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69.113.2.43
In Reply to: how was the TAD room? posted by rhyno on May 13, 2007 at 08:50:52:
there was a magical sense of realism in the TAD room, that was better than any other room I went into....fwiw
jerry g
for $160,000 total approx
Follow Ups:
I was underwhelmed by the TAD room. The sound of the system was rather sterile and unexpressive. To be fair to TAD I wasn't able to sit on the couch in the sweet spot and had to stand behind it so my ears were a couple of feet above the level of the tweeters. For whatever reason I never found myself drawn into the music. In comparison, Jeff Joseph's demo of a floor - standing speaker (RM-33Si maybe?) for example made unfamiliar music consistently compelling even though I was sitting several feet to the outside of the right speaker. The Zu guys played a cover of a Lynyrd Skynyrd song reimagined as an acoustic country song - a genre of music in which I usually have little interest - and it made me want to run over to the Virgin store in Times Square to buy the CD. TAD didn't help themselves by playing stereotypically wimpy audiophile music at a relatively low volume. You could almost drown out the demo by whispering. I'd think that one of the primary reasons for buying a large expensive full range speaker is to reproduce music at a bigger scale than small monkey coffins can ever do, yet TAD seemed reluctant to take the Ref 1 out of first gear and open 'er up. C'mon TAD, you had 400 watts behind each speaker, why not rock the house a little?
....when we played Pink Floyd and Supertramp at rock concert levels? You must not have stayed very long in the room. Most of the demos were at fairly high volume. You could have asked, and Andrew would have played your request.
I was highly impressed, moreso than with the TAD speakers at past shows. One thing to keep in mind, though, was the source material used in the rather controlled demos. One was a CD from Boz Scaggs that is being mastered using TAD speakers, an advantage not shared with most of your other recordings. The other source was a highly modded Technics reel deck with a tube output stage. The material was some new reel tape that is recorded at 15 i.p.s., and sold (at very high prices, no doubt) on 2 10" reels per album. Again, most consumers, even if they can afford the TADs and the amps from MSB (also quite impressive), will be able to assemble a large number of this kind of quality source material. So, the TAD did impress, but it should have, considering how carefully every part of the rig, including the source, was selected.
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