Tannoy Mercury 7.4
FOR Big sound for a small budget; fairly agile midrange AGAINST Dynamically flat; treble, bass need more control
The past 12 months have been something of a rollercoaster for Tannoy, with it celebrating its 90th anniversary and then takeovers and turmoil at HQ. It’s hard not to think some of that pressure is starting to show.
The Mercury 7.4s, the second of the four-strong Mercury 7 range we’ve tested, are budget floorstanders. With a 44-litre design aimed at larger rooms, the cabinets are pretty chunky – they aren’t the most elegant speakers we’ve seen.
The plastic plinths hint at their price point, but we don’t have the same build-quality concerns we had with their bookshelf siblings. They feel sturdy enough and reasonably well put together, and are available in three finishes.
Big speakers for a big room
The Mercury 7.4s are twin ported, with dual 18cm mid/bass drivers and a 28mm softdome tweeter. These are positioned in a D’appolito configuration (tweeter in the middle) with the aim of widening the all-important sweet spot – necessary for a speaker intended for a bigger room.
The drive units themselves have been changed from the previous generation, with new materials used, while Tannoy also claims the cabinet construction is the most acoustically neutral to date. It all sounds promising but, knowing what the company is capable of at this price, we’re left feeling rather disappointed.
The Tannoy 7.4s certainly live up to the claim of being big speakers for a big room. Even placed well into the room, they provide plenty of scale, with weighty bass that never fails to make its presence known. It does lack a degree of control, however, and has a tendency to overpower the midrange.
And, for all the low-end presence, there’s no real kick behind bass notes, leaving them sounding a touch soft. The White Stripes’ Seven Nation Army falls flat without the punctuation to the drum kicks that defines its melody and gives it momentum.
Play something that relies on strong midrange performance, such as the stripped-back vocal of India Arie in Ready for Love, and the Tannoys leave us wanting, failing to come up with enough detail to do the track justice. We can pick out the breathy drawls that sit on the surface, but more subtle nuances are left undiscovered.
A lot of that is because the midrange sits back from the bass and treble, leaving the range extremes to fight over which sits more prominently in the presentation. The bass wins out, but the lack of refinement in the treble doesn’t go unnoticed either. Snare drums, cymbals and percussion shakers are short on the detail they need to sound clean and natural, and female voices can fizz with a coarseness that doesn’t always make for the most comfortable listen.
It’s a trait that makes the speaker sound unbalanced, with treble, midrange and bass all struggling to pull together, and the performance feeling a little disjointed.
Perhaps most disappointing, though, is that the Mercury 7.4s fail to really grab hold of a track and keep a good sense of timing and rhythm. They don’t get particularly confused or flustered, but lack that level of fluency you find in a more capable speaker.
Dynamically they’re a little flat too. You’ll get some sense of peaks and troughs, and the rising and falling of momentum, but only when it’s most explicit. More subtle moments aren’t expressed with the same ability. Q Acoustics’ 3050s are notably better, more than justifying their £100 premium on these Mercurys, as are, come to that, the £300 Tannoy Eclipse 3s.
It leaves us feeling rather down on the Mercury 7.4. Compared with their bookshelf siblings there are more flaws in the treble, which means they aren’t quite as easy to listen to. Big rooms will benefit from their big sound, and if you’re after a booming pair of speakers without a huge outlay you may find your head turned.
Ultimately though, the Mercury 7.4s fail to deliver in too many places, and there are much better places to spend your money.
”The Tannoy 7.4s certainly live up to the claim of being big speakers for a big room, providing plenty of scale”