Tannoy have earned a good reputation for their range of active nearfield monitors with the well-proven Precision series, and the range was augmented last year by the Precision iDP model. It is available in two sizes, one with a six-inch and the other with an eight-inch bass driver. It's the latter model, the Precision 8iDP, that is reviewed here.

The iDP is really an amalgamation of two pre-existing products: the iDP system (borrowed from parent company TC Electronic, and first introduced by Tannoy in their Ellipse monitors); and the original Precision 8 monitor, which employs Tannoy's Wideband and Dual-Concentric technologies. The Precision monitor was first seen as long ago as 2005, with the passive Precision 6 being reviewed in the pages of SOS in August of that year.

The iDP acronym stands for 'Interactive Digital Programming', which is a digital technology that provides digital inputs and easy interconnection of multiple monitors, with facilities for accurate level-matching and remote control, as well as accommodating a host of EQ functionality for general tonal tweaking, room alignment and bass management purposes. More of that later; I'll turn first to the more conventional aspects of these monitors.

Tannoy's Precision monitors are very solidly built from MDF, with stable tongue-and-groove joints and a 40mm-thick sculpted front baffle (which helps reduce cabinet-edge diffraction). The overall size is 440 x 272 x 369mm and each cabinet weighs a sturdy 17kg. The baffle supports three drivers on a brushed-aluminium panel, and the cabinet is ported to the rear. Magnetic compensation for the drivers is included as standard (so you can place these monitors near 'legacy' CRT displays without problems).

The main driver is an eight-inch dual-concentric design with paper cones, the claimed advantage of the dual-concentric approach being more accurate stereo imaging and a wider 'sweet spot'. The idea is that the majority of the spectrum is reproduced from the same small source area — the HF emerges from the centre of the LF driver — rather than from two spatially separated drivers, as with most speaker designs.

The upper driver on the baffle is referred to as a wideband 'super-tweeter' and is a one-inch titanium-dome device. Tannoy are not alone in producing wideband monitors, and while the reproduction of audio content to 50kHz may...