart a sense of lower-bass content that seemed to belie our measurements.

This quality is not unique to the Mercury m2, but it is rarely achieved so successfully, especially in this price range. The lower range of the pipe organ in portions of the Reference Recordings CD of John Rutter’s Requiem was reproduced with surprising success, lacking only the skin massage that comes with a strong response in the low 30-Hz range and below.

Our bottom line is that the Tannoy Mercury m2 is one of today’s best values in compact speakers. Its emphasis is on performance rather than style, and the customer is the beneficiary.

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