The complete Tannoy Revolution Signature range comprises four stereo pairs and two centre-front (dialogue) models, each available in real wood 'light oak' or 'espresso' colour finishes.

The stereo pairs come in two-way standmount and two-and-a-half-way floorstanding versions, and use either 150mm or 100mm dual-concentric main drive units.

These are housed in the appropriate-size enclosures and with a matching bass unit in the floorstanding versions. (The LCR models also come with the larger or smaller dual concentric drivers, this time with a matching passive radiator.)

Attractive styling

The subject of our review is the £800 per pair DC6, which is based around the larger 150mm dual concentric driver, mounted in an attractively finished and interestingly shaped enclosure. Of the real wood veneer options, 'Espresso' is currently proving the more popular by a significant margin.

'Espresso' might well be the height of current cabinetwork fashion, but the same cannot be said for a wood veneer which has a resolutely matt finish.

Speaking personally, I think this type of surface treatment (probably originating from Eastern Europe) looks much more natural than the typical high-gloss approach that seems to be favoured by Far Eastern sources.

Inside Tannoy's speaker set

The cabinet encloses a volume of 11 litres, and is loaded by a port at the front, below the solitary dual-concentric drive unit. Although the front panel is wide enough to accommodate the 150mm drive unit, the back panel is exceptionally slim - only just wide enough to accommodate the strip of five terminals.

Although the front and back are flat and parallel, with the top and base likewise, the sides are formed into a tight curve so the depth corresponds quite closely to the width. This has the multiple advantages of stiffening the sides, spreading out the horizontal standing waves and dispersing reflections.

The five terminals? One pair feeds the bass/mid, another pair the tweeter, while the one left over is connected to the drive unit chassis. Like a similar feature found on Tannoy's more upmarket Dimension and Prestige models, the idea is to allow the chassis to be earthed back to the amplifier in order to reduce RF interference.

But there's little evidence of cable brands making appropriate five-conductor speaker cables available, so the feature's practical relevance must be questioned.

A refined design

Tannoy's famous dual-concentric driver began life way back in 1948 and, in various forms, has been a cornerstone of the company's loudspeaker technology ever since.

A co-axial drive unit, which places a horn-loaded tweeter down the 'throat' in the middle of a bass/mid cone, shows how the concept continues to be refined and developed with a shorter tulip waveguide and much modified tweeter.

Built on a 150mm cast alloy frame, the flared doped paper bass/mid cone is 115mm in diameter, driven from a high-power-handling 44mm edge-wound voice-coil. The 25mm diameter tweeter has a titanium dome just 25 microns thick, with a claimed extension to 54kHz.

The crossover point is set at 1.8kHz, with a second-order roll-off feeding the bass/mid section and a simple first-order feed to the tweeter.

Frequency response

Under our in-room far-field measurement regime, the DC6 comfortably met its 88dB sensitivity rating and did so alongside a relatively straightforward nominal impedance of 8 ohms, with an easy-to-drive minimum at around 200Hz. However, the pair match between our two examples was not particularly close, which is a little disappointing.

Although the port tuning is 50-55Hz (depending on the sample), a frequency which usually leads to some mid-bass excess in our test room, our measurements reveal a surprisingly dry bass alignment.