Ye Olde PFO Editors Dave and David have called for the Writers Choice Awards to be submitted by us Hi-Fi hacks, so I'm putting that together now. One of the benefits you get by visiting my little blog is a preview of what's coming from yours truly before it goes into print at that esteemed magazine.
We writers hand out the PFO Awards for those stellar few items that we have reviewed over the past year that really impressed us with their musical prowess. We get to pick three awards maximum, so that means there are other deserving products that get left on the cutting room floor. This was a banner year for me on the equipment front, and it made it really easy for me to pick out deserving awards.
The first winner for 2010 was ... drum roll ... the Tannoy Westminster Royal Special Edition loudspeakers ($35,000 USD):
The Scottish Tannoy Westminster Royal Special Edition is the best loudspeaker I have used by a country mile. As the oldest loudspeaker manufacturer in the world, Tannoy has put everything they’ve learned about loudspeaker performance over the years into the Westminster Royal Special Editions, and as listener after listener that has visited my listening room has said, the Westminsters are really something special, and are a couple of performance levels above either of my previous reference loudspeakers, the Avantgarde Duo or Harbeth Monitor 40.1.
They should be considering the price differential: the Harbeth M40.1 is around $12K, the Avantgarde Duo is double that, and the Westminster is about triple that. In the case of the Westminster Royal SE they are expensive enough to make your teeth hurt, but you really do get what you pay for and a lot more, they are simply the most musically satisfying Hi-Fi purchase I’ve ever made. Using the Stereophile rating system that places the Avantgarde and Harbeth in highest category of Class A, the Westminsters are simply off the rating scale somewhere above Class A.
As my friend Ron said after hearing the Westminsters, "Where do you go from here!" Well, for me, nowhere. I'm finally done searching for loudspeakers that I can live with and love for the long haul. The Westminster Royal SE represents the end of long a journey through many different loudspeakers, all of them good to great, but in the Tannoy Westminster Royal SE I've finally found 'my' perfect loudspeaker. Maybe it’s my Scottish DNA kicking in, but I like everything about them, and I can't imagine living without them. I hope I never have to.
Get the full story on the Westminster Royal Special Edition in the Positive Feedback Online Review here.
For more information about arranging for an audition or for purchasing the Westminster Royal Special Edition loudspeakers in North America contact Darrin Kavanagh, VP Residential Sales, Tannoy, TC Group Americas at [email protected] or 303-459-4594.
More to come ...
