Tannoy System 10 DMT
A ten-inch dual concentric studio monitor that Tannoy built to win back the professional room, and priced accordingly.
Overview
The System 10 DMT is a two-way dual concentric monitor built around a ten-inch driver. It was part of a deliberate campaign, not a casual addition to the catalogue. Tannoy relaunched four dual concentric studio monitors - the System 8 NFM, System 10 DMT, System 15 DMT, and System 215 DMT - under the banner of Differential Material Technology. The company was explicit about why: it wanted to re-establish its reputation in the professional audio monitoring field. This was a monitor line meant for studios, not a hi-fi speaker wearing a pro badge.
DMT is the whole argument here, so it helps to know what it means. According to Tannoy's own description, Differential Material Technology isolates any moving or vibrating component by mounting it with a surround or bonded mount made from a different material, or a fused bond that generates a differential, so that unwanted sonic characteristics are eliminated. In the System 10 DMT, that principle runs through a cabinet built from a high-density MDF space-frame, with hard-wired crossovers, bi-wired terminal panels, polymide wire insulation, and magnetic gap coolant. The dual concentric driver sits in a die-cast chassis with vented rear suspension, an open approach to casting construction that Mix (April 1991, p.116) described when it field-tested the monitor.
The ten-inch cone is one of the details that separates the System 10 from its siblings. The System 8 and System 10 monitors both moved to injection moulded polyolefin copolymer cones as part of the relaunch. Tannoy paired that change with a new copper-clad, rectangular-section aluminium HF voice coil and a "vibration-reducing" resin impregnated into the crossover. The high-frequency side gets a new "HF tulip" waveguide. Tannoy claimed its low 4:1 compression ratio delivered smoother sound with lower second harmonic distortion and improved symmetrical dispersion across both the horizontal and vertical axis. The design intent is a point-source monitor with controlled, even dispersion, which is what a dual concentric is for.
The System 10 DMT does not hide its ambitions in its price. That makes sense given the build: the MDF space-frame cabinet, the hard-wired crossover, the bi-wireable terminals, and the cast-chassis dual concentric are not the stuff of a cheap desktop speaker. Buyers were paying for a Tannoy driver in a Tannoy cabinet, and the pricing reflected it.
The model numbers show where it sits in the line. The System 10 DMT is the ten-inch member of a family that runs from the compact System 2 NFM and System 8 NFM up through the twelve-inch System 12 DMT, the fifteen-inch System 15 DMT, and the dual-fifteen System 215 DMT. Tannoy's studio monitor series, built on what the company described as ten years of DMT research, consisted of six speaker types in total. The System 10 DMT was the middle of that range, the ten-inch option for rooms that needed more low-end authority than the eights could give but didn't want to step up to a twelve or fifteen. The adjustable HF response on the ten-inch model (and on the System 12 DMT) let engineers tailor the top end to the room.
By 1993 Tannoy had relaunched the line again, and the System 10 DMT carried forward with the new capacitors, the HF tulip waveguide, and the resin-impregnated crossover. That second pass reinforced the company's stated intention to reclaim its professional monitoring reputation, and the System 10 DMT stayed in the catalogue alongside the larger DMT models. It is a ten-inch point-source design with real cabinet engineering behind it, priced when new at the upper end of the nearfield-to-midfield market, and built to be serviced rather than discarded.
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