TAD Speakers

Which TADs are you interested in, letitbe? TADs are excellent modern speakers, that is, musical but uncolored, very transparent.

Their beryllium tweeter reproduces sound way past the range of human hearing, so there’s no softening of high frequencies. If your system or a recording is bright, you’ll hear it. On the other hand, if there are beautiful, delicate details up there on the recording, you’ll hear them too.

The midrange driver is beryllium in the Reference line and magnesium in the Evolution line. So again, there’s no softening or pleasant coloration going on, but they’re not harsh or metallic sounding either. They cleanly reproduce what they’re fed.

You don’t have to listen to only audiophile records, they sound good on all kinds of music, but if you listen to a lot of badly produced pop or badly produced whatever, these are probably not what you’re looking for.

They always get great reviews, most recently the Compact Evolution Ones in the June Stereophile. But keep in mind that most reviewers probably have their electronics in good listening order. It’s their job after all.

So I like them but I know that there are people for whom they are not warm, lush or pretty enough sounding.

So which model are you looking at? What kind of sound are you looking for?

You could buy new TAD speakers or a new car, whichever you need more.

Thank you for your comments, tymco6. There are many TAD speaker systems that I have an interest in. TAD originated its speakers on the pro audio side many years ago so my interest began with the studio monitors. Given that this is an audiophile forum I was more curious about the TAD home audio speaker systems that have been introduced over the last decade. These include the Evolution and Reference versions and now the more recent TX versions which have received considerable notice from the hi-fi press.  I have never owed TAD speakers but would like to at some point in the near future. 

letitbe, You can usefully read about a speaker only so much. As you said, they get reviewed frequently, but ultimately you have to listen to it, preferably in your own system (good luck with that), to know if it’s right for you.

There were a Compact Reference and an Evolution One that sold pretty quickly here on Audiogon recently. Good luck in your search.

I know quite a few months have passed since @letitbe1306  posted, but I’ll add that one of the most unique qualities of TAD, at least the reference series (I own CR1’s) is the amount of inner detail, that makes ordinary (but good) recordings sound like audiophile recordings. Bass is also very articulate, which is important for me.

I have augmented mine with Velodyne subs and Enigmacoustics super tweeter to widen the window of realism ever further. (After hearing Raidho speakers I felt like I wanted a little bit more sparkle, so added the super tweeters).

I’d say if you can find a used CR1, that’s the speaker I’d suggest. It’s also the speaker Andrew Jones has stated he’s most proud of (which I confirmed with him in person)