TAD is a familiar name in recording studios. Their bass drivers power the monitoring in Lyndhurst Hall and Studio 1. However it is no easy task to satisfy AIR Studios ears.
TAD Model 1 2002
While not an AIR branded product the Model-1 deserves comment. In early spring of 2002 they contacted us about a high-end domestic speaker they were developing and wanted our opinion of. Designed by Andrew Jones, former Chief Engineer of both KEF and Infinity, they feature a 165mm (6.5") dual concentric Beryllium hi-mid and tweeter unit. Beryllium is a very desirable material due to it's incredile stiffness and low mass, but it is very difficult to work. A pellet of Beryllium is vapourised in a vacuum, the vapour condenses on a copper former. After etching away the copper, the tweeter and hi-mid cones are laser cut and the formers and voice coils attached. The resulting driver has it's first break up mode at 60kHz and is flat to 100kHz. Low and mid drivers (250mm & 200mm respectively) are woven aramid fibre cloth, non-woven carbon fibre matting and polypropylene sheet bonded using special resins for a total of 10 layers. A cabinet of 50 indivdual birch ply layers is a masterpiece of laminate engineering.
We did extensive listening tests in June 2003. The first hurdle was finding a suitable amplifier! They are so revealing that any weakness in your signal chain sticks out like a sore thumb. We settled on bi-amping with a pair of Chameleon ULH3500, awesome.
The finished product is amazing, much more than the sum of it's parts. All the drivers integrate seamlessly; treble goes on forever, bass extension and control is astounding, mid range articulates beautifully. Sound stage is wide, deep and pinpoint accurate. They are also surgically revealing, showing up poor recording, production or mastering with ease. Good material is a joy, presenting previously unheard detail and dynamics with precision. | 
