Today I had my first ever listening to the TAD Reference 1 loudspeakers (at a hi-fi shop).
They cost USD 60,000 which is approximately the same as competitors like JBL DD66000 Everest and Dynaudio Consequence.
The speakers are made by Technical Audio Devices Laboratories,Inc which is a subsidiary (or division) of Pioneer.
They are really beautiful, confer the picture together with the vase. You have to see them in real life for best judgement.
The room they played in is the same room which they earlier had a JBL K2 demo, see the picture. It is a rather small and rather rectangular room with one long side and one short side. The speakers were place along the long side.
You may say that the TAD R 1's look rather KEF 207/2-ish. This is not so surprising because Andrew Jones designed them, and he was formerly head of engineering at KEF (Andrew is pictured in the bottom picture).
We first heard them using Hegel amplification (Hegel H30 monoblock used as stereo amplifier (ca 300W as stereo-amp) and P30 pre-amplifier). The sound was very impressive (I want to avoid torrent of word, so no further description is made).
We thereafter replaced the Hegel amplification by Mcintosh MA7000 (which costs approximately 50% of the Hegel amplification).
This resulted in a rather huge downgrade in sound quality.
The service of the hi-fi shop's staff was exemplary.
Conclusion: TAD R 1 are very good speakers, and you should use an amplifier being better than the Mcintosh MA7000 to take out their full potential.
