TAD Reference loudspeakers-How good are they?


Just wondering if the TAD Ref 1 and/or TAD Compact Ref 1 are as good as some of the show reviews suggest, although a recent review did mention a slightly "dark" presentation, albeit state of the art sound.

Does anyone know if the implementation of concentric tweeter/mid is superior to that of KEF/Thiel, or perhaps the Berylium constructed drivers and/or crossover sophistication.

I'm thinking about the TAD Compact Ref One as my "final" loudspeaker, as I have a small listening room at 14 x 16; Quite expensive at MSRP of $37K. I would appreciate any and all opinions and experience with the TAD Reference loudspeakers.

Thanks so much!
opinions
audiobrian
Thanks for your response; that is interesting regarding the other speaker. I had not heard that from the guys I know who own them and are liking them very much. Happy New Year!
@Zephyr, i'm glad you've assembled a system which sounds musical to your ears. Tthanks for your good wishes. All the best to you in 2017!

@shadorne, You must be talking about the S5 Mk1, as respected reviewer Martin Colloms had this to say about the S5 Mk2's in his review for Hifi Critic -

"We also found that the S5 MkII could play almost impossibly loud with near perfect clarity and no perceptible hardening, textural crowding or dynamic compression. The most difficult and densely scored material was handled with sweet clarity and with particularly low fatigue, a strong indicator of inherently low distortion together with exceptionally uniform frequency responses".

Melbguy: Happy New Year to you as well!  As far as my system sounding musical to me, you can also add a long list of various audio fans who have had long and multiple listening sessions at the house so it's not simply just my ears thinking the system sounds good.
@melbguy1


I was was referring to these rather embarrassing set of measurements for a SOTA mega-buck speaker. (See horrendous deviation from linearity above 2KHz - this kind of distortion is common in low cost speakers and is usually extremely audible - this example however is the worst I have ever seen. I don’t think this engineering error is acceptable in a speaker of this calibre or claimed repute. Maybe this explains the MkII to correct the errors of the Mk I?)

http://www.soundstagenetwork.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1043:nrc-measu...
@shardorne, Firstly the NRC at the time stated the S5 Mk1 speakers had the lowest THD of any speaker they ever tested. Secondly, a max 2bd deviation in linearity above 2kHz is "embarassing", "horrendous" and "extremely audible"? The S5 Mk1's driver pair matching was approx ±0.5dB, so i'm not sure what you're jumping up and down about. Also, I don't think the S7 or S5 Mk2 were designed to correct any "embarassing" test results, but were in fact the result of Magico's relentless R&D efforts which resulted in the M Project, from which the S7 was born. The S5 Mk2 has some technology from the M3, but that's another story.