The TAD horn's smooth, microresolved response was a refinement upgrade from my multicell Altec horns; plus, the TADS' French-polished wood looked radically less industrial than the soldered-tin, tar-filled 1005/288C horns they replaced. None of my horn-fanatic friends had anything sonically or aesthetically comparable, and all of them were envious. I didn't keep the TADs long, because the friend who admired them most made me a very "friendly" offer.
That was my first experience with Japanese loudspeaker design, and it exposed me to a level of engineering precision and fine craftsmanship I had not yet encountered in American-made speakers.
Thirty years later, I find myself listening to a pair of brand-new TAD speakers, and once again, none of my friends have anything sonically or aesthetically comparable. This time, though, it's a living room-friendly, three-way, dynamic-driver standmount/bookshelf called Compact Evolution One - Bookshelf Speaker System. The model number is TAD-CE1TX-WN. It is exposing me to a level of fit'n'finish and sonic insightfulness that is rare among contemporary speakers, even at the highest prices.
In the beginning
The company everybody knows as Pioneer was founded by Nozomu Matsumoto in 1938 as a radio store and speaker repair shop in Tokyo. Over the ensuing decades, Pioneer grew into a revered brand with a global reach. In 1978, Pioneer decided to break into the professional speaker market with a line of all-out recording studio monitors manufactured under the name Technical Audio Devices Laboratories. TAD's first product was the TD-4001 compression driver mentioned above.
According to the TAD website, that driver and its associated TH-4001 horn "found its way into famed recording studios around the world, including those designed by Tom Hidley, who was a toprated acoustic designer of the time, as well as AIR Studios, Capitol Records studios, and Record Plant.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der June 2023-Ausgabe von Stereophile.
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Michael Des Barres and the Art of Aural Obsession
Listening to music inspires us to take action. Upon hearing an I.E.-Instant Earworm-we must then determine the best way we can go about listening to it again (and again) at our convenience.
PLANET OF SOUND
BLACK FRANCIS ON HARNESSING THAT MAGIC PIXIES DUST
T+A R 2500 R STREAMING RECEIVER PHONO MODULE
In my review of the T+A R 2500 R receiver (August 2024 issue), I covered many of its features and took as deep a dive as time and column inches allowed.
Audia Flight FLS10
The dogma of separates has long reigned supreme among audiophiles: If you're serious about sound quality, you're supposed to need a dedicated preamp and power amp.
Totem Acoustic Element Fire V2
Totem Acoustic was founded in 1987, in Montreal, Canada, by a former high school math teacher named Vince Bruzzese. The company's first product, the Model 1 loudspeaker,' impressed me so much I bought a pair.
MoFi Electronics MasterDeck
Get two mouthy jazz drummers in a room and watch the sparks fly. Talented turntable designer Allen Perkins, the brain behind Spiral Groove,2 Immedia's RPM turntables,³ and various SOTA models, is first and foremost a jazz drummer.
Soulution 727
AImost 14 years have passed since a review of a Soulution product appeared in the pages of Stereophile.\"
The Spin Doctor checks out the Kuzma Safir 9, a superarm from Slovenia.
The British audio scene from the late 1970s through the mid-1980s was pretty strange. Audio as a hobby was a big deal, with widespread appeal to a much younger crowd than today. Audiophiles were guided by a flurry of what my friends called \"hi-fi pornos,\" audio magazines that filled the racks at the newsagents.
Alex goes to Japan
Arriving in Japan from the United States is like being turned upside down. This condition lasts for much of the first week. When I visited in November, the time difference between Tokyo and New York was 14 hours. \"The floating world\" is a term for the pleasure-addled urban culture of Edo-period Japan, but it's also an apt description for the twilit and not-entirely-unpleasant weirdness of first arriving in Tokyo. Everything seems slightly unreal.
Wilson Audio Specialties The WATT/Puppy
Since the original WATT/Puppy concept kicked off in the late 1980s,' there has been a 40-year evolution leading to the latest version reviewed here.
